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Feminism and the Western in Film and Television
Mark E. Wildermuth
Feminism and the

Western in Film and
Television
Mark E. Wildermuth
Department of Literature
and Languages
University of Texas of the Permian
Basin
Odessa, TX, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-77000-0 ISBN 978-3-319-77001-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77001-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936577
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
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on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
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Cover design: Fatima Jamadar
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to my sister Victoria who knew the genre was hers.
Acknowledgements
I must thank the University of Texas and the Dunagan Endowment for
gracious financial support during the writing and the researching of this
book. Special thanks also go to the Interlibrary Loan Staff at UT for
their fine performance in providing materials for researching this study.
I am also grateful to my research assistant Abigail Nau for invaluable
help provided for finishing this book. Thanks go to Amy Smith and the
editorial board of Lamar Journal of the Humanities for allowing me, in
Chapter 6 of this book, to reprint in altered form my article “Feminism
and the Frontier,” which appeared in volume XLI, No. 1, Spring 2016
of their publication. Thanks also to the late Dr. Peter Brunette, Reynolds
Professor of Film at Wake Forest University, whose scholarship and
kind guidance have taught many of us so much about film, media and
the profession. And finally, special thanks go to Dr. Annette Kolodny,
Professor Emerita of American Literature and Culture at the University
of Arizona for helpful advice given during this book’s inception.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: Is the Western an Inherently

Anti-feminist Genre? 1
2 Women Professionals in 1930s’ Film: Westerns

in the Context of the Progressive Age
and the New Deal Gender Politics 17
3 Women and Westerns in the Films of the 1940s 47
4 Women and Western Films in the Cold War 75
5 After the Cold War: From the 1990s’ Interregnum

to 9/11 111
6 Women and Television Westerns, 1954–2001 129
7 Conclusion: Some Reflections on Women, Violence

and Westerns 151
Index 157
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Is the Western an Inherently

Anti-feminist Genre?
Critical studies of Westerns in film and fiction not uncommonly describe

the genre as anti-feminist or even misogynistic in its representation of
men and women of the frontier. John Cawelti in his monumental study
of the genre The Six-Gun Mystique Sequel says that only two types of
women appear in Westerns, the schoolmarm and the dance hall girl (31),
and that the genre rejects “interchangeability of gender” roles because
in order for the genre to “affirm the new values of mobility, competi-
tion, and individualism, the female must remain feminine” (153). “Thus,
despite some surface changes,” Cawelti says, including those seen in
Westerns like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman featuring female main pro-
tagonists, “the Western genre has always had a basically sexist orienta-
tion” (123). In West of Everything, Jane Tompkins argues that from
their inception Westerns were “secular, materialist, and antifeminist”
(32) because they repudiated “the cult of domesticity” (41) emerging
after the Civil War as women moved “out of the home and into pub-
lic life” (42). Thus “the women and the children cowering in the back-
ground […] legitimize the violence men practice in order to protect
them” (41). Likewise, Janet Thumin concludes that with the exception
of a few Westerns such as Westward the Women and The Ballad of Little
Jo, “the western and feminism seem to be contradictory terms” (353).
To make such arguments, however, is to desert a comprehensive
description of the genre, especially in film and television, where excep-
tions like Dr. Quinn, Westward the Women, and The Ballad of Little
Jo exist in far greater numbers than these authors suggest and thus
© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. E. Wildermuth, Feminism and the Western in Film and Television,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77001-7_1
2 M. E. Wildermuth
require some explanation. Some critics, like Jenni Calder and Sandra
Kay Sohakel, have noted that there are Westerns that do present
Western women who are independent and who raise hopes that the
genre can evolve to reflect women’s changing roles in American soci-
ety. Nevertheless, even these writers suggest that masculinism is the
operative norm for Westerns. Calder says, “Occasionally the courage,
determination, independence and incredible capacity for endurance
[of frontier women] is allowed to contribute richly to the Western, but
not as a rule” (158). Indeed, women’s “positive contributions to the
[Western] myth would be a welcome experiment” (173). Likewise,
Sohakel recognizes that independent women do emerge in Westerns but
she maintains, “The male perspective dominates the genre in ways in
which women’s roles are played in accordance with male expectations of
female behavior” (196).
Nevertheless, as Blake Lucas argues, it is unwise to dismiss the impor-
tance of women characters even in more traditional masculinist Westerns.
As Lucas says, the Western is “not a masculine genre but one supremely
balanced in its male/female aspect” (301). The genre does typically dis-
tinguish the two genders: “the man is the restless wanderer and figure of
action, while the woman is physically more passive and can embody the
values of civilization while standing in the doorway of the homestead”
(304). Thus “the woman in the Western can act on its narrative with a
subtle but real forcefulness, helping the hero to his destiny while finding
her own.” Indeed, “in the process [gender] archetypes often intriguingly
merge” in the Western (310–311).
However, this process of blurring traditional gender roles is more
widespread and complex than Lucas can fully attest to in his brief essay.
This blending of gender roles, and even more radical gestures regard-
ing gender in Western films and television, has its roots in the earliest
traditions of women writers in the frontier that predate and help lay a
foundation for the Western on the large and small screen. Annette
Kolodny’s 1984 study The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of
the American Frontiers, 1630–1869, which is briefly alluded to but not
discussed in depth by Tompkins (42), provides insight to the develop-
ing cultural countercurrents in America that would formulate the matrix
for subverting the masculinist paradigm of the classic Western. If the ico-
nography of the frontier in its masculine conception represented a vir-
ginal Eden to be forcibly possessed by dispossessing its native inhabitants
and exploiting its natural resources, for frontier women writers this land
1 INTRODUCTION: IS THE WESTERN AN INHERENTLY ANTI-FEMINIST … 3
was as an Edenic garden to be cultivated and shared by men and women

