Ralph and Myrtle Mae Borsodi's Vision of Back-to-the-Land as a White Heteropatriarchal Refugium during the Great Depression

Abstract

Abstract Ralph and Myrtle Mae Borsodi, two early twentieth century back-to-the-land writers based in rural New York state, wrote the rural agrarian smallholding as a kind of refugium, a philosophical and physical site for those self-sufficient smallholders to survive, even thrive, through an expected US cultural extinction. The centre of their back-to-the-land agrarian refugium is the heterocouple complete with attached gendered roles and expectations. For this self-sufficiency promoting couple, the rural back-to-the-land homestead was the future of a new and better America made up of decentralised, self-sufficient farms and workshops run by those Ralph termed 'quality-minded men'. Indeed, both in their writings and in real life, their self-sufficiency rested on the backs of urban factory workers, the poor and, most likely, people of colour - domestic labourers. Such exploitation was not incidental, but a key component of the ideal world imagined by this couple.