The Shaw Farm

The vast majority of the novel takes place on the Shaw family farm in a roughly fifty-year period covering the first half of the twentieth century. The farm is located in rural Virginia and is both beautiful and remote, offering the children a jointly idyllic and suffocating place to grow up in. For many characters, the farm functions as something of a trap; Wendy and Marie, for instance, both find themselves withering away in domestic service there, while Bette defines much of her personality by her decision to get as far away from the farm as possible. The Shaw children generally avoid going home in their adult lives. The farm changes a great deal over the course of the novel and much is made of the fact that the farm has been gradually shrinking since the height of its breadth; in order to remain financially afloat...