Reading List

In my search of books I came across a few interesting titles that may come in handy. One of them is So Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier by Jane Tompkins, which is a collection of accounts of real life pioneer women who came West in the nineteenth century. The picture of frontier life they present is diverse as they come from different backgrounds, end up living in different parts of the west, but most importantly, their views on issues ranging from housekeeping to definition of womanhood are also diverse. Put together they form a very informative picture (and a historical account for that matter) of what it meant to live in the west as a woman. I would like to think that the picture this book paints is more true to the reality than what the myth of the west presents.

Another publication that grabbed my attention was West of Everything : The Inner Life of Westerns. In the introduction Tompkins states that she loves westerns and continues how the West being a symbol of freedom contrasts with the modern industrial society, how it functions as a place that promises the opportunity of self-transformation. In the book the author argues that western as a genre is a response to (and in a sense a continuation of) the 19^th century Victorian  women’s novel that cherished the domestic sphere. It is the antithesis of the cult of domesticity that dominated American Victorian culture. The Western hero, who seems to ride in and out of nowhere, in fact comes riding in out of the nineteenth century. And every piece of baggage he doesn't have, every word he doesn't say, every creed in which he doesn't believe is absent for a reason. (Tompkins. 39) This is a surprising statement, however it certainly sheds some light on the origins of the masculine ‘hard edges’ in the traditional western.
  

Last but not least, Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema by Anette Kuhn. I do not know if you would agree with me, but some concepts of feminist critical theory are confusing (at least initially). Kuhn’s book deals with the 80s and 90s cinema and introduces all the relevant issues combined with multiple examples from different films. Unfortunately I have not seen most of the films she discusses, however, as far as I can tell, Kuhn's writing style is accessible and, unlike some other scholars, she does not try to complicate the already intricate concepts.