Women, Women Writers, and the West ed. by L. L. Lee and Merrill Lewis (1979)

252 Western American Literature Brown wrote his sketch. She comes to life as a beautiful old woman with gnarled hands, heavily wrinkled face, lively brown eyes, lilting Spanish voice talking to the holy figures in the church and scolding them as she dusts and cares for them through the years. She jokes about a saint, “The saints are human like the rest of us, except that they have access to God’s ear and so can intercede for us” (p. 132). Other village people and the many stories and tales that are included show us the intimate, quiet life of Hispanos of Cordova. As Briggs and Weigle state, “This presentation thus closes with a rich perspective on old age, the Church, death, mourning, and life lived fully in the knowledge of death and the hope of life eternal” (p. 38). For the researcher, there is a useful appendix which includes valuable information on the Federal Writers’ Project, plus a bibliography of Brown’s manuscripts and a supplemental compilation of Hispano folklife in New Mexico. As Brown says in his foreword, “Careful nurture with cautious fanning and the addition of dry grass, twigs, or dried bark will soon reward you with a bright blaze, a cheerful and warming flame for your enjoyment” (p. x). LYNN MONCUS, New Mexico State University Women, Women Writers, and the West. Edited by L. L. Lee and Merrill Lewis. (Troy, N. Y.: Whitston, 1979. 252 pages, $15.00.) Women, Women Writers, and the West is by no means a book pro­ claiming the existence of a rugged women’s liberation in the frontier West; rather, it provides a close look at elements of the American West, both past and present, as told by women writers and those who write about women. The book is divided into five sections, each of which approaches the enormous topic delineated by the title from a different perspective. These sections are: “Introduction,” “Women, Writing and the Western Ex­ perience,” “Changing Images of Men and Women,” “The Woman as Writer,” and “Other Voices Other Wests.” The book fittingly opens with a poem by a woman about a woman in the West, and an essay by a woman about the frontier myth. “The Old One and the Wind” by Clarice Short tells of an old woman of the frontier generation who welcomes the wind as a reminder of the relationship be­ tween woman and an untamed nature. Susan Armitage’s “Women’s Litera­ Reviews 253 ture and the American Frontier: A New Perspective on the Frontier Myth” charges that the frontier myth is a “male myth preoccupied with physical bravery, honor, and male friendship,” and she concludes the “women’s literature will illuminate the private, domestic, interior side of the frontier experience which the myth has ignored.” (pp. 9-10) These two opening pieces provide both a theoretical foundation for the major thematic con­ cern in later essays of the book and one modern woman’s poetic response to the frontier woman’s life. Many essays contained in this book, whether about writings by women or about women, present women in conflict with the frontier because of its lack of community and its unfamiliar culture. These essays suggest that women respond to this conflict in one of two broadly defined ways; some rise to the challenge presented by the West, and others are crushed by it. Jeanne McKnight’s “American Dream, Nightmare Underside: Diaries, Let­ ters and Fiction of Women on the American Frontier,” Barbara Quissell’s “Dorothy Scarborough’s Critique of the Frontier Experience in The Wind,” and Sylvia Grider’s “Madness and Personification in Giants in the Earth” explore the inability of some women to adapt to the frontier. Elinor Lenz’s “Homestead Home,” Ann Ronald’s “The Tonopah Ladies,” and Barbara Meldrum’s “Conrad Ritchter’s Southwestern Ladies” are just a few of the essays which discuss women or characterizations of women that become full individuals as a result of the frontier experience. Other essays in the book relate less closely to the concerns of frontier women, but they investigate the technical devices of women writers, both past and present, and the contexts within which they define themselves. Bernice Slote...