TTeexxaass AA&&MM UUnniivveerrssiittyy SScchhooooll ooff LLaaww TTeexxaass AA&&MM LLaaww SScchhoollaarrsshhiipp Faculty Scholarship 10-2001 IInncceesstt iinn aa TThhoouussddaanndd AAccrreess:: CChheeaapp TTrriicckk oorr FFeemmiinniisstt RRee--vviissiioonn Susan Ayres Texas A&M University School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar Part of the Family Law Commons, Law and Society Commons, and the Legal History Commons RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Susan Ayres, Incest in a Thousdand Acres: Cheap Trick or Feminist Re-vision, 11 Tex. J. Women & L. 131 (2001). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/267 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Texas A&M Law Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Texas A&M Law Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Texas Journal of Women and the Law Volume 11 INCEST IN A THOUSAND ACRES: CHEAP TRICK OR FEMINIST RE-VISION? Susan Ayres* I. Introduction .............................................. 131 II. Smiley's Feminist Re-vision .............................. 133 III. The Longing for the Mother .............................. 137 IV . Incest by the Father ...................................... 141 A. The Role of the Narrative ............................ 142 B. Is Smiley's Rewriting a Cheap Trick? ................. 143 C. Smiley's Rewriting Serves a Feminist Purpose - but W hich O ne? ........ ................................. 145 V . C onclusion ............................................... 154 You are entitled to have your story told in your language ...o r the law is failing.1 I. Introduction In the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres,2 Jane Smiley re- writes King Lear3 from the older daughters' perspectives, because "[bleginning with [her] first readings of the play in high school and contin- * Visiting Associate Professor, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. B.A., Baylor University, 1982; M.A., University of Texas at San Antonio, 1985; J.D., Baylor University School of Law, 1988; Ph.D., Texas Christian University, 1997. I wish to thank the following present and past colleagues for their valuable comments and suggestions: Mary Locke Crofts, Paul George, Earl Martin, Nancy Myers, Amy Patterson, Richard Storrow, and David Zlotnick. My appreciation also goes to Professor Robert Batey of Stetson College of Law, to Anna Teller for research and library assistance, and to my spring 2001 law and literature seminar class, which enthusiastically read and discussed both KING LEAR and A THOUSAND ACRES. Article edited by Deena Kalai. 1. JAMES BOYD WHITE, HERACLES' Bow: ESSAYS ON THE RHETORIC AND POETICS OF THE LAW 42 (The University of Wisconsin Press 1985). 2. JANE SMILEY, A THOUSAND ACRES (The Ballantine Publishing Group 1996) (1991). This novel was Smiley's seventh fictional work. It won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. 3. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR (R.A. Foakes ed., Arden Shakespeare series 1997) (First Folio 1623). Texas Journal of Women and the Law [Vol. 11:131 uing through college and graduate school," she had "been cool to both Cordelia and Lear"; rather, she was attracted to Regan and Goneril, the "older sisters, figures of pure evil according to conventional wisdom."4 Smiley relates that Regan and Goneril "sounded familiar, especially in the scene where they talk between themselves about Lear's actions, and later, when they have to deal with his unruly knights."5 In describing her composition of A Thousand Acres, Smiley explains that in "wrestl[ing]" with '"Mr. Shakespeare's" Machiavellian vision, she became a "lawyer for Goneril and Regan": I proposed a different narrative of their motives and actions that cast doubts on the case Mr. Shakespeare was making for his cli- ent, King Lear. I made Goneril my star witness, and she told her story with care. I made sure that, insofar as I was able to swing it, she was an appealing witness as well-cautious, judicious, ambivalent, straightforward ....T he goal of the trial was not to try or condemn the father, but to gain an acquittal for the daugh- ters. The desired verdict was not "innocent," but rather "not guilty," or at least, "not proven."6 As Smiley points out, A Thousand Acres is "a response to the play,"7 a "rewriting," "my own King Lear,"8 which was influenced by feminist, Marxist, and environmental concerns.9 Her purpose in re-telling Lear was to "cut. [Mr. Shakespeare] down to size a little bit.""