Page 43 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOPHY: AMERICAN DISCOURSE

must have asked themselves many questions: Would they survive in the
arduous environment of the West? Would male protection be sufficient
to carry them through? And the most crucial question of all:Would male
strength prove equal to that of American Indian "barbarians" who
reportedly attempted to assault and rape white women? Even though
women "knew " that female morality would triumph over evil, the West,
a seeming "land of savagery," appeared less than an ideal arena in which
to test that belief.
Fortunately for westward-bound women, an opposing portrayal of
women appeared during the mid-nineteenth century. Even as the "fact"
of female physical inferiority was heralded across the land, the capable
woman made her literary debut. The capable woman could not only
care for herself in certain situations, but could occasionally aid a man.
A close reading of Catharine Sedgwick's popular 1836 novel, A Poor Rich
Man and a Rich Poor Man, provides a case in point. Its heroine supported
a large family on an impossibly small income and, in her spare time,
engaged in charitable endeavors. Only a year later, Hannah Lee's hero­
ine in Elinor Fulton sustained her entire family after bankruptcy, as well
as provided unwavering inspiration until her father worked his way back
to solvency. 8I
This is not to suggest that these early capable heroines won over
American readers completely. According to book sales, the public still
preferred Hannah Lee's flighty, squandering Jane of Three Experiments if
Living (1837). Meanwhile, however, certain events opened readers'
minds, including the women's r i ghts conventions of the late 1840S and
1850s, and the liberating effects of the Civil War on women during the
early 1860s. Near the war's end, the height of the capable woman
appeared in E. D. E. N. Southworth's Capitola (1865).Young and daring,
Capitola entered the story disguised as a boy. After flouting her guardian,
fighting a duel, outwitting her kidnappers, and romping through a
number of people's lives, she received the supreme compliment from
her guardian, who declared that she deserved to be a man. That many
readers loved and possibly imitated Capitola was proven by the book's
sales, for it joined the works of Charles Dickens, W i lliam Thackeray, and
George Eliot on the best-seller list and was republished several times in
subsequent years. 8 2

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