Dear readers,
This morning (or afternoon, if you are in the UK), I am excited and honored to interview Lady Scruton, Sir Roger Scruton's widow and creator of Horsell's Farm Enterprises in Wiltshire.
At 11 a.m Eastern, 3 p.m. GMT, Lady Scruton and I will talk about stewardship of the environment and nature, the work that can be done to both support and learn from farmers, and what it means to create a sense of place (among other things). I look forward to discussing the work Lady Scruton has done in Wiltshire to partner with surrounding farmers, restore hedgerows, cultivate bird habitat, and more.
You can join us on Zoom by signing up at the link below:
Below is an excerpt from an essay I wrote for Plough Magazine this month, published on International Women’s Day. This essay has been a labor of love for the last several years, as I have thought long and hard about Tanya Berry’s statement that “I … got more pleased with the idea of women’s work being good. And when they worked hard, they deserved to be noticed for working hard and for doing good work.” In the last few years, I have thought often about the way women’s farm work often gets forgotten or misunderstood. When people hear the word “farmer,” they almost always assume that we are talking of a man, not a woman. And yet, as my research and Tanya’s own experience have suggested, women have traditionally done an incredible amount of farm work and management—and have, in fact, traditionally brought in a substantial share of the farm’s income.
This essay explores the historic work of 18th century farm women, and the way George Eliot sought to capture and celebrate those farm women in her novel Adam Bede:
Mary Ann Evans (whose pen name was George Eliot) grew up on a farm. Her husband J. W. Cross recalls that the Evans home held a “long cow shed … where butter-making and cheese-making were carried on with great vigour by Mrs. Evans.” Young Mary Ann Evans learned the skills of dairying alongside her mother, Christiana Pearson Evans—and according to New Yorker essayist and author Rebecca Mead, she remained proud of this proficiency into adulthood: “in 1871, when she was the best-known novelist in England … she surprised a local farmer’s wife with her knowledge of fruit growth and butter manufacture.” There were even rumors that Eliot’s hands were shaped by agricultural labor: Olivia Rutigliano has written for Lit Hub that Eliot’s right hand “was evidently larger because she had pounded a large quantity of butter and cheese with it in her early years.” We don’t know whether this rumor was true. But the pride Eliot felt in her dairying background is evident—and is important to understanding her writing.
In each of her novels, Eliot elevates the work of quiet rural communities. But in Adam Bede, Eliot specifically celebrates the work of farm women. Cross suggests that the farmwife in Adam Bede, Mrs. Rachel Poyser, is based on the life and character of Eliot’s mother Harriot.
While Martin Poyser works the surrounding fields, producing wheat, barley, beans, corn, and tending the cow pasture, Rachel Poyser wife makes high-quality butter, cheese, and beer. Mrs. Poyser rules over her dairy with “the keen glance of her blue-grey eye,” Eliot writes, operating a business characterized by “coolness, such purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, [and] of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water.…” Cross writes that Mrs. Evans, similarly, was “a very active hard-working woman … with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser in her. Hers was an affectionate, warm-hearted nature, and her children … were thoroughly attached to her.”
Seeing Mrs. Poyser as a celebration of Eliot’s own mother emphasizes her importance. Mrs. Poyser and her dairy are not fable or fiction; they capture a real place and a real presence that she wanted to commemorate. In and through Mrs. Poyser, Eliot offers a vital glimpse into England’s eighteenth-century rural household economy, explaining the division of labor on farms in pre-industrial rural England. Mrs. Poyser emerges as the novel’s strong center: a picture of diligence and fidelity, elevating the work of farm women while at the same time capturing its struggles and injustices.
Happy Tuesday!
Cheers,
Gracy
I love George Eliot, and really enjoyed your insightful essay — thank you