Up The Coulee Analysis

In the summer of 1887 Hamlin Garland visited his family in northern Iowa after six years of living in the West, and the monotonous lifestyle of the countryside had inspired him to write the series of eleven stories that became The Main Travelled Roads. In these stories, Garland explores the daily lives of common women in the Midwest, demonstrating how they were required to do arduous labor on the fields, and as a direct result, women were ill at an early stage from poverty and exhaustion. Additionally, living in the Midwest as a woman consisted of taking care of children and housework, stripping them of their independence by obstructing them from traveling and broadening their worldview.

Most women in the Midwest had responsibilities in their
When Garland visited his parents in 1887, he had noticed that his mother was frail, failing in health, and living in discomfort in a small, unshaded cabin. He portrayed his mother through the mother of Howard McLane in the story Up the Coulee. When Howard, a young man pursuing his acting career in the West, visits his mother in Mississippi, he cannot fathom how much his mother had changed since the last time he saw her seven years ago. Mrs. McLane explains that “I don’t seem to be able to do much now ‘cept sit around and knit a little. I tried to pick up some berries the other day, I got so dizzy I had to give it up” (Garland 39). The flies buzzing around in the cabin, the heat, the poor furniture, and the way people were dressed indicated that families in the Midwest were not able to financially support themselves. Another example of this can be found in A Branch Road, when Will Hanan asks the six year old Thomas Kinney about Agnes Dingman when he returns to The Corners. He replies with “She’th been thick though… a long time. But she ain’t thick abed; sheath awuul poor, though Gran’pa thayth she’th poor ath a rake” (Garland