in harmony with nature. Kolodny traces a “tradition of women’s public
statements” about the frontier in diaries, letters, essays and even fiction,
including the writings of early settlers like Rebecca Boone and philoso-
phers like Margaret Fuller (xi). The women project “an idealized domes-
ticity” where gardens “implied home and community, not privatized
erotic mastery” of a virginal landscape (xiii). This new kind of human
community “invites sharing instead of competition, generosity instead of
greed” (196).1
Interestingly, Kolodny concludes that these women’s fantasies of a
better America “left no lasting imprint on our shared cultural imagina-
tion” (225). Meanwhile, Christine Bold’s more recent 2012 study The
Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 1880–1924 paints
a slightly more complex portrait of the interactions between masculine
and feminine cultures in the genesis of the Western. The Frontier Club
was a group of Eastern aristocrats including such notables as Theodore
Roosevelt, Frederic Remington, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Owen Wister
(author of the first Western, The Virginian) who, linked through the
medium of print, “created the western as we now know it, yoking the
genre to their interests in […] mass publishing, Jim Crow segregation,
immigration restriction, and American Indian segregation” (xvii).
Nevertheless, the club was less successful in excluding women than
other marginalized groups. This was partly because women married to
club members exerted their own influence on the group’s print culture.
These women “claimed and protected imaginative space in the West”
and influenced the rise of “the women-centered western” in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries in print (97) where “family remained
an organizing narrative principle” (104). Still, Bold concludes, much
as Kolodny does, that this legacy is less palpable than the masculinized
Western paradigm. In the end, the Western hero is the individualistic,
competitive male, whose “violence is represented as unavoidable” with
the women ending up “in the male’s arms” (238).
Jane Johnson Bube similarly describes this feminine culture of the
women’s Western as something lost that needs to be reclaimed. She cites
women writers of dime novels at the turn of the century whose stories
“place women’s experiences and women’s characters as agents and main
actors of westerns” (68). These writers “questioned and destabilized
conservative gender ideals” (69). They also criticized the idea of man-
ifest destiny and the “mistreatment of ” other marginalized groups like
4 M. E. Wildermuth
“Indians and Mormons” and “claimed women’s right to […] discover

careers” (82). Nevertheless, Bube also implies that these alternative
Westerns ended by the early twentieth century and left little to no impact
on our popular culture.
It is the contention of the present study, however, that these subver-
sive gestures continued to exert an influence on the Western genre in
film and television, from the inception of the sound era Western in the
1930s to the early twenty-first century. Cawelti, Thumin and Tompkins
underestimate the significance of the impact of women characters in
Westerns that so strongly emphasize the agency of women characters,
that they can indeed be called pro-feminist Westerns. As all of these
critics attest, the polarities of civilization and savagery define the ideol-
ogy, themes and values of protagonists and antagonists in the Western.
Typically, women are identified with civilization to which the frontier
hero, dwelling between these polarities, must be drawn if he is to suc-
ceed as a protagonist. Women often play a role in that process. The typ-
ically dark-haired dance hall girl will be rejected for the lighter-haired
schoolmarm who teaches the frontier hero to balance his violent savage
side with civilized attributes such as compassion and respect for the social
order that must someday prevail if law and order are to be established to
secure the domestic tranquility that the heroine stands for.
Nevertheless, there are counter gestures to this in film and television
that provide alternative ways to establish order. The masculinist Western
accepts the traditional distinction whereby the public realm is masculin-
ized and the domestic or private realm is the site of feminine influence.
The pro-feminist Western rejects this premise, arguing that even in the
world of the Western, women can function as agents in both the private
and public realms. As a result, the more progressive women Western
heroes develop and signify somewhat different sets of values from
their sisters in the traditional Western. Typically, while they sometimes
embody domestic values that women are often identified with in tradi-
tional Westerns—things like love, compassion, respect for the individual
and for the laws needed to secure their rights—they also can embrace
values embodied by the men. Many show reluctance to adopt violence
as a way to establish justice on the lawless frontier, but most will use it
in order to protect human rights and the rights to domestic peace and
security. Some (primarily in televisual Westerns) also believe in harnessing
the forces of nature but only to benefit society as a whole—not solely
for profit. In short, they often seek to extend the values of the domestic
realm to the public realm to ensure that the potential for exploiting the
land and its people will not be pursued. Violence is justified only when
it unswervingly serves benevolent ends. And, increasingly, as we move
from the 1930s to the post war era, women protagonists show a capac-
ity not only for the self-sacrifice associated with the traditional Western
heroine but also for self-gratification and professional self-fulfillment
more often associated with the masculine protagonists. The quest of the
Western pro-feminist protagonist is not only one for justice and domestic
tranquility but one for public agency and subjecthood in a masculinized
landscape which seeks to deny women these things.
It should be noted, however, that not all of these pro-feminist women
protagonists associate themselves with the domestic. Visual pro-feminist
Westerns, as we will see in later chapters, evolve in three major stages
where the focus shifts over time from the domestic to the public realm.
(The televisual Western is an exception, for reasons we will explore in
depth in the chapter on TV Westerns.) In stage one, films of the 1930s
borrow from first-wave feminism of the Progressive era (late nineteenth
century to the 1920s) wherein women progressives sought to undermine
the aggressive individualistic capitalism and exploitation of marginalized
groups by bringing domestic values focusing on egalitarian cooperation
into the public realm—thereby also enabling women to be empowered in
public. In stage two, films of the 1940s maintain the earlier stance, but in
the context of so many women entering the public workforce during the
war, begin to focus on women’s individualism and need for satisfaction in
work, while also more explicitly exploring their sexuality. In stage three,
films of the post-war era and beyond, while some women protagonists still
associate themselves with domesticity even as they find agency in public,
others complete eschew their domestic identities and find agency in public
much as male protagonists, under the influence of second-wave feminism.
Interestingly, because so many of the women protagonists are white,
third-wave feminism, with its emphasis on race and gender themes, does
not represent a major influence on these Westerns. Indeed, none of the
later forms of feminism have much impact on these Westerns—mainly
because the majority of them were made before these philosophies
became a major influence in American culture. Strangely, the white fem-
inist norm in Westerns survives into the twenty-first century. Even a film
like Bandidas (2006), where the women protagonists are Hispanic, does
not take full advantage of the potential for establishing a non-white fem-
inist norm. Perhaps this has to do with the film industry’s perceptions
6 M. E. Wildermuth
of the genre’s demography. Either way, first- and second-wave feminism

remain the primary influences on these Westerns. This, of course, limits
these films to heteronormative paradigms, which, unfortunately, prevents
women protagonists in Westerns from exploring the most radical means
available for subverting masculinism.
How then are we defining the pro-feminist visual Western as a fem-
inist cultural artifact in this study? We define it as any cinematic or tel-
evisual Western that, through the actions of its plot and characters,
represents and implicitly endorses the most progressive conceptualiza-
tions of the feminine subject empowered politically and socially as an
agent in the current cultural milieu that produced that Western. These
progressive conceptualizations will sometimes be only implied by the
political and social activities of the time, while at other times they will be
more fully and explicitly articulated by feminist thinkers in public media.
On some occasions, the progressivism of earlier times may not conform
with or seem to meet the standards of feminism in the post New Left
culture of today. Nevertheless, the intention here is to trace the develop-
ment of the feminist thinking in these films as it evolved from the 1930s
to the present. The result will be a history of these increasingly progres-
sive representations of women in Westerns, which will enable us to see
how far the genre has evolved with regard to subverting the conventions
of the genre in film and television.
The definition of feminism implicit in all of these Westerns, regard-
less of their respective times and cultural contexts, is the empowerment
of women socially, economically and psychologically in the public realm
by all the means available in the culture of the time. As we will see, the
means made available in the respective cultures of these Westerns will
often pose challenges for representing feminine empowerment in these
films, but the progressive drive for agency in the public realm for women
is discernible and very much opposed to the masculinist norms of the
genre. Hence, these films do indeed embody a feminist ethos, albeit one
that continues to evolve under various cultural influences, which we will
describe in depth in the ensuing chapters.
Methodology
The intention of this study, therefore, is to avoid any presentist bias in
describing and analyzing the evolution of feminist ideology in Western
films and television. This will also enhance the book’s capacity for
implementing a rhetoric of inclusion to enable readers with many takes

