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The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860
The Land Before Her Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers 16301860 Author:Annette Kolodny Continuing the study of frontier mythology that she began in The Lay of the Land, Annette Kolodny shows that there was little place for a woman in the myth of the westering male. To discover how women constructed their own mythology to make themselves more at home in the wilderness, Kolodny examines the evidence of three centuries of women's wri... more »ting about the frontier. She finds that although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as a virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated.
Both literary and cultural history, The Land Before Her is the first comprehensive study of women's contribution to the mythology of the American west. It also raises compelling questions about how even contemporary attitudes toward our environment might differ had women's, rather than men's, views of the frontier prevailed.« less