The Midwest Farmers Daughter: In Search of an American Icon

Chapter Seven: Milkmaids in Manhattan

133 There’s no place like home,” read the exam prompt for the 1993 course final of English 210 at Iowa State University. “Both King Lear and A Thousand Acres are in crucial ways domestic dramas; that is, they are both concerned with family land home, parents and children, food and shelter, ownership and order—and various beliefs, assumptions, and expectations connected with each of these. At the same time, one is a play and the other a novel; one is set in an obscure corner of ancient Britain and the other in an obscure corner of the contemporary United States. . . . There are, of course, other similarities and differences. Write an essay in which you explain the two respects in which these two works are most alike as domestic dramas . . .” I remember tearing into the exam, ink pen flying across the wide-ruled pages of my mandatory exam blue book. I wrote with something approaching pride, pleased by the plum, topical draw of a contemporary Midwest Chapter SEVEN MILKMAIDS IN MANHATTAN “ CHAPTER SEVEN 134 writer. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t share my professor’s enthusiasm for the book or that Jane Smiley was a native of Los Angeles who had attended Vassar and was thus about as far away from a Heartland farm girl as she could get without falling into the Pacific. Indeed, New York publishers and literati have long held a fascination for the farmer’s daughter, a mostly parasitic infatuation evolved over time to reflect the changing tastes of urbanizing generations. In 1941 the Mason City (IA) Globe-Gazette and other Midwest newspapers picked up a new serial fiction by Allen Eppes—author of such female-minded pulps as Eveless Eden, The Glass Slipper, Go West Young Maid, Southern Belle, and Strictly Feminine . Syndicated by the Central Press Association, the series ran under the title A Maid in Manhattan, and told the story of one Susan Farmer, a dutybound farmer’s daughter living with a spinster aunt. Taken at face value the themes resembled those of Smiley’s A Thousand Acres—dutiful farm women, obligation to family, conflict between the microcosmic world of the barnyard and larger societal forces—but with a campy, allegoric twist. By the 1940s the farmer’s daughter had already become a novelty for much of America. Opening November 7, 1941, the first episode of A Maid in Manhattan introduced readers to college-educated leading lady, Susan Farmer, a farm daughter only to the extent that she lives on a failing farm with her aunt Alice. Her father died years earlier in an equestrian accident, and she, still in mourning and wanting not to abandon her aunt, has thus far resisted the many marriage proposals made to her by her boyfriend, Fred. Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, up-and-coming ad man Roy Leonard has drummed up a can’t-miss ad campaign for his client, the perfectly alliterative Dainty Diana Dairies, by which the company will sponsor a “Typical Farmer’s Daughter Contest,” with the winner to receive $5,000 and a trip to New York City. In the car with the amorous Fred, Susan hears the radio spot Roy has dreamed up: “Send your picture to Dainty Diana Dairies, in care of this station. That is, if you feel you can qualify as the Typical Farmer ’s Daughter for whom we have been searching. Also send us a letter of not more than 250 words telling something of your life on the farm.” Fred snickers at Susan’s interest, commenting to his best girl, “You look more like something straight from Park Avenue than you do something straight from a farm. You never even milked a cow in your life.” Susan Farmer, however, sees 135 MILKMAIDS IN MANHATTAN in the contest a chance to save her family’s farm, and thus demands of her boyfriend, “I want you to snap me in a sunbonnet, holding a milk pail and standing beside Esmeralda.” Esmeralda is Aunt Alice’s last remaining cow. Back in the Big Apple, Roy wears a “satisfied smile” at the novelty of the genius promotional idea that has already landed him an office in New York’s tallest skyscraper. “God bless all the dear little daughters of farmers !” he chuckles. “He owed a lot to them, bless their innocent hearts. And boy, how they had occupied his thoughts here of late! He had...