on feminist philosophy to appreciate and make use of this study. The
method reflects a post-Althusserian emphasis on the impact of ideology
on the material, political and cultural aspects of human life. Although
this book does not implement the kind of purely Marxist/Structuralist
analysis that Louis Althusser practiced, it nevertheless shares a similar
focus with his work that can allow this study to describe the material
impact of something as seemingly immaterial as ideology and informa-
tion on the lives of men and women in America.
Louis Althusser’s most famous piece on ideology entitled “Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatus” indicated that ideological state appara-
tus (ISA) such as television, radio, the press, literature and the arts, plus
institutions like the church and schools, reflected the “ideology of the
ruling class” (1343). ISAs not only defined for the culture what was eth-
ical or unethical behavior (1353–1354), but they also defined “‘truth’ or
‘error’” in cultural products like the literature human subjects imbibed
(1356). The state thereby defined the individual subject with this ide-
ology that “‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects” conforming to
the values of the state (1356). Additionally, this defines the gendered
roles of “the sexual subject” (1357). Hence ideology defines the rela-
tionship of the human subject to the state, and so the ISAs lead to “the
reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of
exploitation” of individuals by the state (1346). Althusser nevertheless
concluded that the masses can resist if they “turn the weapon of ideology
against the classes in power” (1343, n. 3).
The Westerns here show this potential for subverting norms and
presenting representations of women that theoretically have a posi-
tive impact on the culture and the individuals living in it. In order to
demonstrate this, the focus of the study is on women professionals in
Westerns. The term professional can have many meanings in our culture
today—with the general assumption being that a professional is someone
who requires some kind of education or specialized training in order to
assume some kind of public role to be performed for the benefit of the
society and the individual who performs that role. In short, laborers are
not typically included in this description.
One must use a somewhat more flexible definition of profession-
alism in the context of the Western, however. Here the term profes-
sional means someone who in the process of performing her work and
her main social function moves from the private domestic realm to the
8 M. E. Wildermuth
public realm. It does not include pioneer women who work in the home.
It does include every other kind of public profession for women exhib-
ited in the genre—and this includes everything from mule skinners to
gun slingers, and from doctors to bar maids. This is necessary to trace
the pro-feminist Western’s rejection of the public and private gendered
paradigms—something that is quite discernible in the evolution of
these Westerns. The intention here is not to inadvertently support the
gendered public/private paradigm by suggesting unintentionally that
women’s public work is somehow more important than their private
duties—far from it. But in order to see and trace how Western feminist
protagonists evolve greater agency and independence, it is necessary
to focus on these polarities of public and private that indicate how the
evolution takes place. In short, women professionals in Westerns repre-
sent a handy kind of barometer for reading cultural and social progress
for women as reflected in Westerns. This means that interesting female
protagonists in films like High Noon, True Grit and others must be over-
looked so that protagonists who better fit the profile can be discussed in
depth.
The focus here will also be on Westerns set in the nineteenth century
or at the turn of the century rather than on those set in the twentieth
century. This makes the task of stabilizing genre boundaries simpler and
avoids the confusion that can come with modern Westerns that often
seem as much like murder mysteries, action films or crime dramas as they
do Westerns. This avoids the problem of site contamination from other
genres that might distort or falsify a truer barometric reading of the fem-
inist Western and its evolution. This unfortunately means overlooking
interesting modern Westerns like Coogan’s Bluff, Wynonna Earp, and
The Electric Horseman, but the line must be drawn somewhere.
The historicity of feminism in this study is based on a sampling of
feminist historians’ writings that enable a re-telling of significant devel-
opments in American culture that supported a feminist mindset from
the 1890s to the present. Beginning in the Progressive era, covering the
period of approximately the last decade of the nineteenth century and
the first two decades of the twentieth century, we see the rise of many
progressive ideas on women during the age of reform in America. It was
a time full of paradoxes that would complicate the history of w omen’s
Westerns and the feminism they incorporated within them from the
1930s to the present. This is because, as we shall see below, the progres-
sive movements identified with the rise of first-wave American feminism
are also rooted in certain assumptions about women’s nature that was
widespread in the nineteenth century. These assumptions indicated that
women were naturally constituted to have more refined feelings than
men and were therefore more sympathetic than men and more inclined
to help those who had been victimized by society. Such assumptions
helped women become involved in the American political scene at a time
when the rise of industrial giants had raised issues about the rights of
workers who appeared in many ways to be exploited by the new capitalist
venture. Women were seen as being immanently suited to this kind of
work, just as they were seen as being more suited to working as nurses
and aids for the homeless and other unfortunates in society. Indeed,
women active in politics at the time, and many feminist separatists felt it
was the job of women to extend the domestic values of love and sympa-
thy to the public realm to protect the rights of people who were seen as
being exploited in this culture of competition and profit. Nevertheless,
this was seen as problematic because it meant that women moving into
the public realm of professionalism could only do so if they were doing
this as a matter of self-sacrifice rather than personal and professional
gratification. Hence implicit in the liberating gestures of the time were
assumptions about women that women professionals would also have
to fight in order to secure subjecthood in the professional realm, which
was dominated by men who could assume that personal and professional
gratification were, for all intents and purposes, God-given rights for
men only. Still, the insistence that men could adopt domestic values in
the public realm seemed to imply that essentialist assumptions about
women’s inherent sensitivity were incorrect—an idea that will also be
implicitly reflected in early sound age Westerns.
As we will see, this struggle for women’s rights in the public realm
intensified for women in the 1930s when the global depression and the
American culture of the New Deal suggested that the American male,
wounded as he had been by the trauma of an unpopular World War I and
by the scarcity of work in America, needed to be protected from the fem-
inism of Progressive era America. The job shortage led many to conclude
that it was wrong for women to compete with men as professionals, and
as a result the gendered paradigm of private and public reasserted itself.
If the Progressive era had promoted an egalitarian companionship ori-
ented ideal for relationships between men and women, then the New
Deal promoted one based on what we will describe below as the com-
rade ideal. In the former, men and women pursue relationships where
10 M. E. Wildermuth
both seek companionship based on intellectual and sexual compatibility,

