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"True statements": Women's narratives of the American frontier experience Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Stefani, Victoria Lee Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 08/10/2021 01:06:51 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284185 INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been repfoduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter lace, while others may t)e from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 •TRUE STATEMENTS": WOMEN'S NARRATIVES OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER EXPERIENCE by Victoria Stefani Copyright © Victoria Stefani 2000 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE LnsnVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2000 UMI Number 9983848 Copyright 2000 by Stefani, Victoria Lee All rights reserved. UMI^ UMI Microform9983848 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ® GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared bv Victoria Stefani entitled "True Statements"; Women's Narratives of the American Frontier Experience and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Poctor of Philosophy L arr y Evers Date 7'/V'^r2/ udy^ Noyte Tempi Date IjLL ?- /V- zcoo Tilly (AVarnock Date Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and reconnend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement, Dissertation Director Larry Evers Date 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGN 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply appreciative of the many individuals who assisted me throughout the researching and writing of this dissertation. Although I have lived all my life in the West, Larry Evers, Judy Temple, and Annette Kolodny helped me to see the American frontiers in new and exciting ways and to discover my purpose. I am grateful to them and to Tilly Wamock for their interest in my project and for their careful and thoughtful reading and constructive criticism of draft after draft. I wish to thank the staffs of Yale's Beinecke Library and the Huntington Library for their assistance, and I especially thank Dr. Martin Ridge of the Huntington Library for his insights on the publication of Maiy Hallock Foote's memoir. Several people other with personal connections to the people I wrote about were generous with their time, interest, and assistance, and I thank Aem all. Freda Manfred kindly made her father's working notes available to me and was willing to answer any questions. Glenn Shirley, Belle Starr's biographer, and Mrs. A1 (Flossie) Cooke, her great-granddaughter, willingly shared their knowledge and insights regarding the "Bandit Queen." Mary Ellen \^^lliams Walsh put me in touch with Mrs. Evelyn Gardiner, M^ Hallock Foote's granddaughter. Mrs. Gardiner has been extraordinarily kind and gracious in sharing her memories and knowledge of her grandmother and of the writing and publication of Angle of Repose, and I am deeply grateful. A I^trick Dissertation fellowship from the English Department at the University of Arizona helped make it possible for me to complete this work, and for this I also wish to express my appreciation. Finally, my family and friends have been my greatest supporters. I am especially grateful to Dr. Marseille Spetz, whose faith in me never wavered and whose intellectual energy, independence, and generous spirit make her a remarkable role model. I owe my mother, Patricia Thompson, more than I can express; she is an example of strength equal to any frontier woman, as well as a fine reader, critic, and friend. My daughter, Deirdre Modarresi, has spent half her life with a student for a mother and has tolerated it remarkably well. She has also been unfailingly encouraging and supportive and I am happy and proud to be her mother. Last but certainly not least, my husband, Joe Stefani, has proven himself over and over innumerable ways. His patience, honesty, and love have never wavered. As reader, editor, traveling companion, lover, and friend, he is simply the best. 5 DEDICATION To my grandmother, Jeannette Marie Cast Couch (1894-1983), who came West at the turn of the century. She loved this land, worked hard, gained and lost much, knew love and joy and also great sorrow. She told her own stories, and she never let anyone censor, silence, or revise her. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 7 INTRODUCTION 9 I. 'HIS PRECIOUS SERVANT AND HANDMAID": EARLY PURITAN WOMEN'S CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES 17 II. FATES WORSE THAN DEATH: THE USES OF SEX IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES, AND A TWENTIETH-CENTURY VARIATION ON THAT THEME 69 III. INVENTING BELLE STARR: "WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT, PRINT THE LEGEND" 106 IV. MARY HALLOCK FOOTE AND ANGLE OF REPOSE: WALLACE STEGNER'S QUESTIONABLE RESCUE OF A VICTORIAN GENTLEWOMAN. 163 V. CONCLUSION 218 REFERENCES 224 NOTES 235 7 ABSTRACT This study examines women's narratives about their experiences on successive American frontiers. It analyzes exemplary texts from Puritan women's captivity narratives to the eariy 20th-century letters and memoir of Mary Hallock Foote. Close readings of those texts reveal how they were influenced at the time of their production, or later appropriated for other purposes, by white male authority figures, reflecting an attitude that women's stories are fair game for reinterpretation and that women's concerns about such reinterpretations are irrelevant Examples of influence include the captivity narratives of Mary Rowlandson (1682) and Hannah Swarton (1697). The composition and publication of their narratives was encouraged and approved by Puritan leaders Increase Mather (Rowlandson) and Cotton Mather (Swarton) as effective religious and political propaganda. Examples of appropriation include Cotton Mather's representation of the captivity of Hannah Dustin (1697), a story later revised by both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau; Frederick Manfred's Scarlet Plume (1964), based on Sarah Wakefield's Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees (IS64); and Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose (1972), which draws on and quotes extensively from—but never credits—the memoirs and letters of writer and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote. Analyses of these texts and of sensationalized representations of "Bandit Queen" Belle Starr explore the purposes and results of such influence and appropriation. Women's voices were encouraged when they served approved purposes, such as justifying religious faith and encouraging anti-Indian sentiment, characteristics of most captivity narratives. However, some women's behavior was deemed unacceptable or problematic: Hannah Dustin's killing and scalping of her Indian captors, Sarah Wakefield's outrage at U.S. government Indian policies which triggered the 1862 Dakota Uprising, the unjust execution of her captor/rescuer, and the impugning of her chastity; Belle Starr's unorthodox lifestyle and marriages to outlaws and Indians; and (in Stegner's view) Mary Hallock Foote's alleged snobbishness. Whether they valorized conventional attitudes and beliefs, invoked questions of conscience with regard to recognized authority, or were deliberately provocative and rebellious, these women's attempts at self-representation through words or actions were mediated in various ways by their relationships to male-dominated power 9 INTRODUCTION When one thinks of literary or film representations of the American frontier, the names that come to mind are almost invariably male: James Fenimore Cooper, Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, to name just a few. Persistent prodding produces a few women's names.