Texas A&M University School of Law Texas A&M Law Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 10-2001 Incest in a Thousdand Acres: Cheap Trick or Feminist Re-vision Susan Ayres Texas A&M University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar Part of the Family Law Commons, Law and Society Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Susan Ayres, Incest in a Thousdand Acres: Cheap Trick or Feminist Re-vision, 11 Tex. J. Women & L. 131 (2001). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/267 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Texas A&M Law Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Texas A&M Law Scholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Texas Journal of Women and the Law Volume 11 INCEST IN A THOUSAND ACRES: CHEAP TRICK OR FEMINIST RE-VISION? Susan Ayres* I. Introduction .............................................. 131 II. Smiley's Feminist Re-vision .............................. 133 III. The Longing for the Mother .............................. 137 IV . Incest by the Father ...................................... 141 A. The Role of the Narrative ............................ 142 B. Is Smiley's Rewriting a Cheap Trick? ................. 143 C. Smiley's Rewriting Serves a Feminist Purpose - but W hich O ne? ........ ................................. 145 V . C onclusion ............................................... 154 You are entitled to have your story told in your language ...or the law is failing.1 I. Introduction In the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres,2 Jane Smiley re- writes King Lear3 from the older daughters' perspectives, because "[bleginning with [her] first readings of the play in high school and contin- * Visiting Associate Professor, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law.