So Big

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death and gender discrimination. 

Selina is markedly different from most High Prairie women. She is “too small, too pale and fragile for [the local men’s] robust taste” (33). News of her arrival soon spreads through the gossipy community. During her first trip to the local church, she gains some insight into the local community. She spots a glamorous woman known as Widow Paarlenberg, whose husband died recently and left her a small fortune. Widow Paarlenberg, she learns, is romantically interested in a local man named Pervus DeJong. She often sends food and gifts to Pervus, who finds ways to decline her offerings. Pervus is also bereaved. His wife died two years before, along with his baby daughter, and he continues to work his small, barren farm alone, even as “luck and nature seemed to work against him” (36). Selina sees Pervus for the first time and she is struck by his handsome appearance.

Some time later, Selina attends her first social gathering in High Prairie. According to a local tradition, women put together a food basket. These food baskets are then auctioned off to support charitable causes. Typically, men bid for their wives’ baskets, but the baskets of the local single women are sold to the single men of the community as a romantic overture.