as well as social equality. In the latter paradigm, no matter how much
responsibility the woman may take in the public and private realms, she
remains subordinate to her mate. This further complicates the problem
of women professionals and whether they can seek personal gratification
in the public realm—an issue we will see reflected in the many cinematic
Westerns.
Implicit answers and later explicit discussion of these issues came
in the years of World War II and the years following. Despite initial
attempts to maintain the New Deal anti-feminist paradigm, the war
implicitly changed everything. We see here the rise of an American secu-
rity state organized to direct the nation’s resources toward defending
America from both external and internal security threats, including pos-
sibly feminism. Nevertheless, the need for women to join the labor force
and the need for women in uniform during a time of industrial age war-
fare, where the efforts of everyone must be enlisted to secure victory,
enabled women to move decisively into the public realm as profession-
als. And interestingly, just after the war ended, women continued to play
these roles, partly because of the positive economic impact on their lives,
but also perhaps implicitly because the culture was beginning to accept
the idea that self-gratification for women in the professional realm was as
acceptable for women as the older idea of self-sacrifice. This change was
reflected in Westerns of the time, discussed below.
With the coming of the Cold War, a new security state sought to sta-
bilize gender boundaries according to the old pre-Progressive ideas on
gender with the rise of a new suburban middle class culture where the
woman was once again expected to be restricted to the private realm.
But increasing numbers of women seeking college degrees and employ-
ment seemed to undercut the thrust of this new security state culture.
Moreover, articulations of a new second-wave American feminism appear
in the Old Left philosophies of writers like Betty Friedan and the New
Left feminism that establishes power bases for itself in women’s political
organizations and in American academia. With the rise of the counter
culture and in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights move-
ment, American feminism established its ability to question and coun-
ter the gendered hierarchies re-emerging in the American security state.
In the 1980s came the first backlash against this feminism with the rise
of the New Right. This was followed by the interregnum of the 1990s
in which the security state lost some of its strength, and experimentation
with ideas on gender was renewed. This was followed by yet another
backlash against feminism detected by feminists with the rise of a secu-
rity regime after 9/11. Nevertheless, feminism used these backlashes
as a means to refine its ideas in a cultural milieu whose postmodernity
allowed it to adopt many new epistemologies in order to consider
women’s new place in the public realm.
The progressive feminist Westerns studied below reflect this his-
tory and incorporate contemporary features of feminism into their cul-
tural rhetoric. Chapter 2 describes early sound-era feminist Westerns
in the milieu of the depression. In Westerns like Cimarron, Annie
Oakley, The Plainsman, Union Pacific, and Destry Rides Again, we see
implicit critiques of the comradely ideal and support for the more pro-
gressive companionly ideal. We also see women protagonists struggling
with the complex issue of self-gratification and self-sacrifice in the pro-
fessional realm. With Chapter 3 in the 1940s, we see these issues con-
tinuing to create problems for woman protagonists in films such as The
Great Man’s Wife, The Sea of Grass, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful
Bend, and Calamity Jane and Sam Bass. Women become increasingly
independent subjects in the context of the war, and the questions of
self-sacrifice and gratification for women professionals move toward a
resolution. Chapter 4 studies women’s progressive Westerns in the post-
war era looking at films from the Cold War that include Westward the
Women, Johnny Guitar and Hannie Caulder to name a few. Here we see
the move towards embracing self-gratification and total independence in
the public realm. Chapter 5 describes an increasingly radical postmodern
feminist stance in films after the Cold War in films such as Bad Girls,
The Ballad of Little Jo, and The Quick and the Dead (among others). The
book concludes with a discussion of women’s Westerns on television
from the 1950s to the twenty-first century. Here we will see that, unlike
the feminist Westerns preceding them in motion pictures, televisual
Westerns seek to incorporate the ideal described above by Kolodny of the
West as an egalitarian garden where not only are men and women equals
but so too are all races and the denizens of the natural world in general.
Cinematic Westerns do not always function in this capacity; racist stere-
otypes sometimes appear in depictions of African Americans and Native
Americans in these films. For reasons described in depth in Chapter 5,
the televisual women’s Western is truly a horse of a very different dis-
position, one that often leads it in some ways to be the most progres-
sive of the breed, one which in varying degrees anticipates or embodies
12 M. E. Wildermuth
post-colonial conceptions of manifest destiny in the Old West. All of

these Westerns show that feminist ideology can be productively incor-
porated into the Western film genre in such a fashion as to suggest that
there is indeed a great alternative to the masculinist vision of the West as
a site only for individualistic competition and aggression. The West can
also be a site for cooperation, unity and diversity where men and women
share responsibilities in the public and private realms.
Before we proceed with this study, however, more needs to be said
about domesticity as it is such an important concept for many of the
Westerns in this study. It should be pointed out that some postmod-
ern and post-colonial feminists like Laura Wexler and Amy Kaplan have
noted that the domestic scene can be a site for oppression and imperi-
alistic rhetoric in the writings and photography even of women in nine-
teenth century America. Kaplan says that the domestic is “related to the
imperialist project of civilizing” (25), and Wexler sees similar tendencies
in women’s nineteenth-century domestic photography (6). Nevertheless,
Wexler also sees signs of “serious social protest” in some of that domes-
tic photography (8). Moreover, says Wexler, even if some photographers
missed the opportunity to undermine the imperialist culture of their
times, they nevertheless sometimes managed to undermine assump-
tions about gendered hierarchies, as in the case of photographer Alice
Austin (12). Hence the domestic realm was a complex site offering
opportunities for subversion as well as support for the status quo just as
the Progressive era that inspired so many of the films in this study was
dawning.
Indeed, domesticity and its relationship to feminism are more com-
plex subjects than even the scholarship of Kaplan and Wexler indicate.
Domesticity is still a significant trope for feminism even in the twenty-
first century, as some feminist writers have shown. In their introduc-
tion to a collection of essays on this subject, Domesticity and Popular
Culture (Routledge, 2009), editors Stacy Gillis and Joanne Hollows
indicate that domesticity and the values associated with it still shapes
feminism. Although second-wave feminism promulgated the idea that
“domestic life is contrary to the aims of feminism” (1), domesticity
can be productively constructed “as compatible with feminism rather
than its antithesis” (4–5). Hence even the domestic feminism of a nine-
teenth-century feminist like Catherine Beecher espousing the moral
superiority of women who seek to take domestic values into the pub-
lic realm can be seen as compatible with modern feminism, despite her
essentialist assumptions about women and morality (4). Indeed, Gillis

