Gifts and Curses

The book A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley, is characterized by Ginny’s growing conflict with her father, Larry. Their conflict comes from the characters’ needs for control. Ginny realizes that she has had no control over her life and Larry loses control of his life and tries to get it back.
In Larry’s ambition to buy all of the land adjacent to his farm he also acquirers a yearning to have complete ownership over everything on the farm. This, of course, includes Ginny and Rose. Larry shows his ownership of Ginny not only by committing incest, but also by controlling her life. She never leaves the farm or goes to college, and she marries a man because he is a good farmer and gets along with Larry. Ginny does not discover that this is the life her father wants and not the life she wants for herself until she has lived this life for many years.
Ginny may not have known consciously that this was not the life she wanted, but she certainly was not satisfied with it. She i...