Frederick Turner and Women on Essay

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From Turner's viewpoint, women's place was in the home, tending the crops and raising the children. However, if Turner could step out of his own cultural biases and see women on the frontier for their real contributions, his theories would have read differently.

Migration to the west was done by families and family groups. Other than the early fur traders, later migrations involved family units. Women were the ones to maintain homesteads and stake their claim to the new world. Women were the ones to set down permanent roots in the new frontier. Their role as keepers of the home and children cannot be minimized, as these very activities were the ones that made occupation of the west a permanent endeavor. Without the women to perform their pre-determined jobs as keepers of the home and hearth, occupation of the west would have been a transient affair.

The women were considered the keepers of society and morality. It was their job to make certain that culture was maintained in the home. In the beginning, settlements were isolated, but they later grew into more complex structures. Women helped to shape the larger scheme of frontier culture by the way they kept their homes and the values that they instilled in their children within their cabin walls. The values that they instilled in their children became the values of the new frontier and eventually the new nation.

One of the most important contributions of frontier women arose from the situation in which they were placed. Unlike their city cousins in the east, frontier women were often placed in survival situations where they had to break traditional jobs in order to survive. They hunted and defended themselves. They had to do what they had to do to survive. This position often made them break traditional gender roles, thus redefining traditional roles.

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They were rugged and independent, an admirable quality the Turner attributes to frontier men, not women.

This newfound freedom and independence was a result of isolation from the rest of society. Eastern values were not likely to be reinforced on the frontier. There was no one to chastise a woman for breaking traditional roles, as would be the case in the east. Women on the frontier were the first to experience a new identity, one in which they were the creators of a society. The spirit of the frontier women drove the women's movements of the early 20th century.

Had Turner considered the importance of the "hand that rocked the cradle" and the role that it played in permanent settlement, his theories would read quite differently. He failed to realize the importance of traditional women's roles in shaping society and the new society that would eventually spring from the frontier. Men were not the only shapers of society. Without a comfortable home to come back to, life in the west would have been a rather nomadic existence. The real history of the frontier and its role in the new nation was shaped by the families that decided to pack up their possessions and stake their claim. It was the woman's place to hold that claim through establishment of a permanent household. Turner's ignorance of the importance of women on the frontier makes his theories seem shallow and incomplete. However, one must remember that Turner's theories were a product of the time in which he lived and the values of society. He cannot be held entirely accountable for these omissions, but they do make his theories less credible from a modern perspective......

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