and Hollows cite the theories of feminists like Leslay Johnson and
Justine Lloyd who in 2004 argued that “feminism has the responsibil-
ity to reassert the importance of these [domestic] values in the public
world in a way that challenges the [gendered] separation of home and
work life and the relegation of humane values to the home”(9). Gillis
and Hollows also cite Iris Marion Young as a feminist who in 1997
argued that “feminists need to revisit the politics of home and explore
how home might be reimagined in ways that are consistent with feminist
agenda” (16).
Likewise, in her 2016 study Extreme Domesticity, Susan Fraiman
takes issue with the notion that domesticity should be seen as “shor-
ing up capitalism, colonialism, and other structures of domination” (4).
While it can be associated with those things, domesticity can also pro-
mote “jarring juxtapositions coinciding with female masculinity, fem
inism, queerness, and divorce,” thereby inculcating “gender rebels”
who can “represent the deviant flip side of the domestic ideal” by being
“outsiders to normative domesticity” (4–5). She questions the “tendency
in American studies to demonize the domestic” (6). She looks back
to the nineteenth-century “‘bad girl’ tradition [where] domesticity
is reconfigured as a language of female self-sufficiency, ambition, and
pleasure” (22).
This process of reconfiguration continues to this day. In her 2010
feminist treatise Radical Homemakers, Shannon Hayes argues the new
domestic feminist’s “life’s work is to create a new, pleasurable, sustaina-
ble and socially just society, different from any that we have known in the
last 5,000 years” (17). The goal is to rebuild “a life-serving, socially just
and ecologically sustainable economy while honoring the values of fem-
inism” (18–19). And this is a goal that can be shared by the professional
in the public realm who does not necessarily invest solely in the domestic
environment for “not all careers are soul sucking ventures” (31). “The
balancing act with a good career is to achieve personal fulfillment, to
contribute to society, but also to honor the four tenets of ecological sus-
tainability, social justice, family and community” (32).
Haynes’ words and the words of other domestic radicals quoted
briefly above recall the kind of imagined garden of equality and ecolog-
ical stability described in Kolodny’s study of frontier women’s writings
before 1900. And they reflect similar ideas and temperaments informing
the Westerns we are about to discuss below. While these films initially
14 M. E. Wildermuth
ignore issues about colonialism and environment, they eventually turn

to them after World War II. From their inception, all of these Westerns
will focus on feminine empowerment in the public realm. Some will see
domestic values as keys to that empowerment, some later will not. But
all of them show some compatibility with today’s feminism to the extent
that in a number of ways they shed the essentialist tendencies of earlier
forms of first-wave feminism and the cult of womanhood. Firstly, those
films that do argue for the superiority of domestic values will insist that
both men and women can share in these values and build a better society
from them. Hence there is no essentialist assumption that women alone
can embody these values. Second, all of these films will transcend essen-
tialism to the degree that all insist that women can be the equals of men
in terms of rationality, courage and mastery of empowering technologies
that include everything from the spade, to the stethoscope, to the six-
gun. Finally, because the most progressive of the women protagonists
will also achieve empowerment in the public realm, they also subvert the
gendering of the public and the private realms that lay at the essentialist
core of the cult of womanhood that these women protagonists clearly
transcend. Hence all of these Westerns will show that in varying degrees
and in varying ways, the genre is indeed capable of embracing feminist
attitudes emerging in the cultures of their respective times.
And now, let us begin.
Note
1. Interestingly, Kolodny has never retracted her argument that women in the
frontier were less complicit in supporting manifest destiny or the imperial-
ist enterprise than their masculine counterparts. In an e-mail to this author
dated August 10, 2017, she indicates that she “never wavered or retracted
anything I wrote in the book,” The Land Before Her.
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York:
W. M. Norton, 2010. 1341–1361. Print.
The Ballad of Little Jo. Dir. Maggie Greenwald. Fine Line Features, 1995. New
Line Home Video, 2003. DVD.
Calder, Jenni. There Must Be a Lone Ranger: The American West in Film and
Reality. New York: The McGraw-Hill Company, 1974. Print.
Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique Sequel. Bowling Green: Bowling Green
State University Popular Press, 1999. Print.
Coogan’s Bluff. Dir. Don Siegel. Universal Pictures, 1968. Film.
The Electric Horseman. Dir. Sydney Pollack. Columbia/Universal, 1979. Film.
Fraimen, Susan. Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016. Print.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. M. Norton, 2009. Print.
Hayes, Shannon. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer
Culture. Richmondville, NY: Left to Right Press, 2010.
High Noon. Dir. Fred Zinneman. Perf. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelley. United
Artists, 1952. Film.
Hillis, Stacy and Joanne Hollows, Eds. Domesticity and Popular Culture. New
York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Print.
Kolodny, Annette. E-mail to the Author. 10 August. 2017. E-mail.
Kolodny, Annette. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American
Frontiers, 1630–1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1984. Print.
“Pilot.” Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Perf. Jane Seymour. A&E/CBS, 2013.
DVD.
Sohakel, Sandra Kay. “Women in Western Films: The Civilizer, the Saloon
Singer, and Their Mothers and Sisters.” Shooting Stars: Heroes and Heroines
of Western Films. Ed. Archie P. MacDonald. Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1987. 157–215. Print.
Thumin, Janet. “‘Maybe He’s Tough but He Sure Ain’t No Carpenter’:
Masculinity and Incompetence in Unforgiven.” The Western Reader. Ed. Jim
Kitses and Gregg Rickmann. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998. 301–320.
Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992. Print.
True Grit. Dir. Henry Hathaway. Perf. John Wayne and Kim Darby. Paramount,
1969. Film.
Westward the Women. Dir. William A. Wellman. MGM Studios, 1951. Warner
Archive, 2012. DVD.
Wexler, Laura. Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Print.
Wynonna Earp. The Sci-Fi Channel, 2016. Television.
CHAPTER 2
Women Professionals in 1930s’ Film:

Westerns in the Context of the Progressive
Age and the New Deal Gender Politics
The sound era is an appropriate place to begin our survey of women

professionals in Westerns since silent Westerns seldom focus intently
on relationships between men and women. Sound opens up new possi-
bilities for exploring relationships between the sexes via dialogue. The
1930s are also of interest since there was an interesting tradition in the
latter nineteenth century and early twentieth century of feminism and
woman’s professionalism in America that came into question during the
Depression era as men and women began to vie for jobs as the economy
declined. The result was a New Deal paradigm, which simultaneously
evoked the progressive models of the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies that gave rise to first-wave feminism; it also sometimes sought to
contain those models in order to promote the heroic ideal of the mascu-
line worker.
Robyn Muncy’s 1991 study Creating Female Dominion in American
Reform, 1890–1935 is especially helpful for understanding the cultural
paradigm of the Progressive era, which helped shape perceptions of
women and professionalism before and during the Depression era. She
refers to the first two decades of the twentieth century as the Progressive
era “because they constituted a period of vital response to the social and
economic changes wrought by industrialization in the previous half-
century” (29). Hence the Gilded Age Women’s Christian’s Union and
similar female-oriented reform organizations of the nineteenth century
were an antecedent to the Progressive era (28). However, if the Gilded
age reformers emphasized democratic interaction versus “laissez-faire
© The Author(s) 2018 17

