The Becoming Of Lily Casey In Jeannette Walls Half Broke Horses

The Becoming of Lily Casey

In Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls follows the life of Lily Casey as she grows from being the oldest child growing up on a ranch to a determined mother working to support her family. Because her disabled father and ladylike mother were not practical enough to take care of their home, Lily was raised to depend only on herself as she took care of her siblings and the work around the ranch. This upbringing is reflected in how she views her problems later in life, and has both positive and negative repercussions. Forced to compensate for her parents’ incompetence, Lily grows up to be self-reliant and controlling. Throughout the novel, Lily is only able to depend on herself and her own strength to get through difficult

The strongest examples of this mentality are in Lily’s interactions with her daughter, Rosemary. Rosemary has always been a free spirit, the opposite of Lily, who believes that one must work and prepare for the future. Used to being able to break both horses and children in her respective experiences in running a ranch and teaching, she expects to be able to impose her will onto Rosemary as well. This rarely works, no matter how hard Lily tries. One of the biggest examples of this strategy failing is when Rosemary marries a man that Lily disapproves of. “‘So you're going to marry him even if I don't approve . . . I always liked to think I'd never met a kid I couldn't teach,’ I said. ‘Turns out I was wrong. That kid is you’” (Walls 292). Used to being able to change everything in her life through sheer power of will, Lily is aggravated when her own daughter disobeys her. She believes that her opinion on Rosemary’s marriage is the right one, and that Rosemary will only be ruining her own life. She tries to control Rosemary, even though Rosemary is old enough to have the ability to chose her own path. When Lily was a child, the ranch was her primary responsibility, and she made up her for her parents’ neglect by making sure every element of the ranch was perfect. As an adult, she considers her children to be her primary responsibility, and tries to use the same method of controlling them. Even though it fails to work, she remains convinced that she is in the right. Lily’s experience of controlling the upkeep of the ranch as a child carries over later in life, as seen in her attempt to control Rosemary’s