A Thousand Acres

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, death by suicide, misogyny, infertility, pregnancy loss, and mental health conditions.

Ginny is the protagonist and narrator of A Thousand Acres and is based on the character of Goneril from King Lear. She is the oldest Cook daughter and is married to fellow farmer Ty Smith. She does not have any children and has lost five pregnancies. She is extremely maternal toward her nieces and father and desperately wants children of her own, leading her to trick Ty into continuing to try to conceive. She seems to enjoy keeping secrets, as she admits she enjoys not telling Ty about her attempts and relishes her plans to poison her sister Rose.

Larry is extremely hard on Ginny and lashes out at her more often than he does anyone else. Before he runs off into the storm, he calls his daughter a “barren whore” and curses her, which mimics what happens to Goneril in King Lear. However, in A Thousand Acres, the tension between Larry and Ginny stems from Larry’s sexual abuse of Ginny when she was a teenager, something that she does not remember for most of her life.