Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800–1915 by Sandra L. Myres

Abstract

260 Western American Literature Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915. By Sandra L. Myres. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983. xxii + 365 pages, illustrations, map, notes, acknowledgement of sources, and index. Cloth, $19.95; paper, $9.95.) Sandra L. Myres’s work reflects a breadth of research and ambitiousness of scope unparalleled by other writings on women in the West, and given its handsome format and affordable price, seems certain to attract a broad reader­ ship. Yet partly because of the unwieldiness of her topic and partly because of her assumptions about it, Myres’s analysis proves unsatisfying. Hers is an impressionistic study, not a definitive one. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 is both more and less than its title suggests. Myres looks not only at Anglo-American women on the trans-Appalachian and trans-Mississippi frontiers but also, for at least part of the book, at the women who came to New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Spanish and mestizo women who moved north to settle in what is now the southwestern part of the United States. She also discusses the experiences of black women on the frontier, touches on the situation of Native American women, and attempts to analyze the interactions among all of these groups. But while Myres emphasizes the international, multiracial, and multireligious nature of the frontier in Ameri­ can history, she pays inadequate atttention to the varieties of frontier experi­ ence within the American West. Indeed, she treats as almost interchangeable the lives of Anglo-American women on farms and army bases and in cities, mining camps, and Mormon towns. Thus she misses the opportunity to inform her readers about the inner workings of these different types of society and what each offered nineteenth-century women in terms of economic oppor­ tunity and psychological fulfillment. This lapse is related to another problem with the book. In her eagerness to avoid stereotyping the experience of women in the West, Myres fails to focus on significant patterns. Early on she approvingly quotes another histor­ ian’s assertion, “If there is a truth about frontierswomen, it is that they were not any one thing” (p. 11). Given this assumption, it is not surprising that Myres describes most of the women who went west as dauntless individuals, relatively undeterred by the cult of true womanhood or by the doctrine of separate spheres. When on occasion her women show signs of fainthearted­ ness, Myres explains that some men displayed similar fears. While it should be noted that Myres’s observations are carefully documented, they are based on a piecemeal reading of diaries, journals, letters, and reminiscences, not on a rigorous content analysis of such sources, nor on demographic data. Her methodology would naturally tend to lend support to her individualistic bias. Although historians, like other scholars, are not likely soon to agree on the extent to which societal norms affect individual behavior, especially under arduous conditions like the frontier, Myres has taken an extreme position. Apparently overreacting to the feminist determinism of scholars like John Mack Faragher, she has reverted to an older formula in western history. The Reviews 261 “hardy and self-sufficient women” she describes who “stepped out of women’s place with few regrets” (p. 270) are the stuff of hagiography not history. While the book will no doubt prove interesting to general readers, it is impor­ tant more as a compendium than as a major addition to the scholarship in the field. CAROL A. O’CONNOR, Utah State University Cowboy Life on the Texas Plains: The Photographs of Ray Rector. Edited by Margaret Rector; Introduction by John Graves. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982. 119 pages, 88 B/W photographs, $19.95.) Last of a Breed: Portraits of Working Cowboys. By Martin H. Schreiber; Introduction by Louis L’Amour. (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1982. 104 pages, 85 B/W photographs, $38.00.) Fiction and history have recorded the major debates over the fate of the cowboy. Two new collections of photographs, however, shed additional light on the subject, especially when viewed comparatively. Thumbing through either volume will erase any doubt that the cowboy’s job w...