° One of her feminist hopes was that "the minds of adolescent girls would encounter A Thousand Acres first, and that it would serve them as a prophylactic against the guilt about proper daughterhood that I knew King Lear could induce.""l In judging whether Smiley succeeded in fulfilling her purposes, the primary hurdle the reader must overcome is whether Smiley's rewriting to include Larry's (Lear's) incestuous relationship with Rose (Regan) and Ginny (Goneril) and the daughters' longing for the dead mother exceeds the bounds of the storyline to such an extent that the plot changes create a completely different story, or whether, as Smiley says she intended, the novel is a feminist rewriting of Lear. Is Smiley's incest plot a cheap trick that manipulates the reader's emotions, or a feminist re-vision that chal- 4. Jane Smiley, Shakespeare in Iceland, in TRANSFORMING SHAKESPEARE 159, 160 (Marianne Nory ed., 1999). 5. Id. at 161. See infra notes 29-32. 6. Id. at 173. 7. Id. at 160. 8. Id. at 169. 9. Id. 10. Id. at 173. 11. Id. 20011 Incest in A Thousand Acres lenges patriarchal structures and provides a discourse for suppressed femi- nine voices? This article ultimately argues that the plot changes are not a cheap trick intended to manipulate the reader's emotions, but a feminist re-vision, which succeeds or not depending on the reader's critical feminist perspec- tive. Thus, Part Two delineates several feminist stances, such as liberal feminism, radical feminism, social feminism, and postmodern feminism, and summarizes the plot changes Smiley has imposed on King Lear. Part Three considers one major plot change - the longing for the mother - in terms of patriarchy's suppression of a maternal genealogy and feminine language. This part argues that the novel successfully demonstrates the difficulty in overthrowing patriarchal suppression in order to create the wo- man-centered experience that feminists such as Luce Irigaray and Adrienne Rich describe. Part Four considers another major plot change - the incest by the fa- ther - in terms of patriarchy's suppression of feminine reality. Smiley's re-vision succeeds by providing a voice for silenced feminine perspectives, and although some readers might consider the incest theme a cheap trick because it manipulates readers' emotions, this part provides several re- sponses to that accusation. On one hand, Smiley's re-vision is not unlike Shakespeare's own re-vision of the folklore motif and historical Leir story. Smiley's re-vision is driven by a feminist purpose to demonstrate women's vulnerability to patriarchal violence. This part argues that from the view- point of radical feminism, Smiley's re-vision successfully contrasts domi- nant reality with suppressed feminine reality, and in the end of the novel, provides an alternative discourse that allows the primary female characters to. subvert the patriarchal view. But on the other hand, from the viewpoint of postmodern feminism, Smiley'sre-vision does not successfully reclaim feminine sexuality, or jouissance. Rather, the shame of incest cannot be overcome. II. Smiley's Feminist Re-vision To answer the question of whether A Thousand Acres is a cheap trick, we must view Smiley's re-vision of Lear through the lens of feminism, first describing the plot structure of Smiley's "own King Lear,"2 and then judging the appropriateness and the effectiveness of the two major changes - the longing for the mother and the incest by the father. Adrienne Rich's specialized sense of the word "re-vision" as "the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction" 12. Id. at 169. Texas Journal of Women and the Law [Vol. 11: 131 provides a way to define Smiley's project. 3 For Rich, re-vision generates an "act of survival" that carries political implications because it extends to anything a woman writes. "[T]his drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destruc- tiveness of male-dominated society." 