A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

First published: 1991

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: 1979

Locale: Zebulon County, Iowa

Principal characters

• Virginia “Ginny” Cook Smith, the narrator
• Larry Cook, her father
• Rose Cook Lewis and Caroline Cook Rasmussen, her sisters
• Tyler “Ty” Smith, her husband
• Peter “Pete” Lewis, Rose’s husband
• Pammy and Linda, Rose and Pete’s daughters
• Harold Clark, Larry’s neighbor and old friend
• Jess and Loren, his sons

The Story:

The grandparents of Virginia “Ginny” Cook Smith had settled Zebulon County when the land there was fertile but full of standing water and abundant wildlife. They had used tiles to drain the excess water into cisterns and wells; when the land was cultivated, the ponds, plants, and animal life became marginalized; the fertilizer and chemicals used on the land then drained into the wells and cisterns.

Ginny, along with sisters Rose and Caroline, spend part of their childhood being raised by their father, Larry Cook, after the death of their mother. Larry often beats and sometimes rapes the older girls, Rose and Ginny. The daughters marry young—Ginny at the age of nineteen to Tyler “Ty” Smith, who brings his father’s acreage into the family. By 1979, after a series of miscarriages, Ginny still has no children. Rose also marries at a young age. With her husband, Pete Lewis, they have two daughters, Pammy and Linda. Pete, a frustrated musician who is stuck farming and hates it, gets drunk and breaks Rose’s arm, but he stops harming her even further when she puts him on notice. Rose is diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of thirty-four; Ginny nurses her through the surgery and becomes a loving aunt to Pammy and Linda, sometimes envying Rose for having children and wishing that the girls could come home from boarding school.

In the spring of 1979, their neighbor Harold Clark holds a hog roast to welcome back his son Jess, who went to Canada to evade the draft during the Vietnam War. During the hog roast, Larry announces that he is turning the family farm into a corporation, with shares going to each of the daughters and their husbands. In fact, he is turning over control of the property—a farm of now one thousand acres—to the younger generation.

Everyone seems to give their assent to Larry’s idea, everyone except Caroline. Larry angrily tells her that she will therefore not receive a share. Caroline leaves the party and drives away without another word.

Ginny anxiously tries to make peace during the next few days, mainly by arguing with Caroline to change her mind. Soon the family gathers to sign the papers, with Marv Carson, from the bank, and Ken Lasalle, the family lawyer, present. Caroline drives up and approaches the screen door, but Larry gets to the door first and slams it in Caroline’s face. Now alienated from the family, she stays away, working at her law practice in Mason City and commuting to New York frequently. When she marries Frank Rasmussen, another lawyer, the family receives only an announcement, and no invitations to the wedding.

Ginny’s husband, Ty, is happy about the arrangement. He borrows money from Marv’s bank to set up a large hog-confinement operation, which involves putting up new buildings and buying equipment and breeding sows. The farm is already the most successful farm in Zebulon County, and among the largest.

Larry no longer works on the farm and begins some erratic behavior that worries Rose and Ginny. When Ginny, who continues to cook for him, tries to reason with him about his actions, he becomes angry and tells Ginny to stop giving him orders. Later, Ginny drives by Larry’s house and sees him sitting immobile in the window, but when she asks if he is okay, he becomes angry. It is apparent that he is watching Ty prepare one of the fields for planting, and disapproving of Ty’s actions.

The younger generation of Clarks and Cooks start spending evenings together playing the board game Monopoly. As they play, some tell stories about their lives—Pete about his attempts to start a career in music and Jess a little bit about the years he was away in Canada. Jess and Ginny become more acquainted, and Jess and Ty become friends. Jess often visits Ginny, and the two of them talk about their lives, their hopes, their dreams—Jess telling Ginny about his fiancé, who had died in a crash, and Ginny tells Jess about the miscarriages she has had, the last few she has kept secret from Ty. Jess is more environmentally aware than the men of Larry and Harold’s generation, and he tells Ginny that the well water, contaminated by fertilizer and chemicals that can reach the well through the tile drainage system, probably had caused her miscarriages and also Rose’s cancer.

