Nov 20 2008
Protected Women In The Old West
Many of Louis Lamour’s novels describe the sanctity of women in the old west. From Hanging Woman Creek “You could steal cattle or shoot a man and maybe get away with it, but if you bothered a decent woman you stood a good chance of getting lynched.”
How true this notion is can never precisely be determined just as so many other aspects of cultures from the past, but it is quite apparent that Lamour believed it firmly. Many of his stories hinge on the importants of not bothering a woman or of the consequences of violence against women. Kiowa Trail, for example reaches resolution because the antagonist makes the fatal mistake of attacking a woman.
Certainly women were relegated to a station in life that has taken many years to overcome and which some would argue has not yet been overcome. It took a half a century following the civil war for women to receive the vote, and more than a half century after that before legislation was passed to protect their employment status in the United States to ensure that their wages would be equal to that of a man.
Though the cowhands and ranchers would not tolerate bothering a woman, ironically these same men would also not tolerate the same women to vote or work a full day for full wages. How deeply vested is this notion? How far does is persist today? Where will it be in another century?