4 Re-vision is necessary because "we need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us.,15 The purpose of a feminist re-vision such as Smiley's is governed, in part, by the particular feminist goals it seeks to advance in "break[ing] its hold over us." While feminism can be broadly defined as "a politics di- rected at changing existing power relations between women and men," 16 there is not just one feminism, but many feminisms, many different femi- nist politics. For instance, liberal feminists are concerned with increasing women's equality without radically changing social and political systems; a liberal feminist might stress women's choice and challenge the sexual division of labor.'7 Radical feminists such as Adrienne Rich are concerned with creating a new social order, separate from that of men; a radical femi- nist might consider sex and motherhood as forced slavery.'8 Finally, social feminists seek to transform the social system because they believe that pa- triarchy is tied to race and class oppression; a social feminist might argue that gender is socially constructed and that heterosexuality should not be privileged. '9 In addition to these three broad categories, different feminist politics also exist along national lines. For instance, British feminist criticism has always been Marxist in its emphasis on class and politics.20 American feminist criticism typically has strong political implications because it has focused on the distinctive experience of women - rallying with the motto that the personal is political.21 And French postmodern feminist criticism has been less interested in politics, but more interested in the application of 13. ADRIENNE RICH, When We Dead Awaken, in ADRIENNE RICH'S POETRY AND PROSE 166, 167 (Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi eds., 1993). 14. Id. 15. Id. at 167-68. 16. CHRIS WEEDON, FEMINIST PRACTICE AND POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY 1 (1987). 17. Id. at 16-17, 130-31. 18. Id. at 17, 28, 132. 19. Id. at 17-18. 20. See JANET TODD, FEMINIST LITERARY HISTORY 86-87 (1988). 21. See id. at 135. See also ADRIENNE RICH, Blood, Bread, and Poetry, in ADRIENNE RICH'S POETRY AND PROSE, 239, 248 (Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi eds., 1993). 2001] Incest in A Thousand Acres Lacanian theory to femininity,22 and in the possibility of disrupting patri- archy through writing and language.23 Of course, this description of differ- ent feminisms is an over-simplification that ignores overlaps and similarities between feminisms;24 however, it provides a useful paradigm to test the particular feminist goals Smiley's novel advances. Smiley described her re-vision as "a puzzle" for which "[t]he chal- lenge was sticking to the plot but substituting what [she] considered a truer but what many would say was simply a more congenial view of human nature."25 Told from the viewpoint of Goneril, the oldest daughter, the plot conceded two modernizations: the battles would be fought in court, and "Goneril and Regan [would] live through to the end, so that they could reflect upon their experiences. '26 Thus, A Thousand Acres follows Shake- speare's plot in only general outlines. In Shakespeare's King Lear, the action begins when Lear, the king of Britain, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, giving the largest share to the daughter who says she loves him most.27 Lear disowns Cordelia after the two elder sisters profusely express their love, but Cordelia can say merely, "Nothing," and when pressed, "I love your majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less."'28 Lear angrily marries off Cordelia, the daughter he "loved ... 22. The work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is a source-text for many of the writings of French feminists; however, I think it more profitable to trace definitions through the French feminists themselves. One of Lacan's projects "reinterprets Freud in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of discourse," describing different stages of development, beginning with "the imaginary" or pre-Oedipal state of "'symbiotic' rela- tion" between the infant and the mother, moving to the "mirror stage" in which the child beings to develop an ego, and finally, the stage involving "the Law," or the "entry of the father which signifies .. .sexual difference." TERRY EAGLETON, LITERARY THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION 164-65 (1983). 