Fair and Tender Ladies

Part 1 covers Ivy Rowe’s early days as a child growing up in Sugar Fork, Virginia. While Ivy’s letters are not dated, dates from later in her story suggest that she was born sometime in the early 1900s. She has sisters named Beulah, Ethel, and Silvaney and brothers named Babe, Victor, Garnie, Johnny, and Danny.

At around nine years old, Ivy first takes up writing at the suggestion of her schoolteacher, Mrs. Brown, and starts doing so with a “Pen Friend” who lives in Europe. Ivy continues to write as a form of self-expression and self-exploration, and in this section, she writes letters to her “Pen Friend” Hanneke, Mrs. Brown and her niece, and members of her family, including her estranged grandfather and dead father.

In Ivy’s first letter, addressed to Hanneke, she shares a great deal of information about her background. In rambling, stream-of-consciousness prose, Ivy tells Hanneke about how her parents got together and how beautiful Sugar Fork is. She observes, “I am glad I have set this all down for I can see my Momma and Daddy as young, and laghing. This is not how they are today” (7). Ivy continues by listing off the people she knows, particularly her siblings, including her relationships to and opinions of them, and then explains how her family makes a living. In a letter to Mrs. Brown, Ivy indicates that Mrs. Brown has said her letter to Hanneke is “too long and not approprite” (14). In response, Ivy writes a second letter to Hanneke, again talking about her family, but this time keeping information limited.

Ivy stops going to school because her family needs her to work, despite Mrs. Brown’s request that Ivy come back. Ivy writes to her mother’s father, Mr. Castle, innocently asking for money, and writes: “I thoght you migt want to help out some iffen you knowed it” (19). Ivy’s family survives on the generosity of friends and neighbors, including Mrs. Brown and Ivy’s uncle, Revel Rowe. Despite knowing that she will not respond, Ivy writes one final letter to Hanneke, more as a journal for herself rather than as a letter intended for an actual recipient.

Ivy’s father, John Arthur, is deathly ill, and her mother is depressed and lethargic. Friends from up on Hell Mountain visit and keep Ivy and her siblings entertained with stories, then leave the next day. Ivy’s father dies shortly after that visit, which brings Ivy’s family and friends back together as they prepare for his funeral. Ivy’s mother resolves that she will run the farm on her own. For a child, Ivy has a mature reaction to her father’s death. She observes:

[T]he day we berried my daddy wich shuld of been the worstest in my life, but somehow it was not. […] For he had been sick so long, and had got so little, that it was not like we had talked to him there on his pallet by the fire for a long time (48).

On the same day as her father’s funeral, Ivy’s sister Beulah gives birth and names the baby after their father.

Ivy leaves home for a time to stay with Mrs. Brown and keep Mrs. Brown’s niece, Molly, company. Molly is much wealthier than Ivy; Ivy marvels at all of Molly’s possessions, although she is adamant that she is not putting on “Airs” or growing spoiled during her time with Molly. Again showing unusual maturity, Ivy observes that although Molly “has everything I wuld want in the whole world […] she has so many trubles and crys and is not happy” (54). Ivy sees and hears marital strife between the Browns but does not understand it.

Back home, Ivy gets her first kiss from Oakley Fox while they and their friends are out picking blackberries. Ivy’s sister Ethel takes a job at Mr. Branham’s store, Ivy’s brother Danny gets sick, and Ivy’s troubled oldest brother, Babe, comes back home. The family needs Babe to help with chores, but his behavior makes everyone uncomfortable, to the point where Ivy writes to her dead father because “I do not know who to turn to” (66). Babe’s presence makes his twin sister, Silvaney, behave even more strangely than usual.

Babe is shot to death for sleeping with and then rejecting another man’s wife. Silvaney disappears into the woods shortly after Babe’s death. In response, the Browns have Silvaney committed. Revel returns to help the family, as their patriarch and eldest son are gone, and as a gesture, he buys Ivy and Beulah “storeboghten” dresses. While in town, the father of Beulah’s baby, Curtis Bostick, sees Beulah and reunites with her, against his mother’s wishes. Beulah and Curtis get married. Revel has an affair with Mrs. Brown, impregnating her, and in response, Mr. Brown tries to hang himself. Revel leaves Sugar Fork. Ivy’s brother Danny dies. In the face of so much loss—from both death and people moving away—Ivy’s mother decides to move the family to Majestic for a while to earn more money.