The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains

by Glenda Riley

This book introduces the important concept of a female frontier—a frontier "every bit as real and coherent, as, for example, the mining frontier." It gives us a new understanding of western women's shared experiences and of the full implications of their participation in America's westward movement.

Riley has reconstructed women's roles and concerns from census data, legal proceedings, newspaper accounts, local histories, essays, sermons, novels, photographs, works of art, and in large part from their own words, as recorded in diaries, day books, journals, letters, memoirs, reminiscences, and interviews. These women include the barely literate and the educated, the young and the old, single and married, white and black, native-born and immigrant. What emerges is a new understanding of the shared experiences—at home, in paid employment, and in community activities—that constituted the female frontier.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 1988

About the author

Library of Congress Authorities pub. info. gives additional name: Shauna Reilly (lives in Indiana; pseudonym of Glenda Riley)

Reviews

[Mathew Powers · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not bad, but I don't understand the premise that gender -- being a woman -- existed as the cultural dominant feature of a pioneer woman. Consider Elinore Pruitt Stewart's /Letters of a Woman Homsteader/. While gender plays a significant role, to be sure, her life is certainly not like her former boss in Colorado, a woman who lives a much different life. It is obvious that a woman in the Prairies and a woman in Chicago or New York are bound by their gender (and still are, today), but surely the aspect of being in the frontier cannot take a back seat to gender. The book, to me, seems more about overall gender issues placed in a frontier setting, rather than describing how the frontier woman is unique, compared to other women as well males in the Plains.

With that being said, the information, research, and prose is excellent and even if one doesn't totally buy the argument, the scholarship is valuable. If anything, the analysis is easy to forget while in the midst of the narrative or layouts of several sub-arguments. More so, the descriptions of the day to day life of a homesteader is very interesting.

I would recommend all read Pruitt's book as a compliment to this work.

If not for the overall argument, I would have given this a 4, but that thesis is tough to swallow.

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was really interesting for me because the author (from Iowa) obviously came to Bloomington to research her book! She cit ed many sources from the McLean County Historical Library. I didn't find the comparison of the prairie and the plain that interesting and thought that any contrasts were sort of strained. but as a book about women and their experiences in the West, this was a great book that gave bits of information I never heard before.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Riley offers great information about women's lives on the frontier from 1815-1915, but some of the information is repetitive since she looks at both women on the prairie and the plains. Some of her arguments are not the strongest, but if you are looking for a book about the general everyday lives of women on the frontier at this time this book holds a lot of great information.

[Dan Newland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glenda Riley's The Female Frontier is a relatively quick read that presents readers with a very straightforward thesis: that the life and work experiences of 19th century American women were more uniform than those of American men. Using the American frontier as a proving ground, she looks at the lives of women on the Prairie and Plains in an attempt to see how much their life experiences were altered by changing environmental and societal conditions.

Methodologically, I think that Riley's work is solid. She is able to show that even as men experienced very different social and economic opportunities when moving to different regions of the frontier, women largely remained within the same sphere of home and family, which did not change dramatically with changes in climate or community. As Riley noted, "Even such factors as social class, ethnicity, race, religion, education, and marital status did not alter the gender expectations of prairie women and plainswomen in any substantial way." The book does a nice job of exploring and confirming this statement, although Riley's decision to deal with the Prairie and the Plains in parallel chapters results in much duplication, making the book less entertaining than it might have been.

My primary question about the book is one that concerns just how prevalent the stereotype of the "sunbonnet Madonna" that Riley sets up as a bit of a straw man at the beginning of her analysis. Riley contends that many people think of prairie and plains women as being "gaunt and sad-faced" or "leathery, stooped and lifeless figures." if that is indeed a common perception, Riley shatters it effectively by showing that while women's life experiences were similar on the plains and the prairie, they were in most ways not particularly better or worse than the lives of women out east. The same concerns with family and home were paramount, and women's education, employment and marriage patterns remained similar across regions.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly small print makes this book appear as more of a drudge, but don’t let that mislead you. An incredible primary source defining the different experiences prairie and plains women faced during the westward expansion. Through first hand accounts, articles of the day, and journals, this book provides one of the most accurate histories of the time.

[Arena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly, but not an easy read. Wish the author had revised/organized the information in some other way. I most enjoyed the descriptive portions of domesticity on the plains and prairie.

[Kathy KS · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found many of the author's examples interesting, but feel that the book was weak in many areas. Since the subtitle is "A comparative view of women on the prairie and the plains" I believe the contrast and comparison of the two areas would be more effective if placed side-by-side in the same chapters. By doing this author's book would, of course, by much shorter. As it is, much of the information is repetitive between the discussion of Prairie and Plains.
The strongest aspect of the book, for me, is the notes section because it introduces many interesting resources and their locations. My personal preference, however, would be to present this information in footnotes, rather than endnotes, so that readers can find what the source material is without breaking the flow of reading.
Recommended as background and bibliographical research for historians and genealogists, but the actual sources would make more compelling reading. I personally enjoyed reading Schlissel's Women's diaries of the westward journey and Stratton's Pioneer women more.

[Cws]

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