Women Finding Their Voices in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres

Women Finding Their Voices in A Thousand Acres

"Women, just like nature or the land, have been seen as something to be used,' says Smiley.'Feminists insist that women have intrinsic value, just as environmentalists believe that nature has its own worth, independent of its use to man'" (Duffy 92). Larry Cook, the senile, old power holder and father in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, is a prime example of a man who believes that women and land are nothing more than objects that exist on this earth only so that he can control them.

Larry's obsession with control begins in his marriage. In Larry's mind the only thing his wife was necessary for was cooking and cleaning. Larry also becomes obsessed with controlling his daughters, not only through disciplinary actions but also through molestation. He continues to control Ginny and Rose well into their adult lives. Because of their mother's premature death, Ginny and Rose are forced to take over the household. Their main jobs are to look after their little sister, Caroline, and to cook and clean. Rose and Ginny continue to look after Larry on a daily basis well after they are both married and have lives and children of their own.

Even though neither of the daughters really wants to cook and clean for Larry, both feel obligated to look after him because he has instilled so much fear into them. Ginny tells the reader of this obligation: "My job remained what it had always been-to give him what he asked of me, and if he showed discontent, to try and find out what would please him" (Smiley 115).

Besides forcing his daughters to take care of him, Larry also controls Ginny and Rose through molestation. As one critic observes, "The implication is that the impulse to incest concerns not so much sex as a will to power, an expression of yet another way the woman serves the man" (Duffy 92).

The women in this novel are fairly passive and tend to let the men manipulate them. According to Martha Duffy, Smiley sees a link between the exploitation of women and that of the land. The land is stronger than the women in this novel in that despite the fact that men manipulate and attempt to change it as much as possible, it is still its own entity. This presents a contrast to what occurs when the women are dominated.