“This Country's Hard on Women and Oxen”: A Study of the Images of Farm Women in American Fiction

Abstract

The many new publications on women's history, on women in the economy, and especially on women's work, strikingly document the tremendous number of working women in our society and the variety of jobs they perform. If the source of one's impression of the past is fiction, the discrepancy may be attributable to the fact that American fiction poorly represents the reality of working women's lives. This chapter explores the one working role we do see accurately portrayed in fiction: women farming, both with their husbands and alone. Fictional pioneer women and farm wives often express loneliness. They are usually separated from their kin, especially if they moved west with their husbands to claim new land (a decision often made by the man alone). In fiction as in real life, women who farm alone usually inherit their land from fathers and husbands. Fiction may well be one of the most important sources of information on women's work in US agriculture.