A Thousand Acres

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of infertility, pregnancy loss, and mental health conditions.

Following his transfer of the farm to Ginny and Rose, Larry begins buying new furniture, including a mismatched arrangement of kitchen cabinets and counters and a white couch. The family initially assumes that Larry is buying this new furniture to one-up Harold, who has just bought a fancy new tractor. All the new furniture is extravagant, expensive, and unnecessary. Larry’s new furniture is a motif that emphasizes the theme of The Impact and Harm of Gender Roles, primarily because everything he is buying is very domestic and subsequently unusual for him to care about. Additionally, the furniture pushes Ginny and Rose to act in ways that are outside their stereotypical and expected gender roles. They take the fact that Larry is buying new furniture to mean that he is acting erratically and start chastising him as if he is their child. By acting more dominant—and masculine—than Larry, they strip him of his power, leading him to go off into the storm and move back in with Caroline.

The motif also connects to Appearance Versus Reality, as Larry uses the new purchases to project an appearance of prosperity at a moment when he is feeling disempowered and uncertain.