Ginny and Jess’s closeness leads to one sexual encounter, but after Ginny tells Jess that she loves him, he becomes more distant. Meanwhile, Larry, consumed by anger, is eventually arrested for driving while intoxicated. He refuses to discuss this with Ginny, and he becomes more critical of her treatment of him and of everyone’s way of running the farm. Rose and Ginny argue over what to do about their father, and Rose finally tells Ginny that she hates him because he had raped her repeatedly years ago. Rose thinks the same thing had happened to Ginny, but Ginny remembers nothing of it. Rose keeps Pammy and Linda in boarding school because she fears Larry will rape them, too.

Harold Clark sympathizes with Larry and urges Ginny, Rose, and their families to attend a church supper, where he plans to help them make peace with each other. Instead, Harold uses the occasion to denounce Ginny, Rose, and Jess publicly, and he does so using foul language.

One night during a violent storm Larry confronts daughters Ginny and Rose, making outlandish accusations and calling them names. Then he disappears into the rain. Caroline makes contact with her sisters again, but despite Larry’s own bad treatment of her, she now blames them for Larry’s disappearance during the storm. Ginny and Rose finally learn that Larry plans to sue them to regain control of the farm, with Caroline a party to the suit on their father’s side. Before the case goes to court, Pete, Rose’s husband, sets up an accident that leads to Harold’s blindness, then drunkenly threatens to kill Harold and Larry. Later, Pete drowns after driving his truck into a flooded quarry.

During the time of Pete’s death and funeral, Rose reveals to Ginny that she is having an affair with Jess. In shock, Ginny begins to remember her own times when Larry had raped her, but her anger is at Rose, and she jealously plans to kill Rose by poisoning her.

The lawsuit finally goes to court, but the judge dismisses Larry’s suit after a short session. Larry seems to have advanced dementia. After returning from court, Ty and Ginny argue, and Ty believes, as he always has, that Ginny and Rose had treated their father badly. Ginny asks Ty for one thousand dollars cash, takes it, and drives to Minneapolis, leaving him for good; Ty and Rose are the only surviving family on the farm.

Ginny settles into a contented, although somewhat lonely, life in Minneapolis. Eventually, Ty visits and tells her he is giving up the farm and going to Texas to start over and that Larry is dead. Later, Rose calls and tells Ginny that her cancer has returned, and this time it is terminal. She asks Ginny to take care of Pammy and Linda after she dies. Rose and Ginny make peace, and Ginny is relieved that Rose never took her poison. After Rose dies, Ginny takes the girls to Minneapolis. No one is left on the farm, which is bought out and taken over by a corporation.

Bibliography

Carden, Mary Paniccia. “Remembering/Engendering the Heartland: Sexed Language, Embodied Space, and America’s Foundational Fictions in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 18, no. 2 (1997): 181-202. Examines how Smiley, in A Thousand Acres, challenges agrarian ideologies that serve to silence women.

Farrell, Susan Elizabeth. Jane Smiley’s “A Thousand Acres”: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2001. Provides a close look at Smiley’s award-winning novel. Addresses such subjects as father-daughter relationships, King Lear as a legendary character, and rural families and farm life. Includes bibliographical references.

Leslie, Marina. “Incest, Incorporation, and King Lear in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres.” College English 60, no. 1 (January, 1998): 31-50. Presents a scholarly comparison of King Lear and A Thousand Acres, with an emphasis on Shakespearean criticism that recognizes incest themes in King Lear.

Nakadate, Neil. Understanding Jane Smiley. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. An academic book that is helpful for general readers and students new to Smiley’s work. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Rozga, Margaret. “Sisters in Quest: Sister Carrie and A Thousand Acres—Search for Identity in Gendered Territory.” Midwestern Miscellany 22 (1994): 18-29. Rozga examines the ways in which the heroines of both novels seek authenticity in a world of male value.

Sheldon, Barbara H. Daughters and Fathers in Feminist Novels. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. Feminist literary criticism has long focused on Freudian and other views of father-daughter relationships, including sexual tensions. This study employs this tool to examine A Thousand Acres and other works.

Walker, Nancy A. The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Walker argues that Smiley, in writing A Thousand Acres, reformulates William Shakespeare’s King Lear to give authority to women’s voices.