SOURCE: Levin, Amy. “Familiar Terrain: Domestic Ideology and Farm Policy in Three Women's Novels about the 1980s.” NWSA Journal 11, no. 1 (spring 1999): 21-43.

In the following essay, Levin traces the influence of 1980s myths about family life on the heroines of A Map of the World, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, and Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, explicating each novel's perspective on “family” in terms of a specifically Midwestern American identity and the interaction between global farming policies and political ideology.

During the 1980s, Republican administrations glorified nostalgic visions of family life. These visions coexisted with social and fiscal policies that had negative ramifications for small farms, families, and women. This paper analyzes three contemporary novels—Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee (1989), A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1991), and A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton (1994)—in which the heroines' lives on their farms are influenced by contemporary myths. Like some of...