Fair and Tender Ladies

“[N]o I do not pray, nor do I think much of God. It is not rigt what he sends on people. He sends too much to bare.” 

This is Ivy’s first real comment about God while she is still a child. Though she lives in an area dominated by religion, the losses she has suffered at a young age have convinced her that God isn’t worth her time. She does not deny his existence, but she feels that he does not deserve her praise, as he is unfair. 

“Please do not think I am fancy, nor spoilt, nor putting on Airs. It is not so, as I will tell you direckly. Things is not all what they seem ether.” 

While she often wishes for more than she has, Ivy is adamant that the recipients of her letters know she is not trying to live above her station. She feels it important that her family know she is still like them and part of their world regardless of what experiences she has. Ivy also notes, for the first of several times, that wealth doesn’t necessarily equal happiness. 

“Because sometimes when I say things, Mister Brown writes them down in his notebook and then I feel like whatever I have said isnt mine any more, it’s a funny feeling.” 

Possession is a key theme throughout the novel. In this quote Ivy observes that having her words taken from her feels like a form of stealing or invasion. Ivy’s feelings on this subject may unconsciously influence her letter writing, as the act of putting her own words down for posterity means they will always belong to her. 

“I reckon this to be the lastest letter I will ever write you in this world. And it migt be the last letter I will ever write ether. For I feel we have come to the end of all things.” 

In her final letter to her deceased father, Ivy tries to put into words how she feels about the events leading up to her leaving Sugar Fork for the first time. Most of her siblings either are dead or have already entered new stages of their lives. Though she has longed to venture out into the world, Ivy’s reasons for having to leave Sugar Fork at this point make her feel as though her life is over.  

“I love when it rains, it is like a hundred million horses running on top of my head, it is like the Charge of the Ligt Brigade on this old tin roof.”

During her childhood, Ivy often references stories, poems, and other literature in her writing. In this quote, Ivy casually references a poem by Tennyson while talking about her everyday life. 

“But Mister Reno is bying up coal land rigt and left, and everybody is getting rich! For nothing it seems, as he is not going to do a thing with it nor bother them that lives ther in any way. So this is free monney, it is like picking monney offen a monney tree.” 

Capitalism’s effect on the rural poor is a theme throughout the novel. Mr. Reno’s scheme serves as the first of many examples of rich businessmen taking advantage of poor workers who don’t understand what’s really being done to them. Ivy’s blind excitement about Reno’s offer reflects the feelings of the adults around her who don’t know any better than she does. 

“But I feel that things are happening two times allways, there is the thing that is happening, which you can say, and see, and there is another thing happening too inside it, and this is the most important thing but its so hard to say.”

Ivy is a precocious child, and this quote shows her ability to make observations about human behavior beyond her years. She understands that things are not always what they seem, and that getting to the motivations and feelings behind people’s actions is crucial but difficult.  

“I looked out my window and felt so sad, and then all of a sudden I knew why, because I have lost it now, Majestic Virginia which used to be mind. And this room in Geneva Hunts bordinghouse is not my own ether, not any more, I have lost it too because of bringing Lonnie up here.” 

Possession is a significant theme in the novel. When Ivy arrives in Majestic, she feels ecstatic because she feels as though the town belongs to her. She also has her own room for the first time ever and feels possession of her space because of that. After losing her virginity to Lonnie, Ivy feels an overwhelming sense of dispossession. She hasn’t really lost her room or her town; rather, she has lost her sense of self in the act of losing her innocence.

“However I do NOT believe that if you make your bed, you have to sleep in it for ever.” 

Ivy’s observation about human behavior is both true and untrue in the context of the novel. Unlike many of her peers, who believe in eternal damnation, Ivy does not think that a single decision necessarily has to make or break her life. On the other hand, Ivy’s lack of foresight causes her to make decisions that do end up affecting her for the rest of her life. Her beliefs put her at odds with those around her.

“Everybody comes in spending that scrip, and then on payday there is no pay. Some of them owe so much to the store it looks like they will never pay it off.” 

As part of Ivy’s change of heart about the “paradise” that is Diamond, she sees men and their families become beholden to the company due to the loans they were given in the form of scrip. Where once Ivy thought scrip was a wonderful, magical concept, she now sees it as a problem, indebting men to the company to the point where they can never break free and have their lives back. 

“It is the only time all year, and the only place except the movie house, where the people from Silk Stocking Hill will mingle freely with them that goes down in the mines.” 

Part 3 largely focuses on capitalism’s effect on the workers of the mine and the social divisions that exist within the mining company. Ivy points out that there is only a single event during the year when the rich businessmen and their families are willing to interact with the miners, which says a great deal about how the company is run and how unfair things are for the working class. 