23. TODD, supra note 20, at 53-55. See also TORIL MOI, SEXUALIJEXTUAL POLITICS: FEMINIST LITERARY THEORY 105 (1985) (describing Helene Cixous' project as undoing binary oppositions that stem from logocentric ideology and "proclaim[ing] woman as a source of life, power, and energy, and... hail[ing] a new, feminine language" that subverts patriarchy) and WEEDON, supra note 16, at 22 (claiming that postmodem, or poststructural feminism also exists in different forms, but all forms "assume that meaning is constituted within language and is not guaranteed by the subject which speaks it"). 24. For instance French feminists and radical American feminists "[b]oth valorize[] female relationships" and language, and share basic assumptions about gendered subjectiv- ity. TODD, supra note 20, at 62. This description of different feminisms also ignores varia- tions of the late '90s, third wave feminism, which arose after the composition of A THOUSAND ACRES. 25. Smiley, Shakespeare in Iceland, supra note 4, at 172. 26. Id. at 171. 27. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 3, at act 1, sc. 1, 11. 35-53. 28. Id. at act 1, sc. 1, 11. 87, 92-93. Texas Journal of Women and the Law [Vol. 11:131 most," to the suitor who will take her for "nothing."29 She marries the king of France and does not see Lear again until the end of the play, when the two elder sisters have divested him of his entourage of one hundred knights,3° have thrown him out of the castle into a storm,31 have chastened his "infirmity of ...a ge,"32 and thus have driven him to madness.33 The speeches of Goneril and Regan grow increasingly disrespectful and shrill, until the sisters finally conspire to blind the Earl of Gloucester34 without a fair trial. When Cordelia returns to England, they capture and imprison her with Lear, finally ordering her death.36 At the end of the play, Goneril poisons Regan (who has slept with Goneril's lover, Edmund), Goneril kills herself, a servant hangs Cordelia, and Lear dies after killing the servant.37 Albany, Goneril's husband, turns the kingdom over to Lear's faithful ser- vant, the Earl of Kent38 and to Gloucester's faithful son, Edgar.39 Smiley rewrites King Lear in six narrative books and an epilogue rather than five dramatic acts. A Thousand Acres remains generally faith- ful to Shakespeare's plot and contains many of its elements: the division of the kingdom/farm, the disinheritance of Cordelia/Caroline, her marriage to the King of France/Frank, the storm scene in which Lear/Larry wanders madly, trial scenes, the blinding of Gloucester/Harold, the adulterous rela- tion of the two sisters with Edmund/Jess, the shift in alliance of Albany/Ty from Goneril/Ginny to Lear/Larry, the successful/attempted poisoning of Reagan/Rose, the death of Cornwall/Pete, and the death of Lear/Larry.4° A Thousand Acres also repeats major themes and images found in Lear, such 29. Id. at act 1,s c. 1,1 1.12 5, 247. 30. Id. at act 1,s c. 4,1 12.2 8-243; act 2,s c. 2,1 14.3 7-38, 260. The sisters claim that the knights are "insolent" and that they "Do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth / Inr ank and not to be endured riots.Id". at act 1,s c. 4, 11.19 2-194. 31. Id.at act 2,s c. 2. 32. Id.at act 1,s c. 1,1 12.9 0-300. 33. Id.at act 3,s c. 4,a ct 4, sc. 6. 34. The Earl of Gloucester, his bastard son Edmund, and elder son Edgar, represent a subplot that parallels the major action of the play. Edmund conspires to take Edgar's land, Edgar goes into disguise as "mad Tom," Gloucester isa rrested and tortured by Goneril and Regan, and dies after learning that Edgar, his true son, isa live and disguised as Poor Tom. Id.at act I,s c. 2; act 2,s c. 3; act 3,s c. 4; act 5,s c. 3. 35. Id. at act 3,s c. 7,1 15.5 -83. After Regan's husband, the Duke of Cornwall, plucks out Gloucester's eyes, a servant kills Cornwall. Id.at act 3,s c. 7; act 4,s c. 2,1 1.71 -73. 36. Id.a t act 5,s c. 2-3. 37. Id.a t act 5,s c. 3. 38. Lear banishes his adviser Kent int he firsscte ne, when Kent tried to convince him to change his decision to disinherit Cordelia. Kent disguises himself as Caius and, along with the Fool, follows and serves Lear for the remainder of the play. Id.at act 1,s c. 1. 