Abstract
I would like to begin with two stories about families and places over time. Both are modern, but one is fictional (from Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres) while the other is real (from the Duluth News-Tribune). In the first, the story begins with a widower who owns a very large family farm in Iowa. He wishes to retire and to give the farm to his three married daughters. Two of the daughters reside in their own homes on the family property, working as farm wives; the third lives in Des Moines, practicing law. The two who have remained nearby are at first happy when the lawyer sister refuses her share. But after a while, things disintegrate to the point where one of the farm wives concocts an elaborate scheme to kill the other and the family ends up in court. The struggle is about the farm property, of course, but even more it concerns positions in the family and how these positions change as the sisters and their father age. The embittered daughter, Rose, describes to her sister that she wants her father destroyed. The sister, Ginny, thinks that it "was incredible to me to hear Rose speak like this, but it was intoxicating too, as sweet and forbidden as anything I had ever done. I couldn't resist her. I said, 'Rosie, I understand. I'm with you."'
Recommended Citation
Brinig, Margaret F.
(1996)
"The Family Franchise: Elderly Parents
and Adult Siblings,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1996:
No.
2, Article 2.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1996/iss2/2