Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

This chapter deals with the particular difficulties and a few surprising positives of being a woman from an impoverished background. One of the surprising benefits Smarsh finds in her upbringing is a lack of traditional expectations and gender roles. The women in her life are not regarded as less capable, and many are the family breadwinners. Of course, this is due to the fact that everyone must work, and work hard, to make ends meet regardless of gender. 

Smarsh also proudly points out that Kansas has a history of being more forward-thinking than much of the country when it comes to women’s rights. In 1867 the state held a referendum vote on women’s suffrage and eventually gave women the right to vote in 1912, eight years before the rest of the country. 

Despite this, women in poverty are separated from the feminist movement; for them, working is not liberation, it is a necessity: “class and its implications for literacy and access decide what feminism looks like in action” (212).

However, though the women in Smarsh’s life work as hard as the men and often in the same jobs, they nevertheless often find themselves dependent on men. Working class women make significantly less money than men for the same job, and pregnancy brings other responsibilities. For example, Betty married the extremely violent and abusive Ray at 16 and he continued to influence her life for years—even once shooting her in the arm. Although his abuse was illegal, there was no practical way for her to get help. In the end, she was saved by her own will to escape. 

Still, she was forced to rely on men by the judicial system that said she needed a stable marriage to win back her son, Bo. So, she went on a “marrying kick” (216). Although she eventually found men who were less violent, though still with issues like infidelity, she never was truly independent. 

This changed when Betty got a job at the Wichita courts, which provided stability and reasonably good money. She even joined the police reserves as one of the few women on the force. With this stability and being married to Arnie, she tried once again to regain custody of her son. However, her history of being “a woman in poverty, beholden to so many men over the years” meant that she lost again and for the final time (224). Betty fought hard and eventually pulled herself up into a more stable life. As Smarsh says: “economic power is social power. In the end, for all her hard work and tenacity, the poor woman lacks both” (225).

Growing up as a poor female, Smarsh remembers middle school as the happiest time of her life. It was a time when she was old enough to roam free around the countryside independently, but before she had physically matured enough to be objectified by men. She recalls this as the true feeling of freedom. During that time, she lived on the farm with Betty and Arnie and went to a small rural school. As a member of the track team, she recalls how the Amish girls would always win the races, proving once again that “doing ‘men’s work’ as a female can develop an inner defiance that, channeled to your legs, will win a race. Even if you’re running in a skirt” (228).

Though she was extremely happy living on the farm, the death and funeral of Dorothy, Betty’s mother, made Smarsh miss her own mother. She moved back in with Jeannie; this only lasted only a few months before she returned to the farm. 

For Smarsh, “the horror of being financially reliant upon a man who hits you, blows town, cheats on you, disrespects you, and generally works less than you do was so deep in the women” she understands it implicitly (232). This contributes to her resolution to do well in high school, get a scholarship, and chase new opportunities while avoiding pitfalls like teen pregnancy. Therefore, she avoids drinking, drugs, and sex, working to always do the right thing; this is both what she’s always been taught and a rebellion against the life path expected of her. 

Smarsh understands why most women with her background tend to repeat hardscrabble lives because she knows that “for many poor women, there is a violence to merely existing; the pregnancies without health care, the unchecked harassment while waiting tables, the repetitive physical jobs” and the abusive men, who are harder to escape when poor (236). This legacy of sustained violence contributed to her own mother, Jeannie, having deep love inside of her but being unable to express that love.

However, Smarsh has also witnessed how older women in her community survive, being capable of deep love but also capable of going into fighting mode. She witnesses this with Betty, who retires early due to an injury and is diagnosed with chronic fatigue—likely a side effect of her hard life. She becomes argumentative with Arnie but at the same time displays “the unsentimental power that came with the struggles of a poor woman’s life: a dry humor rather than a sense of victimhood” (245). 

Smarsh asserts that there is a quiet sense of power that comes with being a woman, especially a woman in poverty: wisdom. This was “a power no one could take from them. It was a way of seeing the world that they crafted themselves” (246). Smarsh is immensely proud of this part of her heritage.