Body and Nature as Metaphor in A Thousand Acres Essay -- Smiley Thousa

Body and Nature as Metaphor in A Thousand Acres Most issues on a farm return to the issue of keeping up appearances. (Smiley p.199) [T]he female body is a reservoir, a virgin patch of still, pooled water where the fetus comes to term. (Paglia p.27) [A] fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. (Paglia p.11) The epigraph to this novel is from "The Ancient People and the Newly Come": The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on change never before experienced on this greening planet. This encompasses much of what the novel is about, every phrase having some significance for its project. Human bodies, as well as the "body of earth", are subject to both seasonal and social change. I argue elsewhere how Ginny's body becomes a signifying system for social intercourse, as does the scenery surrounding her. Here, I would like to explore the multiplex meanings of the motif of the tiles. When Ginny's ancestors arrived, their land was marshy, wet, impossible to farm. Laying down tiles drained the water and became the basis for their wealth- "magically, tile produced prosperity"(15). This signifies the control that capitalist industrial farming exerts toward nature, a control that ultimately becomes destructive. As Jess tells Ginny, the way Larry farms has poisoned the land and its people: "People have known for ten years or more that nitrates in well water cause miscarriages and death of infants. Don't you know that the fertilizer runoff drains into the aquifer?" (165). The surface richness and the treacherous, wet p... ...y to turn the destructive forces to her advantage. The important difference, bringing together issues of body and nature in the novel, is that her poison is not chemical, but natural: the root of water hemlock. Ginny envisions her poisoning of Rose's body as the inevitable result of the incest of Rose, but it is indirectly also the result of the abuse of her: "I thought [...] of that cell dividing in the dark and then living rather than dying, subdividing, multiplying, growing, Rose's real third child [...]. Her dark child, the child of her union with Daddy."(323) When she destroys the jar of poison, the only remaining object of her past life and the metaphoric container of that life's destructive path, she stops the spreading of social and filial poison, hindering its influence on the lives of the future generation: Pammy and Linda. That is the hope of the future. Body and Nature as Metaphor in A Thousand Acres Essay -- Smiley Thousa Body and Nature as Metaphor in A Thousand Acres Most issues on a farm return to the issue of keeping up appearances. (Smiley p.199) [T]he female body is a reservoir, a virgin patch of still, pooled water where the fetus comes to term. (Paglia p.27) [A] fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. (Paglia p.11) The epigraph to this novel is from "The Ancient People and the Newly Come": The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on change never before experienced on this greening planet. This encompasses much of what the novel is about, every phrase having some significance for its project. Human bodies, as well as the "body of earth", are subject to both seasonal and social change. I argue elsewhere how Ginny's body becomes a signifying system for social intercourse, as does the scenery surrounding her. Here, I would like to explore the multiplex meanings of the motif of the tiles. When Ginny's ancestors arrived, their land was marshy, wet, impossible to farm. Laying down tiles drained the water and became the basis for their wealth- "magically, tile produced prosperity"(15). This signifies the control that capitalist industrial farming exerts toward nature, a control that ultimately becomes destructive. As Jess tells Ginny, the way Larry farms has poisoned the land and its people: "People have known for ten years or more that nitrates in well water cause miscarriages and death of infants. Don't you know that the fertilizer runoff drains into the aquifer?" (165). The surface richness and the treacherous, wet p... ...y to turn the destructive forces to her advantage. The important difference, bringing together issues of body and nature in the novel, is that her poison is not chemical, but natural: the root of water hemlock. Ginny envisions her poisoning of Rose's body as the inevitable result of the incest of Rose, but it is indirectly also the result of the abuse of her: "I thought [...] of that cell dividing in the dark and then living rather than dying, subdividing, multiplying, growing, Rose's real third child [...]. Her dark child, the child of her union with Daddy."(323) When she destroys the jar of poison, the only remaining object of her past life and the metaphoric container of that life's destructive path, she stops the spreading of social and filial poison, hindering its influence on the lives of the future generation: Pammy and Linda. That is the hope of the future.