Fair and Tender Ladies

At times I did not like Ivy very much because she could be very selfish. As I continued to read she very often acted a certain way because of other people's interest. For example seeing Franklin Ransom was in part for her sister and brother-in-law. She at first did not want to have anything to do with him, but it was because of her sister pressuring her that she did. She had her own reasons for seeing him so long, but some of it was paying her family back for letting her live with them. She did not want the owner's son to make it difficult for her brother-in-law.

I think that Ivy uses letters because it was an accepted (tolerated) form of writing in her family and it was a way to keep up with the news without a phone. She fulfilled her need to write and her family knew what was going on outside of their home. Once they had the technology she still was in the habit and needed to write. I did not realize until the very end of the book that it was a form of therapy for her. On page 314 she is writing to Joli and says she continued to write to Silvaney after her death because "It was the writing of them, that signified." She could get her thoughts and feelings out without having to admit to herself everyday that her favorite sister had died. She knew that she was dead, but still needed to write to her "other half"(p. 313) to feel better.

I hated the first 30 pages or so because it was so much detail and her writing was not very easy to read. I literally had a headache from reading the beginning pages. Through reading the book I began to care more about her and her family. I did not want them to suffer as they did at times. I would not say that it was a great book, but it was a good book. It gave a great description of the early 1900s in the mountainous remote region of Virginia.