The Women's West

by Susan H. Armitage, Elizabeth Jameson

The American West looms large in popular imagination-a place where men were rugged and independent, violent and courageous. In this mythic West all the men were white, and the women were largely absent. The few female actors played supporting roles around the edges of the drama. Molded by the Victorian Cult of True Womanhood, they were passive, dependent, reluctant, and out of place. Men "won" the West. Women, against their better judgement, followed them to this "newly discovered" place and tried to re-create the amenities of the urban East. Or so the myth goes. The Women’s West challenges this picture as racist, sexist, and romantic and rejects the customary emphasis of traditional western history on the nineteenth-century frontier, discovered and defined by Anglo men. In its place The Women’s West begins the construction of a new western history as complex and varied as the people who lived it. This collection of twenty-one articles creates a multidimensional portrait of western women. The pioneer women presented here were actors in their own lives, not passive participants in their husbands’ ventures. They were hardy seekers who came west, sometimes alone, in search of jobs, freedom, or land to homestead. They were political activists who worked tirelessly to win the right to vote and to hold political office. They adapted in practical ways to their own and their families’ economic and personal needs in a new environment.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Gender, Westerns

336 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1987

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Jameson, "Women as Workers, Women as Civilizers: True Womanhood in the American West," in Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson, The Women's West (1987), 145-164.

Jameson wants to know what life on the frontier was really like for real women. She finds both the ideal of women as "civilizers' and the pejoratively labeled "cult of domesticity" equally inadequate. Neither entirely noble nor entirely degraded, real women on the frontier faced the challenges of everyday life with resourcefulness, entered into public life more frequently than their male counterparts would record in the record of public history, and ultimately were the actors in their own history. It is this history she sees to recover through oral history and through unpublished documents found in attics rather than archives.

Women's writings reveal that they were usually "The Reluctant Pioneer." One cannot know, Jameson points out, how many women foiled the attempts of their husbands to move the family west, but for the most part women's connection with local kin networks lead them to resist the move. When people did move, they often brought their extended kin networks along. When they did arrive on the frontier, women on the frontier were confronted with a "Daily Reality" that was very different from the useless and ornamental middle class wives in the East. She gives strength to the assumption that men and women shared responsibilities for work that was essential to the very survival of the family on the frontier. Although public literature often idealized the work women did, this work was hard work. Hauling water, washing clothes, cooking food all required a tremendous amount of physical exertion. The level of this exertion was necessarily increased with additional children and women understood this. It is thus unsurprising that they sought out information about contraception, pregnancy and birth from their female friends. The female world of love and sentiment was as real for the pioneer women as it was for her sister back East. Yet, both the oral histories and private writings are more or less bereft of evidence about how women on the frontier viewed their own sexuality. She suggests, however, that the private discussion of sexual activity was often "corseted" in public. In considering frontier women in "Public Life," she begins by considering the role women had in public institution building -- work establishing hospitals and libraries, rarely credited by men, are often mentioned in women's oral histories. Their work in support of suffrage movements in the West also contributes to a more nuanced picture of women's public work. In addition to the effect which temperance work had on women, bringing them out in public to smash up saloons, she also points to the role Western women played in the Populist, Greenback and Alliance politics that won the vote for women in Western states. Women "organized suffrage campaign, circulated partitions and lobbied for the vote." The experience in several Canadian provinces bears this out as well.

In closing she asks whether we have not missed the point entirely up until now with women on the frontier and she concludes that they are best understood as both workers and civilizers. Neither drudges nor saints, they accomplished a great deal and worked very hard all their lives.

Other Readings:

Clyde A. Milner II, Walter Nugent, Elliott West, Karen R. Merrill, Philip J. Deloria, Richard White, "A Historian Who Has Changed Our Thinking: A Roundtable on the Work of Richard White," Western Historical Quarterly Summer 2002 (1 Jan. 2003).

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much of what is taught in American (and world) history is really incomplete history. Until recently much of it has been written by men. This collection of essays by and about women in the American West starts by noting that what is generally taught about the West is essentially "Hisland" or more specifically "White Hisland." Though there are sometimes references which might contradict the prevalent teachings they are rarely mentioned in classes. For instance, in the essay 'Illusion and Illumination' Patricia Albers and William James point out the promotion of fictional stereotypes as fact through the media of the day, e.g. post cards and dime novels.
Corlann Gee Bush in 'The Way We Weren't...' points out the incipient racism and sexism in Western Art.
Sherry Smith,, 'Between Princess and Squaw...,' notes that Army offices found Indian women had more marriage and political rights than white women and had easier times giving birth because they continued working until giving birth unlike the Victorian idea of the ideal woman.
Susan L. Johnson in 'Sharing Bed and Board' discusses the differences in the Anglo views of marriage and those of other 'ethnicities'.
In a section on depictions in literature Melody Graulich, 'Violence Against Women...,' shows that the idea of women as property a man could do with as he wished allowed men to beat their women folk with near impunity.
These are just a few of the 21 essays that just partially address the dearth of history of women and minorities in the West. Hopefully the current and future generations will learn the complete unvarnished history of the United States (and the world) not just the white male version.

[Milton Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book many years ago and added it to that very large “to be read soon” stack. The title appealed to me as another view of the western migration of this country, which has been a fascination of mine for decades. The book was thick enough and the print small enough to cause me to keep reading something else instead. I have now had this book for over thirty years. Perhaps I would have grasped it when I bought it, but I think not. The book is more academic that I ever realized it would be. It is very scholarly, but still very readable. My perspective on women has changed, been enlightened, by this book. I recommend it heartily to any feminist or to any historian out there. It is a great book!

[Bish Denham · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of articles and essays that all delve into the history of women and they roll they played in the westward expansion in the US.

[Ants · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the published proceedings on the history of Women in the West. The book provides great insight into the misconceived impression of Western History and gives examples of a more accurate history. The information is wonderful. The revelation about what we perceive as history (pictures, movies, stories, and just plain old known facts) is even better.

Not a fast read, but a very good one.

[Diane Mueller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a light read. This is more like reading a history textbook. Yet it gives insight into our foremothers and though larger ignored in the history books they did play a huge part in settling the West.

[Cws]

305.4

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic case studies of women's roles during the late 1900s and early 20th Century. Excellent.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

#31 of 120 books pledged to read during 2021