Ivy Rowe's Ideas of the Past in Fair and Tender Ladies
In Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, Ivy Rowe has a constant
attachment to her past. This attachment is one of the main themes in
the novel. It is one of her main reasons for letter writing and why
she does some of the things that she does, because she does not want
to lose her grip on her past. Ivy Rowe, in Lee Smith's Fair and Tender
Ladies, uses letter writing to keep a hold of her grip on the past and
where she came from.
In Letters from Sugar Fork, Ivy writes for a number of reasons. She
wants to see how and what other people are doing, wanting to improve
her writing skills, asking for help from her grandfather at one point,
in addition to just having some way to release all her thoughts and
emotions. These letters, being a window into her mind, show us the
progression of her as she grows. There is one letter in particular,
which shows how important this correspondence is to her. "I hate you,
you do not write back nor be my Pen Friend I think you are the Ice
Queen instead. I do not have a Pen Friend or any friend in the world,
I have only Silvaney who laghs and laghs and Beulah who is mad now all
the time and Ethel who calls a spade a spade…I will not send this
letter as I remain your hateful, Ivy Rowe."(Smith, 17) This letter
shows just how important letter writing is to Ivy. As she is not able
to receive correspondence from Hanneke she cannot fully express
herself and has a hard time with her anger, as is evidence by the
excerpt from her letter.
Ivy also writes to Mrs. Brown about her experiences in Sugar Fork. She
talks about how she shot a gun and is able to paint a vivid picture of
the winter season. "Ice just shining on each and e...
... middle of paper ...
...her last letter defines her life when she says "Slow down
now, slow down now Ivy. This is the taste of spring. I never have
slowed down." This shows her need to continue and persevere through
all she has been through. Ivy as a character goes through a lot in her
life and by writing these letters and expelling all her feelings and
emotions onto the paper she was able to find a sort of peace with her
existence.
Bibliography:
Henderson, Lara Beth A True Storyteller: Appalachia's own Lee Smith
October 1, 2000,
http://www.etsu.edu/haleyd/engl3134/ejournal/henderson.html
Robbins, Dorothy Dodge "Personal and Cultural Transformation: Letter
Writing in Lee Smith's 'Fair and Tender Ladies'" Critique: Studies in
Contemporary Fiction (Winter 1997, Volume 38 n.2): p. 135
Hill, Dorothy Combs "An Interview with Lee Smith" The Southern
Quarterly 28.2(1990):5-19
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