M. E. Wildermuth, Feminism and the Western in Film and Television,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77001-7_2
18 M. E. Wildermuth
individualism,” the Progressives focused on “efficiency” in creating

bureaucracies and consensus to “rationalize and systematize American
life.” In the end, “both sets of ideals—democracy and efficiency—joined
to produce Progressive reform” (29).
Interestingly, the inherent conflict between individualism and cooper-
ation would prove to be part of the difficulty involved in conceptualizing
the potentially liberating ideal of the woman professional. This is because
while the idea of a woman professional emerged in this time, even as
women fought to attain voting rights, it was nevertheless made problem-
atic by certain pervasive cultural stereotypes that simultaneously provided
opportunities for women to move into the public sphere as free agents
but also hampered their progress by virtue of how they characterized
the supposedly natural characteristics of women. As Muncy indicates,
“Prescriptions for female behavior directly contradicted the solidifying
requirements of professional conduct: lingering nineteenth-century ide-
als urged women toward passivity, humility and self-sacrifice while pro-
fessionalism demanded activity, confidence and self-assertion” (xiii). The
cult of womanhood of the time “proclaimed women the natural harbors
of spiritual and moral values in the acquisitive seas of Jacksonian America
and further apotheosized women as that half of the human race moti-
vated only by concern for others.” Woman served “best through child
rearing, charitable activities, and nursing the wounds sustained by indi-
vidual men and communities in battles for political and economic advan-
tage” (3). Women in short were the private balm for the rampant, violent
individualism in the public realm.
Women were therefore excluded from professions like law and rele-
gated to professions such as nursing. Nevertheless, Muncy says there was
a middle ground between these two extremes in professions like social
work, public health and home economics that “produced uniquely
female ways of being professional” (xiv). These women could then “use
their power and patronage to socialize subsequent generations of women
into a common reform culture” (xiv). This made possible, especially
after acquisition of the vote, women eventually moving into the reform-
oriented apparatus of the government, such as the child welfare move-
ment, all the way into the 1930s.
Yet despite this evolution politically and socially, there were still con-
flicts for women professionals in the culture during the early twentieth
century. For “women, service continued to imply self-abnegation” (22).
Looking at women doctors, for example in reformist institutions like
2 WOMEN PROFESSIONALS IN 1930s’ FILM … 19
Chicago’s Hull House in the early twentieth century, Muncy says that
those who prioritized “private practice” over “serving the needy” were
criticized as being self-serving—charges that their masculine colleagues
never had to face (22–23). Thus, success only was awarded to those
women professionals who “subscribed to the ideal of service” (26).
Nevertheless, women going into social work and health professions,
even in these conditions, were challenging the cultural perception that
the public realm belonged to men and the private domestic sphere was
solely the provenance of women. Women from the late nineteenth cen-
tury through the early twentieth century were convinced that the cul-
ture of exploitation created by industrialization must be combated in the
public realm. “‘Women’s place is in the Home,’ proclaimed one female
reformer, but Home is not contained within the four walls of an indi-
vidual house. Home is the community” (Muncy 36). Hence Muncy says
that women moving into government “maintained commitments […]
to public service […] to the […] integration of their public and private
lives” (65). From the 1890s into the 1920s, these women “were gaining
the strength of numbers and perspective needed to move these strategies
from the local to the national level” (37). In short, if the major thrust of
first-wave feminism was attaining voting rights and the right to obtain
public positions as professionals, the transportation of domestic values
into the public sphere represented, for women of this time, the ethical
underpinnings for challenging society’s new post-industrial masculine
and sexist mores.
Writing in the introduction of Gender, Class, Race and Reform in
the Progressive Era (1991), Nancy S. Dye confirms these conclusions
and sheds further light on the evolution of female professionals at this
time. While at the beginning of the era women focused on local issues,
as time went on they entered politics “at the municipal and state levels”
(2). And “In doing so, they envisioned a new, humane state, identified
with the values of the home rather than those of the market place with
powers to protect its powerless and dependent constituencies” (27).
Women had to subvert the gendered paradigm where the public was
masculine and the private was feminine because their “domestic duties
compelled their interest in municipal politics” (4). This was happening
because “with industrialization […], women exchanged the role of pro-
ducer for the less powerful role of consumer” (3–4). Unfortunately, “By
failing to challenge prevailing stereotypes, women reformers helped cod-
ify a limited public domain for women, particularly in the work place”
20 M. E. Wildermuth
(5). Women were still believed to be best suited to jobs entailing nurs-
ing and self-sacrifice. Hence, they remained barred “from the traditions
of American individualism” (5). It was as if the price women reformers
paid for fighting the rampant individualism of the corporations and rob-
ber barons was to have their own individual needs abnegated and their
own subjecthood and agency as professionals denied. Denial of self was
permissible but self-satisfaction and self-empowerment—anything even
vaguely like a masculine ego—were not.
For all that, the progress made here regarding women’s roles did,
as Dye argues, have a positive impact for feminism in America. Even
though they lacked a larger feminist theoretical perspective to work from,
Dye contends that these reformers “served to define early twentieth-
century feminism.” This is because while the earliest Progressive era
reformers born in the 1850s and 1860s focused on cultural ideals of
maternity, those born in the 1870s and 1880s “centered their under-
standing of women on the emerging roles of female workers.” For these
reformers, “Paid labor, not social mothering, represented the route to
emancipation, as well as the organizational basis for their reform efforts”
as made evident on their growing focus on women’s labor and trade
organizations (8).
Briefly then, we can sum up the import of women reformers in the
Progressive era for the changing image of the woman professional in
the context of an emerging first-wave feminist sensibility at this time.
While the culture still insisted that women were fit only for duties in the
domestic realm, owing to women’s supposed sensitivity to the needs of
the family, this philosophy ultimately served to empower them, unwit-
tingly, in the face of a rising and expanding industrialism in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If industrialists empowered
themselves through uncontrolled competition, individualism and com-
petition, then women would be seen as the antidote to the more crim-
inal and inhumane excesses of this culture due to their being supposed
to be the moral and spiritual centers of the culture via their sensitiv-
ity to human plight. Hence they were compelled to extend the values
of the domestic realm to the public realm—and therefore despite the
sexist assumptions underlying this very movement, women managed
both philosophically and through their actions, to subvert the gendered
public/private paradigm that sought to oppress them. In the process of
doing so, they became workers in the public domain and would seek
political power to secure their capacity for employment. And, as noted
throughout Dye’s and Muncy’s analyses, concomitant results were also

