A Thousand Acres is a 1991 novel by American author Jane Smiley. It won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1991 and was adapted to a 1997 film of the same name. It was premiered as an opera by the Des Moines Metro Opera during their 2022 season.
The novel is a modernized retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear and is set on a thousand-acre (four hundred hectares) farm in Iowa owned by a family of a father and his three daughters. It is told through the point of view of the oldest daughter, Ginny. There are many similarities between King Lear and A Thousand Acres, including both plot details and character development. For example, some of the names of the main characters in the novel are reminiscent of their Shakespearean counterparts. Larry is Lear, Ginny is Goneril, Rose is Regan, and Caroline is Cordelia. The role of the Cooks’ neighbors, Harold Clark and his sons Loren and Jess, also rework the importance of Gloucester, Edgar and Edmund in King Lear. The novel maintains major themes present in Lear, namely: gender roles, appearances vs. reality, generational conflict, hierarchical structures (the great chain of being), madness, and the powerful force of nature.
Larry Cook is an aging farmer who decides to incorporate his farm, handing complete and joint ownership to his three daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. When the youngest daughter objects, she is removed from the agreement. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions, as the story eventually reveals the long-term sexual abuse of the two eldest daughters that was committed by their father. The plot also focuses on Ginny’s troubled marriage, her difficulties in bearing a child and her relationship with her family.
King of Texas is a 2002 American Western television film based on King Lear and directed by Uli Edel. The film takes the plot of Lear and places it in the Republic of Texas during the 19th century. Patrick Stewart stars as John Lear, a wealthy cattle baron and analog to King Lear. In the story, Lear divides his property among his daughters, only to be rejected by the eldest two of them once they have it.
The plotting is reasonably faithful to the original, if occasionally streamlined and toned down–especially the ending.. The central story remains that of the powerful father, John Lear (Patrick Stewart), demanding of his daughters testaments of their love as the price of succession to his empire. Two daughters, Susannah (Marcia Gay Harden) and Rebecca (Laurel Holly) comply, but the third, Claudia (Julie Cox) refuses and is banished by her father. Hardly have Susannah and Rebecca moved in than the greedy scheming (and sexual philandering) begins in earnest. In a test of authority, Susannah banishes Lear, who is accompanied by his confidant, Rip (David Alan Grier), a former slave and a veteran of the Alamo.
The subplot of a neighboring family headed by Westover (Roy Scheider) is also faithful to the original; here the favoured son frames his innocent brother of horse theft. Both fathers misread their children, both will go through tragic events before they understand the cost of their misjudgment and pride.
