妈妈看到它的方式,女人应该让Menfolk做这项工作,因为这使她们感到更加男子气概。这个概念只有在您有一个坚强的人愿意加强并完成工作的情况下才有意义。但是,即使每个人都在投球,我们也从未在所有工作中摆脱困境。我喜欢那个牧场,尽管有时候似乎确实没有我们拥有这个地方,而是拥有我们的地方。
(The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us.)
在珍妮特·沃尔斯(Jeannette Walls)的《半骨打破马》中,主角反思了母亲的信念,即妇女应该允许男人承担劳动以维护男性气质。这种观点对她家庭处境的现实变得复杂,在这种情况下,由于各种原因,这些人通常无法履行自己的角色。因此,管理牧场的责任经常落在她的肩膀上,强调了家庭内的性别动力和期望。
尽管面临挑战和压倒性的工作量,但主角对牧场表示深切的感情。从某种意义上说,它们不是拥有该财产,而是对其进行屈从。对土地的爱与负担的这种二元性表明了个人激情与农村生活无情的要求之间的斗争。最终,它描绘了家族角色的复杂性和在牧场上的艰苦劳动的现实。