36 pages • 1 hour read
Lee SmithFair and Tender Ladies
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Capitalism’s Effect on Rural America
Fair and Tender Ladies is often as much a love song for rural America as a story of a single woman’s life, and Smith’s nostalgia for pastoral life is clear. Ivy loves her life as a child in Sugar Fork. While she recognizes that life is difficult, Ivy is surrounded by family, love, and people who will tell her stories. Life is relatively simple even if it has its drawbacks. Ivy spends the rest of her life defending the way of life of her home even as she sees it slipping away. On some level, she understands that farming is not a viable way forward, but she takes a very long time coming to that conclusion.
Smith’s strongest indictment of capitalist business practices is in her portrayal of the coal company. Once coal becomes an industry, the coal company drives the lumber company out of business, depriving men of work and forcing them to work in the mine instead. Trusting locals are duped by shady businessmen into selling off their land, told that the men are buying the “mineral rights” and that nothing will happen to them. Ivy herself finds out what those promises mean as she must defend her home in her old age when the coal company attempts to mine her land. Ivy understands as an adult that if the company does what it intends, the damage to the surrounding area will impact not only nature but her home as well, as she has seen how coal mining leaves other homes vulnerable.
In Diamond, Ivy gets a clear view of how the coal company really operates and how social status affects people. Families are grouped on the mountain according to their level of wealth, with workers at the bottom and the elite at the top, literally placing the wealthy physically above the working class. There is only one event during the year when the elite are willing to be in the same place with the working class, and Franklin Ransom’s reckless behavior gives Ivy a clear view of how the “other half lives.” Wealth may make certain things in life easier, but it does not provide peace of mind, happiness, or sense.
Moreover, the company does not care about its workers. Injured men are forced out of town along with their families; widows may keep living in their homes but are otherwise uncompensated. Explosions happen regularly and safety doesn’t seem a primary concern, but jobs are so scarce that men continue to work in the mine anyway for lack of alternatives. Ivy points out that most of the men could not go back to their old farm lives even if they wanted to, as they have forgotten how to do those jobs. The company allows families to purchase items on scrip so that when work runs dry, those families have no hope of ever paying the company back, leaving them in debt to the company forever.
As Ivy—and Smith—sees it, there is no ideal solution. Ivy recognizes that going back to the farm life of the past is not feasible, and she eventually admits that it is not desirable either. However, she still disagrees with the coal company’s practices and does not believe that such companies have the best interests of the rural towns in mind. Ivy does not provide suggestions for what would improve life in Sugar Fork but only laments the existing situation.
The Corruption of Religion
Rural towns such as Sugar Fork tend to be heavily Christian, and because of that, Ivy’s life often intersects with Christianity in one way or another. Ivy decides at a young age that she has little use for God, feeling that life is too hard and that if God really cared about her and her family, he would make life easier for them. Ivy’s mistrust of Christianity continues throughout her life. Though she has family members who are “saved,” and she does attend church sometimes, Ivy herself never feels compelled to be saved, nor does she want to attend church. She does not feel any particular kinship with God or with any of the teachings in church.
Furthermore, Ivy’s main example of a preacher from her youth is Sam Russell Sage, who is more interested in taking people’s money and sleeping around than in the word of God. While many are taken in by Sage’s preaching, Ivy sees him for what he is and doesn’t feel the same pull. She does not live her life according to supposed Christian values—she is not chaste, she has not been saved, and she is not meek and subservient. She tries to do what’s “right” in life, with a few notable exceptions, but does not believe that she will necessarily be damned for her behavior. Oakley does believe in God, and while he is a good man and lives a good life, he regrets Ivy’s lack of religion, and his family judges her for it as well.
Garnie serves as Smith’s strongest condemnation of religion. He is the pinnacle of hypocrisy and a strong example of how religion can be twisted and used to hurt people while protecting the person who wields the power. Garnie acts as though he was chosen by God himself, condemning everyone around him who does not follow his exact beliefs. His primary goal as a preacher is to “save” as many people as possible; Ivy accuses Garnie of being interested only in the money that more saved souls will provide. Garnie claims that Sam Russell Sage’s death was justified because of his hypocritical, un-Christian behavior, but Garnie exhibits the same kind of immoral behavior. He beats his wife, and since he cannot have sex, he forces her to do “terrible things.” Garnie believes that women should stay in their “place,” which is below men, with no free will of their own, and as such, he loathes Ivy for behavior that he deems unacceptable.
If Ivy ever felt any pull towards being “saved,” her near beating at the hands of her own brother ends those feelings, ensuring that Ivy will remain staunchly nonreligious for the remainder of her life. Ivy does find some value in the Bible as a story once she eventually reads it, suggesting that the primary problem with religion is not in religion itself, but in corrupt disseminators who use the Bible to their own personal advantage.
Possession and the Female Identity
At a young age, Ivy’s father tells his family that he will not be “beholden” to anyone, refusing help when the family needs it because owing someone feels worse to him. Ivy latches onto that idea and keeps it with her for the rest of her life, often expressing her desire not to be beholden to anyone. For much of her life, Ivy is forced to rely on assistance from others because of financial or personal difficulties. She bristles when she feels that other people treat her like they “own” her, such as when Miss Torrington tries to cut her off from her family by eliminating her rural mannerisms, or when Oakley tells her that she is “his girl” when they are not dating. Ivy’s resistance to marrying Lonnie is likely related to this idea: She does not want to be owned by him even though they will have a child together.
As a child, Ivy lacks material possessions because her family is too poor to buy anything. For a long time, the lack of material things drives young Ivy’s desires and causes her to do things like push her mother into selling mineral rights because she wants another “storeboghten” dress. When Ivy’s family moves to Majestic, Ivy is gleeful, as though Majestic is “hers,” and she has her own room for the first time. She subsequently feels as though she has “lost” something when she brings Lonnie into her room, as though the act of sharing that space with someone else makes the room, and the town, no longer hers. Ivy doesn’t care that getting pregnant young and out of wedlock is “immoral.” Rather, she’s thrilled to finally have something that belongs to her in the form of her baby.
When she is old, Ivy’s greatest joy is that she is no longer beholden to anyone. She takes long walks in the mountains, making other people think she is a crazy old woman, and she is perfectly happy to have them think that because she feels as though she has earned the right to do what she wants. Ivy’s sense of possession also permeates other aspects of life, informing her feelings both on religion and on the coal company—both entities that seek to “own” people in one way or another.