educational opportunities for women, advancement into men’s profes-
sions like medicine and, of course, eventually, the right to vote. Hence,
if one were to jump ahead to the first generation of American feminists
following Betty Friedan’s early second-wave definition of feminism,
these women, despite their lack of a shared, fully articulated philosoph-
ical paradigm for questioning cultural stereotypes, nevertheless man-
aged to meet Friedan’s 1962 criteria of feminism—namely a movement
toward securing equal opportunities for women and men in politics,
education and professionalism. Certainly the groundwork for a Friedan-
style emancipation was being laid here—so the woman professionals of
the Progressive era could rightly be characterized as an early embodi-
ment of values that formed the very foundation of American feminism.
By moving domestic values into the public realm and insisting men
adopt them, they also laid the groundwork for challenging the essen-
tialist assumption that compassion and sensitivity belonged solely in the
domain of the feminine. In short, while their efforts today may appear
to be only an attempt to feminize American culture, these women
were nevertheless the first American feminists because they sought
public agency for women through education, and legal and social
empowerment.
However, as our next group of feminist historians shows, this progress
would be challenged during the New Deal era. As Laura Hapke argues in
Daughters of the Great Depression (1995), there was a tremendous nega-
tive reaction to the gains feminism had made in the Progressive era due
to the fear that men and women would compete with one another for
the same jobs. Hence, “working women, especially married ones, became
the scapegoats of a movement to reassert the separate sphere thinking
of past decades.” Indeed, nondomestic work was seen as “unwomanly
and potentially emasculating” to men (xv). Even as the woman’s labor
force and union activity grew, “the working woman was discouraged
from feminist agitation—or executive board leadership—by both male
party and union officials” (xvi). Moreover, all women were “denied
equal pay for equal work under the provisions of the National Recovery
Administration (NRA) code; if married, they were strictly forbidden
from government and other employment as a section of the Federal
Economy Act; and similarly were restricted by the agenda of mainstream
periodical articles with titles such as ‘Do You Need Your Job?’” Thus
emerged “the back-to-the home-movement” (xvii).
22 M. E. Wildermuth
Interestingly, Hapke sees forms of rebellion against this culture in

