for Discussion: How did
lives and social roles change when
they moved West in the 1800s?
Reading: Hymowitz, pp. 64-75, 176-190; Gerster,
George Batchelder promotes Dakota (web);
Confronts the Kansas Territory (web)
Video: Women in the West
Women's Role in American
Women's Changing Roles in America
the American West
1. Women's Sphere and Women's Traditional
2. Women's Changing Roles in the West
1. How did Women's roles in
society and the
family change between the 1700s and the
2. What economic and social
created a "women's sphere" in the home
by the 1800s?
3. How did the limitations
of women's sphere
allow women to come together to challenge
their larger place in American society?
4. What role did women play
in the long,
hard journey across the country to settle
5. What does Hymowitz mean
writes: " Women of this temperament were
probably only a minority in the West, but they
left their mark, not just on the region, but on
the nation's imagination."? (179)
6. What forces allowed women
to escape the
limitations of their traditional roles and
"women's sphere" and begin to claim many
of the rights and privileges that were granted
7. Why did women in the West
get the right to
vote long before women in the rest of
8. How did women's newer, expanded
in society in the West shape the way American
women saw their role in the larger American society?
In the last twenty years, American
historians have become increasingly interested in how women's roles
and lives were changed by the growth of cities and industrialization,
by the American movement West, and the rise of national women's
journals and magazines. Some American West historians argue that
moving West help transform the lives of American women.
By moving West, American women discovered new opportunities and
roles for women. Gaining confidence in their abilities and skills
as women, these Western women then became role models for women
throughout the country. But not all historians agree
with this perspective.
In her essay, "Women as Frontier
Entrepreneurs," Sandra Myres argues that women lives and roles
were transformed by moving West from 1840 to 1900. While, in her
essay, "Women on the Great Plains 1865 to 1890," Christine
Stansell argues that women's lives and roles were set back and damaged
by their move West. Both Myres and Stansell make good argument,
but who is more convincing? Did settling the West in the 1800s transform
women's lives and roles?
In order to answer this question, we
must first assess what women's lives and roles were like in America
in the 1800s. What were women's roles in the East before they set
out with their families to settle and live in the West? In the 1800s,
women were expected to remain in their distinct place in American
society, which was known as "women's sphere." While the
"men's sphere" was the larger public world of work and
politics outside the home, "women's sphere" was the private
world of the family and the home. In her home, a women was supposed
to raise and protect her children, to safeguard the morality and
religion of her children and husband, and sacrifice her life for
her the success and happiness of her husband and children. Americans
believed that women did not have the intellectual ability and emotional
stability to participate in the larger world of work and politics.
Their husbands would protect them in the home from the larger complex,
often immoral world of work and politics. Many American women in
the 1800s came to believe that their place was in the home, watched
over and protected by her husband, caring and supporting her family.
Myres argues that this women's traditional
roles would slowly expand and become more equal to and like the
role of men in society as a result of women and their families moving
West in the 1800s. She argues that women "did enlarge the scope
of women's place, however, and countered prevailing Eastern arguments
about women's sphere and the cult of true womanhood." Myres
argues that women did this by expanding their traditional roles
in order to help support her family and the larger community. For
example, women took in and cooked for borders, opened up restaurants,
laundries, and mended and made clothing. In the West, "women's
domestic skills became the basis for a profitable business."
In fact, some Western banks would grant women loans to start small
businesses and not men, because women proved more reliable and able
to run profitable businesses.
In addition to expanding their domestic
skills into small businesses, women in the West took up writing.
They wrote for national magazines and journals and some wrote books.
I believe that it was Western women writers who helped make changing
women's roles in the West a model for American women throughout
the country. In addition to writing, Western women also became teachers.
Because they were in such high demand, Western women were allowed
to attend Western universities to become teachers. Their experience
teaching and attending university helped Western women become principles,
superintendents, and serve on state boards of education.
Western women also became missionaries
to the Indians. They helped run missions, Indian schools, and run
missionary schools and churches. Some of these women also preached
to the Indians. As a result of their missionary work and preaching,
some Western women were even ordained as ministers, which was unheard
of for Women in the East.
In the West, women were allowed to
own property in their own name. Men encouraged women to make claims
for homestead land so that they could double the size of the family's
holdings. But the land was still in the women's name and she often
had the final say in what should be done with it. As a result of
their access to land and the booming agricultural economy in the
West, some women ran ranches and farms by themselves. In doing so,
either because their husbands were off mining, fighting Indians,
or working in town, these women would be in a position to supervise
male employees. Along with their success owning and running farms
and ranches, some women became real estate agents and speculators,
buying and selling Western land.
