Westerns connote images of dirt, dust, guns, horses, cowboys and heroes: physically strong, iron-willed, independent, resourceful, quick-witted men. Although the modern Western (the writings of Louise L’Amour, Zane Grey and the numerous films starring John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry) seems to focus on this ideal hero, the genre actually also provides women with strong, self-reliant, active roles. In fact, many texts that precede the typical modern Western had females as the main characters. However, the role of the heroine still differs from that of the hero; the role does not defeminize women but gives them depth as characters. These women still retain their femininity and domesticity, but they also rescue those around them, take care of themselves, and have a relationship with the land. The Girl of the Golden West, a play written by David Belasco around 1905, perfectly demonstrates this idea. The heroine, the Girl, speaks frankly, carries a gun, takes care of herself, protects the miners’ money, and actually rescues the villain. At the same time, she comforts her boys, desires to recreate the home she remembers, and, epitomizing female virtue, converts the road agent with her love. Other earlier works also provide examples of active, strong women. These earlier works laid a foundation and created a tradition from which the modern-day Western evolved. The tradition began in the earliest days of the colonies with the captivity narratives and eventually blossomed into stories such as The Girl of the Golden West, undoubtedly a Western with a heroine.
In her book, West of Everything, Jane Tompkins discusses the essential elements that define the genre. From her discussion, one can extract a working definition: the setting, th...
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...of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.In Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. Ed. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. Hope Leslie; or, Early Times in the Massachusetts. Ed. Mary Kelley. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1942.
Southworth, E.D.E.N. The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap. Ed. Joanne Dobson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. Ed. Ann Douglas. New York: Penguin, 1981.
Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
McMurtry, Larry. 2005. Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890. 10th Ed. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Solnit, Rebecca. "Spectators." Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994. 228-47. Print.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Stowe, Harriet Beecher”. Date of Last Revision Unknown. 6 Jan 2002. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/12373.html>.
West, Elliott, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, (University Press of Kansas,
Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.In Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. Ed. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Edward, Rebecca and Henretta, James and Self, Robert. America A Concise History. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012.
Mortimer Chambers, Barbara Hanawalt, Theodore K. Rabb, Isser Woloch, Raymond Grew, and Lisa Tiersten, The Western Experience, Ninth Edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006).
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
Sedgwick, Catharine. A New England Tale. Ed. Victoria Clements. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
The Gold Rush was one of the most influential times in California History. During the four years from 1848-1852, 400,000 new people flooded into the state. People from many countries and social classes moved to California, and many of them settled in San Francisco. All this diversity in one place created a very interesting dynamic. California during the Gold Rush, was a place of colliding ideals. The 49ers came from a very structured kind of life to a place where one was free to make up her own rules.
Considering the different sources I have provided, many have covered locational factors, origins, and the individuals responsible for creating such a successful genre. While the authors have some subjectivity in writing about their topic as well as a shared affection for it, their sources have provided me with a substantial amount of credible information that will be crucial to my research paper.
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682, of what life in captivity was like. Her narrative of her captivity by Indians became popular in both American and English literature. Mary Rowlandson basically lost everything by an Indian attack on her town Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675; where she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What made this piece so popular in both England and America was not only because of the great narrative skill used be Mary Rowlandson, but also the intriguing personality shown by the complicated character who has a struggle in recognizing her identity. The reoccurring idea of food and the word remove, used as metaphors throughout the narrative, could be observed to lead to Mary Rowlandson’s repression of anger, depression, and realization of change throughout her journey and more so at the end of it.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
In her account, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Rowlandson