Body and nature as a system of signification in a thousand acres The female body, in literature as in other texts, functions as a sort of system of signification; a place of ongoing meaning. Traditionally, this has been understood in terms of the transposition of patriarchal or even misogynistic cultural values ​​into the construction of the female body. In A Thousand Acres, however, Smiley turns the tables. Just as this novel seeks to gain control of King Lear's speech and the feminine metaphors within it, it simultaneously foregrounds the body as a textual matrix through which the subject can understand himself and the world. For Ginny Cook, social interaction escapes the realm of language, because so much of what is happening is hidden and because Larry is this silent signifier who just needs to be significant. Instead, it processes information at the physical level. Thinking about the way Caroline snubbed her sisters when she married, Ginny "realized that I felt the insult physically, an internal wound." (139) Later, shame, one of the feelings that most often emerges forcefully in Ginny...