39. The Duke of Albany, married to Goneril, sides with Lear against Goneril after the conspiracy to blind Gloucester. Id. at act 4,s c. 2; act 5,s c. 3. 40. See generally SMILEY, A THOUSAND ACRES, supra note 2. 20011 Incest in A Thousand Acres as "nothing"/nothingness, madness, eyesight, and appearance versus 41 reality. Smiley's re-vision contains both minor and major deviations from Shakespeare's plot. One deviation is that Ginny survives and Rose dies -not of poison, but of cancer.42 Another deviation is that Jess is not a bastard, like Edmund, but a draft-dodger with environmental concerns - he wants an organic farm and tells Ginny. that her five miscarriages are the result of nitrates in the well water.43 Although Larry becomes increasingly demented and dies after he "ha[s] a heart attack in the cereal aisle,"" Caro- line survives. The absence of the fool in the novel is another change from King Lear4.5 My focus will be on the two major deviations - the longing for the mother and incest by the father - which.1 discuss in the following sections. III. The Longing for the Mother Two major plot changes from King Lear serve Smiley's feminist pur- poses. One is the emphasis on the sisters' dead mother, who is not men- tioned in King Lear. Ginny's longing to speak with her mother and hear what her mother has to say about Larry is thwarted, because her mother died when Ginny was so young.46 Ginny first thinks about her mother when she has taken Rose's daughters swimming and her mother's friend, Mary, apologizes for not befriending Ginny after Ginny's mother had died.47 Mary tells Ginny that her mother had been "'afraid for you. For the life you would live after she died"' because "'[s]he knew what your father was like, even though I think she loved him."'48 According to Mary, Ginny's mother wanted her daughters to have "choices" and was afraid that "'Ginny [wouldn't] stand up to him.' 49 41. Id. at 98, 159, 245, 393 (nothing); 87-89, 125, 202, 233 (madness); 71, 134, 250-51 (sight); 9, 215, 304 (appearances). 42. Id. at 374. 43. Id. at 177. Jess is selfish like Edmund, but not as evil. See id. at 380. 44. Id. at 363. 45. Ironically, the fool was one of Shakespeare's original additions to the Leir story. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 3, at 50, 155. While there is no fool character in A THOUSAND AcREs, Smiley suggests that Larry is a fool, just as Shakespeare and the Fool in King Lear suggest that Lear is a fool. For instance, Larry says, "I'm not going to be your fool." SMILEY, A THOUSAND ACRES, supra note 2, at 331. Both Lear and Larry are foolish con- cerning the premature division of their kingdom. As Richard A. Posner notes, "no play of Shakespeare contains a stronger warning against imprudence in the management of one's affairs." RICHARD A. POSNER, LAW AND LITERATURE 102 (rev. and enl. ed. 1998). 46. SMILEY, A THOUSAND AcREs, supra note 2, at 56, 315-16. 47. Id. at 98. 48. Id. at 97-98. 49. Id. at 98. Texas Journal of Women and the Law [Vol. 11:131 After Mary tells Ginny these things, Ginny dives into the pool, an action which suggests a symbolic delving into her subconscious memories of her mother, who "died before I knew her, before I liked her, before I was old enough for her to be herself with me."5° Ginny remembers her mother as "matter-of-fact and brisk," who "impersonal[ly]" bottle-fed her daugh- ters and had "no melding with the child into symbiotic fleshy warmth."'" Even though Ginny does not remember physical closeness with her effi- cient mother, Ginny still desires this "symbiotic fleshy warmth" and still desires to know more about her mother.52 Ginny also remembers her mother after the storm scene, when Larry has left his house and Ginny prepares a room for Jess, who has been kicked out of his father's house.53 Being alone in her father's house gives Ginny an opportunity to search for clues about her mother. Ginny remembers that her mother "had a history... and for us this history was to be found in her closet."54 Their mother had not told Ginny and Rose her history, but they had unearthed it from her pre-World War II wardrobe: Although her present was measured out in aprons-she put a clean one on every day-her past included tight skirts and full skirts and gored skirts, peplum waists, kick pleats, arrowlike darts, welt pockets with six-inch-square handkerchiefs inside them, shoulder pads, Chinese collars, self-belts with self-buckles, covered buttons... The clothes in the closet ... intoxicated us with a sense of possibility, not for us, but for our mother, lost possibilities to be sure, but somehow still present when we en- tered the closet... 