The Paradox Of Agrarian Stability: Psychological Dynamics In Pearl S. Buck’s The House Of Earth Trilogy

Abstract

This article examines the dual psychological function of the agrarian system in Pearl S. Buck’s The House of Earth trilogy (The Good Earth, Sons, A House Divided). While Nimmy Nair’s dissertation interprets the agrarian order primarily as a source of social stability and collective identity, this study argues that land in the trilogy also becomes a factor of psychological deformation at the stage of capitalization. Using close reading within a socio-psychological realism framework and a polemical comparative approach, the analysis traces how land operates as an ontological anchor for Wang Lung’s identity in The Good Earth, but as wealth accumulates it transforms into property-driven mentality, legitimizes status needs, and accelerates moral erosion and family fragmentation. In Sons, the sacred land–identity bond weakens into utilitarian resource logic, producing intergenerational discontinuity and divergent compensatory strategies (prestige, pragmatism, violence). In A House Divided, the agrarian foundation no longer sustains subjectivity; instead, modernization pressures intensify identity splitting and ideological radicalization in Wang Yuan. The findings demonstrate that the agrarian system in Buck’s trilogy is not a romantic ideal of stability but a paradoxical mechanism that both stabilizes and destabilizes personality depending on historical-economic transformation.