Comparison Of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres By Jane Smiley

It all began with three beautiful daughters tested to the extent of how much they loved their father. Three beautiful daughters in competition with one another. Three beautiful daughters with no real winner. The novel, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, is an adaption of the play King Lear by William Shakespeare. These literary works differ greatly from each other. However, both establish a certain type of dynamic within the family. Smiley’s adaptation features a similar patriarchal household to the one that is present in Shakespeare’s when showcasing the relationship with a father and daughter, and by expanding on this idea, she creates a new, separate work. In Smiley’s adaption, she reinterprets the play by also using the patriarchal household.

In Shakespeare’s version, Lear is the head of the family. He is the one who makes the decisions and calls the shots. However, he also makes the foolish decision to relinquish his power to his daughters and their husbands. In this household, and the one present in Smiley’s adaption, Lear is the one who holds the power. Even though Goneril and Regan are married, Lear is still the one who is the head of the household. However, once he decides to let go of his power, he struggles to adjust to the shift in power. Smiley utilizes this same struggle in her own novel by having him sign away his farm to Ginny and Rose. This idea of a shift in power signals an end to his reign at the top of this patriarchy even though he still tries to hold onto his place by placing certain rules and expectations on his daughters. If he were to have had sons, they would have taken his throne. This underlying idea is present in both works. It is a comment to the undesirability to have daughters as they do not have much of a role to play. Larry does not speak about his daughters in a positive light. He refers to them as the “whores” that “had sent him out into the storms and that he wished he’d had son” (Smiley 195). Lear does not speak much better of them and calls them “pelican daughters” (Shakespeare 78). Pelican is referring to feeding on a parent’s blood. Lear specifically uses the word

It becomes a new work as she creates a story about liberation for Ginny and Rose. Two characters, who were for the most part neglected in Shakespeare’s, find their own inner peace outside of a life dominated by males. This modern twist adds a new layer to this work and helps form a separation from the play. With a new focus to Ginny and Rose, the readers see and sympathize their struggles with their father. Larry, at first glance a senile old man, is painted in a more sinister light. Ginny and Rose were not bad daughters. When they agreed to the division of the land, there may have been ulterior motives, but it is not simple enough to reduce them to bad daughters. Their actions were responses to the patriarchal environment that they were living in. Rose and Ginny end up escaping this system of patriarchy. They start by resisting their father’s demands and wishes. They seal the end of his reign when they win the lawsuit filed against them for the land. Following this lawsuit, “there could no reconciliation now” (Smiley 326). Larry’s system of patriarchy had fallen, and was damaged beyond repair. Larry’s fall from grace ended with a heart attack in the cereal aisle. A death that his two daughters did not care about. Ginny barely affords three sentences about his death in her narration of this story. An equally unglamorous