Barren Ground: A Farmer's Life Barren Ground by Ellen Glasgow follows the life of Dorinda Oakley, a poor girl living in a desolate Virginia town. At the beginning of Barren Ground, twenty-year-old Dorinda Oakley lives with her family in the town of Broomsedge. She dreams of escaping her farm to live in New York when she meets the son of the village doctor, Jason Greylock, and almost instantly develops feelings for him. He becomes "the object of his passion" (Bunch). But when she loses it, her life changes forever. In Ellen Glasgow's novel Barren Ground, the protagonist Dorinda Oakley leaves her life of poverty to pursue her dream of happiness and on her journey experiences love, loss, and despair. Ellen Glasgow, Southern writer in Richmond, Virginia. As the daughter of a mismatched couple, Glasgow felt torn between her father's stern pioneer background and her mother's aristocratic Virginia family. The ninth of ten children, young Glasgow felt isolated growing up. Her mother was in constant poor health and her father worked in manufacturing, while she attended private schools (Glasgow). “At the age of sixteen, Glasgow began to lose his hearing, which increased his sense of isolation” (Glasgow). “Glasgow wrote nineteen novels, a collection of short stories, an autobiography, and other works, many of which focused on the oppression of women in the South. Among his major works are Barren Ground (1925), Veins of Iron (1935), and In This Our Life (1941). Although involved in several passionate love affairs with men, Glasgow never married. He suffered from heart problems in his late 1960s and did not live to see In This Our Life win the Pulitzer Prize in 1942” (Glasgow). Barren Ground chronicles the life of the Oa... middle of paper... .as if it had been reprogrammed (“Roy Lichtenstein Foundation”). Thinking of Him depicts a girl sitting alone thinking about a boy. It ties into my theme, the pursuit of happiness because before Jason Greylock, Dorinda would get up and go to work at Nathan Pedlars' store. Along the way, she stops and stares at the trains passing by the shop, wishing she could one day leave Broomsedge too. It's only when she meets Jason that she manages to leave. Dorinda Oakley, pursued her dreams. However, in the end, he gave up on love. My art is a representation of the love she had for Jason. Leaving her family was a great experience for Dorinda. He had the opportunity to leave his life for a "better life". But unfortunately he suffered multiple losses; the death of her unborn child and almost marriage to fiancé Jason. She then returned home and married Nathan Pedlar instead.