Erskine Caldwell, God's Little Acre

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

God’s Little Acre is Erskine Caldwell’s follow-up novel to Tobacco Road (1932), and it is considered by most critics to be Caldwell’s finest novel. While Tobacco Road illustrates the death of the pastoral ideal in Southern agriculture, God’s Little Acre continues Caldwell’s critique of the sharecropping and cotton farming while also investigating the textile mill as a possible replacement or positive alternative for Southern workers. While the novel is often categorized as proletarian fiction, it is perhaps better thought of as social protest fiction, since Caldwell is more interested in exposing class oppression and exploitative working conditions than he is in offering socialist or communist …

1038 words

Citation: Rieger, Christopher. "God's Little Acre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 July 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4954, accessed 29 March 2024.]

4954 God's Little Acre 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.