God’s Little Acre
God’s Little Acre is a 1933 novel by Erskine Caldwell about a dysfunctional farming family in Georgia obsessed with sex and wealth. The novel’s sexual themes were so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice asked a New York state court to censor it. Although controversial, the novel became an international best seller with over 10 million copies sold,[1] and was published as an Armed Services Edition during WWII. God’s Little Acre is Caldwell’s most popular novel, although his reputation is often tied to his 1932 novel Tobacco Road, which was listed in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.[1] God’s Little Acre was later adapted as a 1958 film starring Robert Ryan.
The novel, told from a third-person perspective, is set in the early 1930s. Ty Ty Walden is a widower who owns a small farm in Georgia, just across the border from South Carolina. His daughter, Rosamund, is married to Will Thompson, a worker in a cotton textile mill. Another daughter, whom everyone in the novel refers to as Darling Jill, is unmarried. His son, Buck Walden, is married to the beautiful Griselda. Buck and Griselda live on the farm with Ty Ty and Ty Ty’s other (unmarried) son, Shaw. Pluto Swint, an obese and lazy local farmer, sexually desires and wants to marry Darling Jill, who constantly humiliates him.
Ty Ty is obsessed with finding gold on his land, and he, Buck, and Shaw spend most of their time digging holes on the farm. Ty Ty has promised to donate any profits generated by a 1-acre (4,000 m2) parcel of the farm to the church, but, terrified that gold will be found on “God’s acre”, he keeps moving the acre marker around. Only two African American hired hands, Uncle Felix and Black Sam, do any farming on the property, and the Waldens largely live off loans and what little income Felix and Sam generate. The local union of mill workers was locked out by management 18 months earlier after they protested against a wage cut. Extensive poverty now afflicts the towns of Scottsville and Clark’s Mill, and the Horse Creek Valley (where the Waldens live). Will fantasizes about entering the mill and turning on the power again to bring employment back to the townspeople.
The novel opens with Pluto Swint arriving at the Walden farm to announce that he is running for county sheriff. Pluto mentions that an albino will be able to dowse for gold and tells Ty Ty that an albino was spotted in the southern part of the county. Ty Ty, Buck, and Shaw drive off to kidnap the albino.
Pluto and Darling Jill drive to the Thompson house in Scottsville, and spend the night there. The next morning, Will makes love to Darling Jill while Rosamund is out buying hairpins; when Rosamund returns she discovers the two naked in bed together and beats Darling Jill with a hair brush. She fires a gun twice at Will but misses, and he flees the house “naked as a jay-bird” though an open window. Rosamund and Darling Jill reconcile through tears, “as though suffering a common bereavement.”
Later that day Will returns wearing just a pair of borrowed shorts. After he gets dressed Pluto drives Rosamund, Will and Darling Jill back to Ty Ty’s house. On the way, they talk about Jim Leslie, another son of Ty Ty’s, who started as a mill worker and married a rich man’s daughter. Jim has become a wealthy cotton broker who now snubs mill workers as “lint-heads.”
