King Lear Vs A Thousand Acres

It was once told to me, “A good writer borrows, and a great writer steals.” Where Shakespeare failed to connect with me as a reader, limiting my appreciation for King Lear, Jane Smiley made me a believer with her clear and natural manifestation of Lear, titled A Thousand Acres. In fact, my entire interpretation and view of King Lear changed considerably after watching A Thousand Acres. I read the book many years before reading King Lear, and as a result never linked the two until I watched the movie version for this essay. I found the book was far better than the film, not in the cynical, typical fashion of how a novel is supposed to tell the story better than a film does, but in a truly superb and distinct rite of passage all its own.
In Acres, it occurs when Ginny and Rose sign the papers transferring Caroline’s portion of the land between the two of them, angering her, as they split her part of the inheritance. It is less about the money for Caroline than it is the principle of the matter. Caroline is unaware of Larry’s actions and believes that he is a good man who has simply made an erroneous judgment when incorporating the farm and dividing the land between Rose and Ginny. Without knowing, Caroline is choosing the ‘evil over the good’ when she helps Larry sue Rose and Ginny to “take the farm back” and even becomes a “party to the suit.” When Lear banishes Cordelia, she believes that he is too trusting, and is overestimating her sisters’ devotion and love above her own “true” feelings for him. She “knows” her sisters are truly evil and wicked, but her father chooses them over her, once again the ‘evil over the good.’ In both stories, this sets the plot in motion for the tragic events that will unfold between families. Sister against sister, parent against child, and husband versus wife. The “untying of the knot” (so to speak) in both Acres and Lear begins with the rage and strife transpiring between the sisters, signifying what is to
Jane Smiley offers the account of Rose and Ginny being molested and beaten (the ultimate betrayal) as good cause for why they hate Larry. Regan and Goneril have nothing but the wickedness of their hearts to account for the way they mistreat Lear. The vast difference between these plots is significant because in Lear, the audience sides with King Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, Kent, etc., and in Acres, the audience sides with Ginny and Rose, despising the actions of Larry as he is the wicked one who deserves what he has coming. King Lear by contrast has done nothing to deserve the mistreatment he receives at the hands of Goneril and Regan, other than standing in the way of their own selfishness and greed. Ginny and Rose are similarly distinguished from Goneril and Regan. They are not greedy; they simply want their due for the life-long care they have given to Larry after the death of their mother and recompense for the way he mistreated them as children. When it comes to Caroline, she is simply suffering from a lack of knowledge. Her devotion to Larry is not unlike the virtuousness Cordelia has for Lear. However, Caroline has spent much of her time away from the family, living in Des Moines as a lawyer. The fact that she does not know the truth about everything