Western women also took advantage of
the growing demand for professionals and became doctors, lawyers,
and businesswomen. Many Western American soon became comfortable
with women doctors and lawyers, which many Eastern Americans would
not think of.
Myres concludes here argument by observing
that surveys of Western women in 1943 found them to be "far
better educated, held a wider variety of jobs, and were more likely
to continue working, were less prone to adhere to traditional religious
and denominational beliefs, were more excited and optimistic about
their lives, were more open to change, and were more likely to approve
equal standards for men and women." All of this lead Myres
to conclude that these Western women's lives and roles were transformed,
and that Western women were not limited by the traditional roles
for women that Eastern women were.
However, unlike Myres, Stansell draws
a very different conclusion about how the movement West affect women's
roles and lives. Stansell argues that in "many frontier regions,
women failed to reinstitute their own [women's] sphere. Without
a cultural base of their own, they disappeared behind the masculine
preoccupations and social structure which dominated the West."
For Stansell the inability of Western women to "reinstitute"
their traditional roles of caring for the family and taking care
of the house hurt them and made their lives worse off, and often
miserable. Stansell would argue that Myres because Stansell believes
that Western women should have allowed to retain their traditional
roles; whereas, Myres argues that it was precisely their inability
to retain their traditional women's roles that allowed women to
transform their lives and roles. Stansell sees some of the very
transformation in women's roles that Myres praises as a threat to
Myres and Stansell also differ in that
Myres draws on the experiences of women in the far West in the Pacific
Northwest and California; whereas Stansell draws on the experiences
of women in the Great Plains. But these environments and the women's
experiences there are very different. Stansell is right: The women
who settled with their families in the Great Plains often suffered
and led lonely, exhausted lives. Oh the Great Plains, settlers lived
on isolated farms, miles away from the nearest towns, there were
fewer cities and town to support the setters, and the land they
settled on was much harder to farm than the land in the Pacific
Northwest. Because of a shortage of trees on the Great Plains, many
women and their families were forced to live in sod or dirt houses.
Living in mud houses was made even worse by the bitter cold in the
winter, the hot and dry summers, and the constant threat caused
by tornadoes, floods, and bitter winter storms. The very environment
of the Great Plains gave women much fewer opportunities and options
that women had in the Far West. Given this environment and the hardships
settlers faced, it is not wonder that Stansell finds that many of
these women suffered terribly.
Isolated from larger communities, churches,
schools, and networks of friends, many women were now forced to
struggle to recreate their traditional role, their women's sphere,
without the support from other women they had once had in the East.
Because of the difficulty farming and working the land, the farm
came first, and women found that they would still be living in mud
houses but the family could afford to buy tractors and farm equipment.
In addition to the poverty and isolation
of their lives, women in the Great Plains also were forced to help
their husbands work the farm, because were was a shortage of farm
hands and neighboring men to help with the difficult tasks of plowing
and working the land, bailing hay, and harvesting the crops. Because
women also had to do men's work in addition to their own, they were
often exhausted and struggled to feed, clothe, educate, and support
their children and husbands. Stansell notes that overworked, exhausted
women sometimes ran away from their families, went insane, or died
at a very young age. If a man lost his wife in the Great Plains,
he would be forced to quickly go out and find another wife because
he could not run the farm and take care of his large family without
a wife to do the work.
In addition to the hardships, the work,
the exhaustion, and the isolation and loneliness, Great Plains women
found that they could not "keep their daughters out of men's
clothes." For Stansell, Great Plains women's inability to recreate
their traditional roles and pass those roles down to their daughters
was a tragedy and a real defeat for these women. Stansell concludes
that Great Plains women often lives futile, exhausted, tragic lives.
In comparing Myres with Stansell's
argument we need to consider these questions:
1). What should be the role of women
2). Can we generalize about women in
the West based on women's experience in the Far West and the Great
Plains? Don't we need to include both regions in our analysis?
3). Why did women in the Far West accept
the opportunity to expand their traditional roles, whereas women
in the Great Plains saw this opportunity as a great threat?
4). Why did men allow women to expand
their traditional roles so far and so fast in the Far West? Was
there a shortage of men to do these jobs that women were now doing?
5). Are the women Myres and Stansell
describe from the same cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds?
No, the women who settled the Great Plains tended to be Scandinavian
immigrants who often didn't speak English, understand American culture,
and felt culturally isolated from American culture and society.
6). Does living in two very different
environments make it difficult, if not impossible, to compare the
lives and roles of women in the Far West and women in the Great
7). Are Myres and Stansell's arguments
two halves of a larger whole that together explain the larger reality
of women's lives in the West?
8) Does Stansell draw on a larger enough
sample of women in the Great Plains to draw the conclusions she
does. Can we be sure that all women lived like this based on the
few diaries Stansell draws on.