The Farm Book overwhelmingly portrays Bob and Betty as an indistinguishable pair. They are often referred to as “the children” and almost always written and shown together. In one peculiar scene, however, the two are divided. The three children on the farm play a game of The children “gathering” the eggs in the hen-house, to which “the hens protested.” During this game, the farm boy, Rueben, shows the children how to find and take the eggs lain by hens. While Bob immediately takes to the activity, Betty displays a certain anxiety towards it:
“They welcomed the idea with pleasure, for this promised to be more exciting fun than watching the chickens. Off they scampered for the big barn. Here they climbed about in the hay, Reuben, being more used to it than Bob and Betty, boldly showing the way. Betty felt rather timid as the loose hay would slide with her down toward mysterious corners, and there were so many corners and dark holes in the barn. But as Bob and Rueben were doing the same and shouting gleefully, she soon enjoyed the fun. One after the other would triumphantly cry out as he found a nest. And occasionally a startled hen would rush off with a wild squawk of alarm.”
Alienated from her male counterparts, Betty’s fears of the “dark holes” and “mysterious corners” stand in opposition to the bold behavior of Bob and Reuben. The passage begins using the third-person plural pronoun that shows a uniform image of the children. As it progresses, it distinguishes them from one another, describing Reuben’s skills and Betty’s fear. When Betty overcomes her fear and “enjoyed the fun,” the passage does not work to include her in its image. Instead it employs the masculine singular noun to show that each would “cry out as he found a nest.” Despite Betty’s sense that she has reclaimed the masculinity of child play, the passage excludes her from the triumphs of the boys.
It is not coincidental that this fear emerges during a game that confronts the egg-laying hens. While the boys see possibility in the unexplored dark corners, Betty dreads the unknown. While we could push this symbolic image to explore its suggestions of genital spaces, the passage presents a possible identification of Betty with the female chickens. Her fear of the dark corners is emblematic of her fear of being in the place of the hens. Vulnerable to attack from the boys’ game, the hens are unaware of the transparency of their hiding places. In order to overcome her identification with the hen’s vulnerable position, Betty must become the aggressor. Betty overcomes her feminine timidity with childhood play.
Betty’s gender, in a sense, precedes her childhood; She must grow out of her feminine fear in childhood and back into it in adulthood. The book later shows another division between Bob and Betty when they are doing domestic chores. Smith writes, “Betty, like a little woman, learned to churn.” This eventual return to her feminine sphere of domestic work shows Betty’s growth out of childhood to the labor of adulthood.
