This reminds me of the book we are reading in class called The Kentucky Cycle. The book is a series of plays taking place over a hundred years on the same piece of land in Kentucky. A reoccurring theme throughout the book is the importance of land, and the impact that is has over the people that live on it. The land means everything to the characters in the book. Blood is commonly shed over it, people fight about it, marriages are ruined over it. But once again, my question is why? Why is the land so important to the characters in the book?
The first answer that pops into my mind is a status symbol. People feel that the better their front lawn looks, or the more land they own, the higher in social class they will become. This would explain why in The Kentucky Cycle, the characters fight over how much land they have, and why in modern society people are always working to improve their front lawns, or backyards. Also, even more than a hundred years ago, people have felt that the land they own reflects on them. If the land is well kept, and sprawling, it reflects well on them, but if it is overgrown, and small in size, it reflects poorly.I wonder when this idea started. When did people begin to feel that the property they own reflects who they are as a person?
I am definitely not an expert on this subject, but I know that Remy wrote her Junior Theme on a topic just like this, so if you are interested, check out her blog!
Kristen-
ReplyDeleteI noticed this too, everybody is outside mowing their lawns today! When I think about land in The Kentucky Cycle, I think about it not only as a status symbol but also as a way to make money, since most people in those days farmed. Therefore, the more land you had, the more money you could make off of it so it became a symbol of power. These days, nobody can really make that much money off of their land in the North Shore, but I think the tradition of seeing land as a status symbol has been carried into modern days through force of habit. It could possibly be compared to Tom in the Great Gatsby turning his "garages into stables", the horses have no real use just as our manicured lawns have no real use, but they are still associated with old money and power.