"To Work Without Stopping": Masculinity and the Midwestern Farm Novel

Authors

Andy Oler, Embry Riddle Aeronautical UniversityFollow

Submitting Campus

Daytona Beach

Department

Humanities & Communication

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication/Presentation Date

2021

Abstract/Description

Ruth Suckow's Country People (1924) and Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991) feature hard-working young farmers who develop their land and gain the esteem of their community. As they age, however, their abilities decline and their reputation erodes, not only revealing their personal flaws but also exemplifying the harms of American masculinity on farmers and their families. By incorporating scholarship on aging farmers and farm economics, this chapter shows how, when August Kaetterhenry and Larry Cook attempt to hand over the farm to the next generation, they miss the sense of ownership and control they had as working farmers. The rigid individualism of their responses taps into histories of self-making that are central to American masculinity.

Publication Title

The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture

DOI

https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367520090

Publisher

Routledge

Scholarly Commons Citation

Oler, A. (2022). “To Work Without Stopping”: Masculinity and the Midwestern Farm Novel. In The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture (1st ed., pp. 239–248). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367520090-16