Femininity In Harriet Arnow's Longing For Daddy

In her book Longing for Daddy: Healing from the Pain of an Absent or Emotionally Distant Father, Monique Robinson, pastor of women’s discipleship and a pastoral counselor at Faithful Central Bible Church, explains that daughters long for something they cannot articulate— the need for a father, for his love “defines [her] femininity, shapes her character, affirms her identity, and validates her womanhood” (Robinson 120). A father’s paternal obligation is to nurture and care for his daughter’s emotional needs, when this innate paternal duty is neglected, the daughters emotional capacity becomes muffled by a loud inner voice that tells she is unlovable, and thus, she sets out in pursuit of love (Robinson 120). Without the paternal support of the daughter’s emotional development, daughters that wish to fly the nest find themselves emotionally impaired, exceedingly vulnerable, and willing to compromise their standards. The father’s role is to shelter his daughter, to protect her as she transitions from childhood into womanhood, to “not provoke [his] children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction …show more content…
Arnow reflects the troublesome lifestyle of Kentucky Appalachian people of the 1930s, depicting the living conditions in the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains as undesirable; a place where people are in want of education, better paying jobs, and decent medical care. While Arnow does pepper these details throughout her account, she pays a great deal of attention to the family unit of certain individual characters, namely the father-daughter relationship between Nunnely Ballew and Sues Ballew. Additionally, Arnow incorporates numerous detailed occasions of fox hunting, which serves a great deal of importance in undermining Nunn’s paternal duties to his daughter,