Women and Matriarchy Theme Analysis

At the heart of Winter’s Bone is the question of who, truly, is in charge of the Ozark underworld. While it seems at first that men are the ones in power in the Dolly clan and the clans that comprise their many extended relations, it becomes clearer to the reader as the novel progresses that the women, too, wield a quiet and dangerous power.

Ree is, for all intents and purposes, the matriarch of her own family, and mother-figure to her younger brothers. She is strong, capable, and independent. She is a survivalist, and her headstrong ways both help and harm her as the novel unfolds. On the one hand, she knows the fearsome power and dangerous doings that define much of her extended family; on the other, she is desperate to save herself, her mother, and her brothers, and she wants, in some ways, to break the cycle of silence and male domination that surrounds her. By going into the homes of people who frighten her, of people who don’t take her seriously, and of people who intend to mislead, deceive, and even harm her, Ree proves her strength and worth.

It’s Thump Milton’s wife, Merab, and her sisters who perpetrate the violent attack against Ree that forms a huge part of the novel’s emotional climax. And it is the Thump women, too, who eventually bring Ree to the frozen pond where Jessup’s body lies buried beneath the ice. The women in Winter’s Bone are agents both of the most devastating violence against Ree and, in the end, the greatest service to her. The double-edged power that the Thump women possess speaks to Woodrell’s vision of a community so entrenched in its customs and traditions that it’s unable to see the ways in which things actually unfold, and which individuals are actually the arbiters of action, vengeance, justice, and even charity.

In choosing for his main character a young woman, Woodrell creates a protagonist who seems to have the odds stacked against her, but who rises to meet her fate with a kind of courage and resolve not demonstrated by any other character in the novel—especially any of the men. By the novel’s end, Ree has made herself not just known, but both unforgettable and sympathetic to several members of her extended family. She cements her place as a provider and an agent of change when she brings Jessup’s hands to the law and, in return, is allowed to keep her home and her land. The novel ends on a note of hope, as Ree tells her younger brothers that she plans to use the extra bond money given to her to procure a set of “wheels,” a literal vessel—a vehicle—that might give her mother, her brothers, and herself all an opportunity for movement and freedom such as they’ve never seen or experienced.