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  3. Women and the Winning of the West The popular version

Women and the Winning of the West The popular version

游客2023-12-20  33
问题                        Women and the Winning of the West
   The popular version of the lone wagon train, forging its way west, in constant danger of losing the faintly marked trail, its occupants trembling in fear of imminent Indian massacre, is just a Hollywood concoction, says historian Sandra Myres, who has been researching the role of women in settling the American west. She has unearthed vivid accounts of the trail west and of homesteading at the journey’s end. The journals, diaries and letters she has read help dispel some long-cherished myths about the American frontier.
   Forget the image of the lone wagon train silhouetted against the horizon. The fact was that after the California Gold Rush in 1849, isolated travel was not even a possibility. "You couldn’t get lost if you wanted to, because you couldn’t get out of sight of another wagon train," explains Myres, professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington.
   "The country was so level that we could see the long trains of white-topped wagons for many miles," ob~ served a pioneer woman, Margaret Frink. "It appeared to me that none of the population had been left behind," she wrote in her Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers, published in 1897:
   It seemed to me that I have never seen so many human beings in all my life before. And, when we drew nearer to the vast multitude, and saw them in all manner of vehicles and conveyances, on horseback and on foot... I thought, in my excitement, if one-tenth of these teams and these people get ahead of us, there would be nothing left for us in California worth picking up.
   Another favorite Hollywood image--the wagon train forming a circle at dusk--bears little resemblance to reality. The wagons might have made a circle, but if so it was to enclose livestock which might 0therwise wander off and become fair game for rustlers. So the protective stockade of wagons was for the benefit of Cows, horses and pigs. Men, women and children naturally preferred to sleep in tents well outside the circle.
   In the movies, we know the Indians are going to descend on the settlers as soon as the sun goes down. Hollywood was only preserving misconceptions of the American Indian that had long-flourished in popular literature and imagination. The 19th-century pioneers themselves were steeped in simplistic views--many of which still persist today. Nineteenth-century fiction depicted either the good Indian--the noble savage of James Feni-more Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales--or the bad Indian. In Robert Bird’s Neck of the Wood, for in- stance, Indians are bloodthirsty and treacherous; the heroic settlers ultimately vanquish them.
   Settlers on their way west, however, were more likely to meet Indians who descended on the wagons in order to exploit the possibilities for trade the transcontinental travelers offered. Pioneer women found the Indians extremely helpful in identifying and preparing indigenous food and herbs. "You can’t find an Indian attack for anything,’ says Myres ruefully after reading more than 500 women’s journals.
   Marauding Indians did occasionally harass the rare party of isolated travelers, but whites and Indians generally regarded each other with a curiosity tinged with mutual apprehension. Pioneer women were keen observers of Indian customs and ceremonies, often recording them in minute detail, very much as a modern anthropologist would. Indian women too were watching their counterparts; some of these accounts have also been pre- served in English transcriptions made by interpreters, at times via sign language.
   "The 19th century tended to be an age of journals, thank God," says Myres. The virtues of keeping a journal were instilled in young women by their teachers and the flood of ladies’ magazines that kept them up-to-date on the latest eastern styles. It was one’s duty to keep up a journal which could be read by friends and relations back home who might never be seen again.
   Journals were a popular literary genre. Many of the diaries and journals Myres has seen are conscious "literary’’ efforts, written for a family audience and with an eye to eventual publication.
   Women responded to the frontier in many ways. Some shrank from the rigors of the migration west and never adjusted to the upheaval in their lives. Once settled, these women were quick to reaffirm traditional female values and roles and new opportunities for women.
   The Western territories, eager to attract hard working women to their embryonic settlements, granted them economic rights far more extensive than those women had known in the east and south. In the Oregon territory women were allowed to homestead in their own names and the practice spread rapidly across the west. A women’s right to own property was unequivocal. Women generally had equal, and sometimes slightly preferential, access to credit. In many western communities it was not unusual for women property holders to control a significant proportion of the wealth. Within a few decades of the settling of the territories an entrepreneurial class of women appeared.
   In examining the role of women in the economic life of the west, Myres was directed to a major lode of source material at the Baker Library of the Harvard School of Business: the records of R. G. Dunn ~ Co. , forerunners of Dunn ＆ Bradstreet. The company’s agents across the country did more than collect financial data for credit reports; they sent back fascinating snippets of gossip as well. A typical item reveals the "well-known fact in the community that the wife wears the unmentionables in the family and runs the business." The Dunn records constitute "a major source of socio-economic information about 19th century America," according to Myres.
   Myres believes that the scope of economic opportunity open to women on the western frontier led in turn to demands for social and political power to match. She points out that eastern and southern women who wielded economic power "tended to use that power silently and through intermediaries throughout the 19th century. Was it the frontier that made the difference?" Myres isn’t sure yet, but hopes to have some answers at the conclusion of her research. (1017) [br] Most probably the writer of this article is a ______.
选项 A、historian
B、novelist
C、reporter
D、teacher
答案 A
解析 推理判断题。本文从历史研究的角度描述和分析了19世纪美国西进运动中妇女的作用和地位，而且文中引用了许多历史学家的观点和当时妇女所写的日记，我们借此可以推断，文章的作者很有可能也是一位历史学家。
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