US History Position Paper on 19th century women in great plains

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Iris Smith

AP US B

Position Paper

Did Nineteenth-Century Women of the West Fail to Overcome the Hardships of Living on the Great Plains?

        The nineteenth century saw a massive urbanization but also a large migration westward. With the development of the railroad and new technology many men went westward for new opportunity. Once the US was discovered coast to coast people began to migrate to the Great Plains. At first single men searching for a profit moved. Decades later, they moved with their wives. Women faced new, difficult challenges radically different from the east and many historians argue two opposite views over women; one is that they could not overcome their hardships while the second view is that they could. 

        Professor of history Christine Stansell argues that women of the Great Plains did not overcome their hardships and instead “endured lonely lives and loveless marriages.” She states that the first people on the plains were men and even as women came it was still a man’s world. Women were expected to cook, clean, maintain a household, raise the children and work on the farm without the aid of other women, churches, schools, and all advantages of the east. Looking at personal memoirs, women fled, went mad, and suicide and divorce rates grew. It’s impossible to keep a house made of mud clean. Religion wasn’t present and women barely travelled. Men had horses and machinery and the farm and more reasons to travel. Although women were crucial to the west, they had no machinery, help, or breaks from their work. However, Stansell admits that many of their daughters grew up and could endure these difficult lives but their mothers suffered.

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        Professor of history Glenda Riley believes the opposite and argues that women endured these hardships and created “rich and varied social lives through thee development of strong support lines.” According to her women had to deal with three types of challenges: political, natural, and personal. Water was scarce, fire was a great danger, winters were freezing, summers were burning, insects were killer, and houses offered poor protection. Politically, they had to deal with Bleeding Kansas, men went to war and left their families alone, economic unrest, movement of ex-slaves into the area, and the fight for women’s rights created a ...

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