A Thousand Acres

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child sexual abuse, incest, and misogyny.

Both men and women in A Thousand Acres are expected to follow strict gender roles. Men tend to be rewarded for conforming to masculine standards of toughness and authority. Larry is highly respected in town for being a good farmer and a strong father. His daughters—and some townspeople—are afraid and intimidated by him, which allows him to exert power and control over them. After he yells at Ginny and Rose, he decides to go out into the storm, rather than seek shelter. This is a hyper-masculine act and shows Larry’s commitment to his male pride. While Larry is never the same after the storm, in many ways, people have more sympathy for him following it. This implies that he is ultimately rewarded for acting masculine even when it is detrimental to his health.

Rose and Ginny, meanwhile, are repeatedly punished for failing to conform to their community’s expectations of femininity. On the surface, both women are extremely domestic and dedicated to farm life. They care for Larry, always making sure he is fed and has everything he needs. They almost take on a maternal role for Larry. When Ginny remembers Larry sexually assaulting her, she remembers “feeling him suck [her] breasts” (228), which is reminiscent of breastfeeding a baby. Some of the tension in Ginny and Rose’s relationship with Larry stems from the way his sexual abuse blurred which feminine gender role they occupy relative to him: They are unsure if they are his daughters, his mothers, or his wives.

While Larry decides to give his daughters the farm, he does seem to resent the fact that he is passing it down to women instead of men. Following the storm, he tells Jess that the “whores had sent him out into the storm and that he wished he’d had sons” (195). Rose and Ginny have done nothing to Larry but question his erratic behavior, but by wishing he had sons, he implies that this kind of questioning is a uniquely female thing to do. As a result, the women are punished by him for forgetting to act submissively. Additionally, both Ginny and Rose are seen as being manipulative and conniving by the townspeople and are accused of orchestrating Larry’s decision to give them the farm. This is not true, as it was Larry’s idea to give them the farm. However, because they are women, they are not expected to have such a level of power and authority, leading people to believe they only could have attained that power and authority through manipulative or evil ways.

Additionally, both women have had elements of their femininity removed from them, highlighting that they are seen as “bad” women by the men around them. Ginny is never able to carry a pregnancy to term, which means that no one in the Cook family produces any male heirs. Larry is especially bothered by this and goes so far as to call her a “barren whore.” At the beginning of the novel, Rose has just undergone a mastectomy due to a breast cancer diagnosis. As a result, Pete no longer wants to see her naked, requesting that she wear her nightgown in front of him. Both Ginny and Rose become obsessed with reclaiming the aspects of their femininity taken from them: Ginny tries in vain to become pregnant, while Rose begins to act hyper-sexually to reclaim her body and the innocence Larry took from her when she was a teenager. Ultimately, both women fail to reclaim these aspects of their womanhood and lose the men in their lives as a result.

Interestingly, Caroline does not adhere to the strict gender roles found on the farm, and she is not punished for this failure. This could be because she is an outsider, and, as a result, she is not expected to adhere to the same expectations as her farmwife sisters. Regardless, Caroline’s ability to act more masculine and assertive toward Larry and the other men frustrates Rose and Ginny because it is something they are unable to do. Overall, by adhering to the strict gender roles on the farm, the characters in the novel are always unhappy and angry at each other, never finding peace.