55 For Ginny, remembering her mother is remembering her mother's closet, and she recalls the closet "when [she] seek[s] to love [her] mother."56 Since her mother's death, no clothes or other physical evidence of her mother remain because Mary and the other church ladies had cle- aned out her mother's belongings and given them to charity." Even when Ginny looks for traces of her mother, she finds "nothing."58 Ginny longs 50. Id. at 99. Mary Carden points out that Ginny's longing for the mother is related to her reveries about "the submerged sea." Mary Paniccia Carden, Remembering/Engendering the Heartland: Sexed Language, Embodied Space, and America's FoundationalF ictions in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, 18 FRONTIERS 181, 194 (1997). 51. SMILEY, A THOUSAND ACRES, supra note 2, at 99. 52. Id. at 243. 53. Id. 54. Id. at 242. 55. Id. 56. Id. at 243. 57. Id. at 246-47. 58. Id. at 243-45. 2001] Incest in A Thousand Acres for her mother and wishes her mother had been alive "to tell us what to think of Daddy."59 Likewise, Ginny's longing to fill the mother position herself is thwarted because nitrates in the well water have caused her five miscarriages.6° Smiley's theme of longing for the dead mother reminds women that patriarchy has suppressed a maternal genealogy and women's language. As Luce Irigaray, a contemporary French philosopher and poststructuralist feminist, has theorized, women often have a strained relationship with each other because they lack a maternal genealogy and a common language.61 Whereas men's speech provides a "linguistic home that man has managed to substitute even for his dwelling in a body" and that "has used women as construction material, 6z women "are deprived of speech."63 Irigaray pro- poses the creation of a "female ethics" with "two vertical and horizontal dimensions: daughter-to-mother, mother-to-daughter, among women, or among 'sisters."' 64 She envisions that this female ethics would allow wo- men "to talk to each other" and thus to love each other.65 It would give women "a periphery, a circumference, a world, a home."66 Rich, like Iri- garay, also envisions a "woman-identified experience" consisting "of pri- mary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the, giving and receiving of practical and political support."67 Thus, Ginny's longing to know more about her mother is a longing for what Irigaray calls "an active subject-to-subject relation" that takes the place of rivalry.68 A subject-to-subject relation hopelessly gives in to ri- valry, however, when Ginny attempts to poison Rose with hemlock-laced 59. Id. at 164, see also id. at 243. 60. Trying to get pregnant becomes Ginny's secret project that she hides from her hus- band Ty, who confronts her when he finds the buried clothes from her fifth miscarriage under the foundation for the hog building. Id. at 275-78. 61. LUCE IRIGARAY, AN ETHICS OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE 102-103, 107 (Carolyn Burke and Gillian Gill, trans., 1993). See also ADRIENNE RICH, Anne Sexton: 1928-1978, inO N LIES, SECRETS, AND SILENCE: SELECTED PROSE 1966-1978 121, 122 (1979) (describing the "horizontal hostility" between women, "the fear and mistrust of other"). Part of Rich's project is to develop a common language among women. See, e.g., ADRIENNE RICH, THE DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE: POEMS 1974-1977 (1978). 62. IRIGARAY, AN ETHICS OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE, supra note 61, at 107. 63. Id. 64. Id. at 104, 108. 65. Id. at 104. 66. Id. at 106. 67. Rich sees relations among women as part of a "lesbian continuum." ADRIENNE RICH, Compulsory Heterosexuality, in ADRIENNE RICH'S POETRY AND PROSE 203, 217, 219. 68. ELIZABETH GROSZ, SEXUAL SUBVERSIONS: THREE FRENCH FEMINISTS 124 (1989).