“They have given up their land, those hardscrabble places we all came from, and they have noplace to go back to. They have lived here so long they have forgot how to garden anyway, or put up food, or trade for goods, or anything about how they used to live.” 

Capitalism and class differences are undercurrents to Ivy’s entire life story. At the peak of her worldly exposure in Diamond, she realizes that the company she once thought was so promising and ideal only set up its workers to fail, both taking away their jobs and depriving them of the survival skills they once had. As many of them also sold the mineral rights to their land to the mining company, they don’t even have anywhere to go. 

“Franklin is the son of the richest man in Diamond, but yet he’s needy. And he has been to more schools than anybody else around here except the doctor, but he hasn’t got any sense.” 

Ivy’s ability to understand human nature sharpens as she ages and gains more life experience, and she is especially apt in her description of Franklin Ransom. While as a child Ivy longed for money and education, as an adult she learns that having money doesn’t necessarily make someone happy and having education doesn’t necessarily make someone smart about life. Ivy effectively stops yearning for a “better life” because the things she once wanted won’t give that to her. 

“Then I started crying for it seemed to me then that life is nothing but people leaving.” 

Ivy deals with considerable loss in her life. She loses parents, siblings, friends, and lovers to death, separation, and tragedy. While she has not previously had any feelings for Oakley Fox, Ivy’s overwhelming sense of loss after Beulah’s leaving and the explosion at the mine drives Ivy to Oakley as a way to combat her loneliness. 

“Sometimes I despair of ever understanding anything right when it happens to me, it seems like I have to tell it in a letter to see what it was, even though I was right there all along!” 

In this quote, Ivy provides justification for her letter writing throughout her life. She feels that she needs time to process life events rather than being able to understand them as they happen, and for her, the act of writing gives her clarity. While she never becomes a writer, as she may have wanted, she does find a way to make writing critical to her life. 

“Well, I have lost my spunk some way. It is like I was a girl for such a long time, years and years, and then all of a sudden I have got to be an old woman, with no inbetween.” 

Wear and tear is a motif throughout the novel. Before she officially starts declaring herself old and worn out, Ivy observes that she has lost her spark, much as she observed her mother doing years before. Ivy feels like life has simply taken its toll on her all at once and does not understand how that happened. 

“It is not worth it to try to say how I want to scream all the time or when I look out at the mountains I want to reach out and rip them all away leaving only the flat hard sudden sky.” 

Prior to her affair with Breeding, Ivy tries to put into words how she feels in her settled life. As much as she loves Oakley and her children, the wild child inside of Ivy is miserable and has been for years. She knows that she is going to cheat on Oakley and doesn’t feel that she needs to elaborate as to why—she has effaced her own nature for so long that it’s finally coming to the surface. 

“Tell me, I said. I am starved for stories.” 

Ivy gives up her imagination to focus on husband and family, but doing so only represses her natural personality. When Honey Breeding, a man who seems like he came out of a story, comes along, Ivy is naturally drawn to him. She wants him to tell her stories like she heard in her youth so that she can feel young and alive again. 

“But he was the last thing left to happen to me.” 

For most of her life, Ivy has done what she wanted without thinking much about the consequences. Though she ends up living a domestic life, she started out life with dreams about having adventures. Ivy’s affair with Honey Breeding stirs up Ivy’s feelings of imagination that have been dormant for a long time, but she realizes that at this point in her life, the affair is likely the last adventure she will have. 

“A person can not afford to forget who they are or where they came from, or so I think, even when the remembering brings pain.” 

Ivy maintains a strong connection to her hometown throughout her life and believes that this connection makes her a stronger person. She criticizes her siblings and children for forgetting or deliberating abandoning their roots, insisting that Sugar Fork will always be part of them, even if they don’t want to admit it. Ivy feels that her own strength comes from accepting and embracing her upbringing. 

“The true nature will come out whether or no, we have all got a true nature and we cant hide it, it will pop out when you least expect it.” 

As an old woman, Ivy reflects back on her life through her letters to her children and grandchildren and tries to pass on what she has learned. She uses this statement both to explain her own affair with Honey Breeding to Joli and as a way of comforting Joli in the wake of her divorce, insisting that Joli’s husband’s true nature was bad and only took time to come out. 

“The Magic Mart is taking all of his business. And with the road finished finally, folks can just drive over to Richlands and go to the shopping center if they’ve got a mind to, which they do.” 

Even though her childhood was difficult, Ivy laments the modern changes that come to Sugar Fork over the years, particularly big businesses pushing out small, locally owned shops. People are no longer interested in the old, difficult way of life when new, easier options are available. 

“Everybody has took everything out of here now—first the trees, then the coal, then the children. We have been robbed and left for dead.” 

The novel is as much a lovesong to rural America as it is an account of one woman’s life, and this quote perhaps more than any other in the novel seems to express Smith’s own feelings about the decline of rural America.