the fiction written at his time—and this includes radical fiction and even
the popular fiction of writers like Margaret Mitchell. Women writers like
Olsen and Smedley “revise the proletarian family by challenging the era’s
orthodoxies about housework and women’s work alike.” Indeed, their
fiction explores women’s “new roles as self-supporting or family bread
winner” even as other writers succumbed to the “misogynistic laboring
(or writing) environment of the 1930’s” (xx). Women, in short “longed
for a feminine new deal” (8) as they watched their proportion in the
work force decline “by the end of the depression to a level hardly higher
than it had been twenty years earlier” (8).
Hapke’s comments are especially interesting in the context of Barbara
Melosh’s study Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in
New Deal Public Art and Theater (1991), which focuses on New Deal
era representations of men and women in the visual arts and drama.
Melosh confirms the repressive nature of the period for women and fem-
inist thinking: “The New Deal stands as the single example of a liberal
American reform movement not accompanied by a resurgence of femi-
nism. Instead, the strains of economic depression reinforced the contain-
ments of feminism that had begun after the winning of suffrage. As men
lost their jobs, women became the targets of public hostility and restric-
tive policy.” Indeed, the youth culture that had sanctioned the postwar
version of the New Woman “seemed to disappear overnight” (1).
According to Melosh, during the Progressive era, “new ideas about
sexuality found their way from psychoanalytic theory to more popu-
lar forms. Advice literature attacked Victorian sexual morality and sup-
ported a more positive view of female sexuality.” Hence cultural ideals
of marriage shifted from nineteenth-century notions of duty to aspira-
tions for friendship, mutuality, and sexual expression. “Hence emerged
the ideology of the ‘companionate marriage,’ which even entertained the
idea of trial marriage to test the viability of marriages based on friend-
ship and sexual desire.” Nevertheless, in the 1930s the ‘comradely ideal’
emerged, a revision of the companionate marriage, “one that deempha-
sized its privatism and instead made marriage a trope for citizenship.”
The comradely marriage “offered some accommodations to feminist
aspirations and bolstered an image of manhood battered by a discredited
war [WWI] and a demoralizing economic depression” (4).
The result is that as the iconography shifted from the Progressive era’s
companionate marriage to the comradely ideal, woman were demoted to
second class citizen status in public art and in drama such as that pro-
moted by the Federal Theater Project. While we see “sturdy proletarian
women of the 1930s’ fiction, photography and visual art” the images
were also “instantly maternal and familial” (3). Even though women
were “promoted to partners of the manly workers […] overall, women
occupied a somewhat subordinate place in the characteristic imagery of
art and stage, outnumbered by their male counterparts and overshad-
owed by the heroic imagery of manhood” (236). Even as character types
such as the rebellious young girl and the pacifistic mother emerged in
the iconography of the time, these images of women too were demoted
to “supporting players in male narratives of work and politics” (232).
In light of the crisis of masculinity evoked by the horrors of WWI and
the Depression, “the public art and drama registered the rechanneling
of female activism and weakness of feminist politics during the New
Deal” (231).
The cinematic Westerns of this time, however, proved to be even
more complex in their representations of the female professional. Like
the public art and drama Melosh describes, they will sometimes reflect
the comradely ideal that simultaneously evokes the feminism of the
Progressive era even as women were subordinated to the professional
men in their lives. But other films, similar to the works of fiction Hapke
describes, will question the reigning paradigm and more strongly evoke
the gender paradigms of the Progressive era. Indeed, some of these
Westerns will go so far as to suggest that women professionals can inte-
grate the public and private realms in such a fashion as to extend the
values of the domestic realm to the public realm. Moreover, these rep-
resentations of women will sometimes at least suggest that women can
enjoy satisfaction for themselves as individuals without succumbing
completely to the cultural norms of both the Progressive era and the
Depression that suggest women professionals can engage only in pro-
fessional activity involving total self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. And
even in those films where the comradely ideal is supported, we will see
that there are signs that this paradigm was under great stress as the com-
panionate ideal and its attendant feminist assumptions about the nature
of work and relationships seem to show the inherently problematic and
unstable nature of the reigning gendered hierarchical paradigm of the
New Deal. In short, these Westerns will show that at least in the pub-
lic imagination, hopes still existed for a feminine Progressive style New
Deal even as the social, legal and political circumstances worked to deny
24 M. E. Wildermuth
women their place in the world of the professional. They support the
first-wave feminist thrust for women’s public empowerment even as they
retain the Progressive Era’s emphasis on bringing the domestic values
into the public realm to curb excessive competition while not denying
women’s need to find agency as independent individuals in the public
realm. While they may seem to argue only for a feminizing of American
culture, the most progressive of these films will qualify as feminist ges-
tures to the extent that they support public agency of women subjects
even as they also maintain the original Progressive idea that the values
of the domestic realm are often ethically superior to those of masculinist
competition and excessive individualism.
Cimarron (1931)
Hapke indicates that Edna Ferber was a supporter of upward mobility for
working women (11, 230), but initially there seems little sign of such an
attitude in the 1931 RKO adaptation of her novel Cimarron. The film
depicts the lives of Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) and Sabra Cravat (Irene
Dunne) who seek to start a home life in Osage after the Oklahoma land
rush of 1889. The married couple seems to embody the comradely ideal
described by Melosh above with Yancey paying the heroic role of the
Western hero and Sabra being his dutiful wife who subordinates herself to
her husband and embodies the domestic values that are separated from the
active public world of heroism that her husband occupies. Nevertheless, as
the plot develops, the comradely paradigm seems to show pressures from
strained gender relations that point to the enduring iconography of fem-
inist paradigms from the Progressive era. And Yancey Cravat’s masculin-
ism, which divorces him at times from the domestic realm, points to an
aggressive egoism suggesting that the rampant individualism that underlies
it is highly problematic and potentially quite destructive to society.
When the couple first arrives in Oklahoma, their roles seem comfort-
ably distinguished from one another and suggest that this differentiation
is productive for them and the newspaper they hope to revive after the
murder of its previous owner. Sabra embodies the pacifistic values of the
mother that Melosh describes above, initially disapproving of this very
wild and wooly town (“I won’t bring up my boy in a town like this!”)
and criticizing Yancey for his lethal shoot out with the local ruffian Lon
Yountis (responsible for the former newspaper editor’s death). “Did you
have to kill him like that?” asks Sabra. “No,” her husband coolly replies,
“I could have let him kill me.” Nevertheless, Sabra comes to realize the
necessity for violence in establishing justice on the frontier and later
praises Yancey for killing his former associate, The Kid, especially after she
learns that her husband will receive reward money for this—something
that disturbs Yancey since he and The Kid rode together and this seems
a violation of the code of honor they once shared. Nevertheless, Sabra
is satisfied that this is necessary, and becomes happy with her role as a
domestic servant in the community as she establishes women’s clubs and
supports the drive for education and culture with her new friend
Mrs. Wyatt.
Somehow, though, the complex dynamic of the frontier setting and
of the characters will not let things remain at ease, and as a result the
seeds are planted in the story for troubling this paradigm. After 1893,
another Oklahoma land grab is available and curiously Yancey decides
he must leave his home of domestic bliss to pursue more adventure.
This decision is all the more strange for the fact that Yancey, an advo-
cate for Native American rights from the beginning of his newspaper
career, characterizes the land grab as another example of exploiting the
Cherokees. It is as if he is not satisfied with being a part of the civili-
zation he has nurtured with his wife. A “wander lust,” as he calls it,
overcomes him—which seems to be a euphemism for his masculine ego
seeking individualistic reward somewhere beyond the sanctity of home
and hearth. His wife Sabra is shocked and declares her mother was right
when she told her that the only reason he had taken the family to the
Cimarron territory was “for the adventure of it.”
Five years pass and rumors abound that he has taken up with a squaw
woman or participated in the Spanish American War. Meanwhile, Sabra
has had no choice but to run the newspaper herself—though she still
lists him as the paper’s editor and proprietor. Indeed, she has been so
busy that she has had to hire a Native American domestic named Ruby
to help run the household. The situation is truly bizarre. Although Sabra
has spent her life schooling herself to play the domestic role, she has had
no choice but to enter the public sphere and play a man’s role in running
a business. As if she had also been schooled in the comradely New Deal
marriage paradigm, she nevertheless keeps the fiction of their marriage
alive and refuses to take the titles of proprietor and editor even though
everyone knows she is the real boss and her male colleagues congratulate
her for what she has done. She is living a mere simulation of the com-
radely paradigm, having proved that there really never was any reason
26 M. E. Wildermuth
for her to subordinate herself to her husband. She is capable of achieving

success in both the private and public paradigms of her world. The sep-
arate sphere paradigm has been undone, and no one in the town objects
to this at all.1
Even more bizarre circumstances emerge when her uniformed
husband suddenly returns home and expects (and receives) a hero’s
welcome. He kisses Sabra and praises her for being “cute and a
mother”—and all is forgiven. Still, seeds of potential paradigm dissolu-
tion intrude on this reunion. In his absence, a former associate of his,
Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor), has come under fire from Sabra, Mrs. Wyatt
and others in town for her nefarious activities as a “soiled dove.” Yancey’s
initial encounter with her was during the first Oklahoma land rush when
they were both driving for a place called Bear Creek for a homestead.
Dixie is seen riding hell for leather just like the men until her horse
falls into a crevasse and, rescuing her, Yancey lets her have the claim.
Criticized by Sabra’s mother for letting “that hussy” win, Yancey says she
had equal rights but he could not shoot her because she was a woman.
Dixie is an interesting character since she usurps the public/private
sphere paradigm even more resolutely than Sabra has. She is a profes-
sional woman who is completely capable of supporting herself and she
makes no attempt at establishing a domestic side to her life. She is con-
demned by the townspeople on the grounds that she is a criminal despite
the fact that, except for her sexual mores, she is living a paradigm very
similar to Sabra’s. And, true to the gendered paradigm, she is criticized
for her sexual promiscuity while the man who will eventually exonerate
her—Yancey—is not criticized or even scrutinized for his own apparent
sexual dalliances outside his marriage. His defense of her in court is even
more remarkable. His defense indicates that even though she was raised
to be a good girl, her family’s demise left her without help and without
money. He therefore characterizes her as a victim of the ‘social order.’
She was betrayed by a husband who was a bigamist—and this marriage
to him prevented her from ever finding legally sanctioned employment.
No matter where she traveled, this blot on her record followed her.
Prostitution was the only answer.
The all-male jury enthusiastically declares her innocent. But
Mrs. Cravat is still not convinced. Towering over her in the domestic asy-
lum of their home (in long shots used often in this film, which frequently
eschews the close ups of classical editing), Yancey makes a passionate case
before his wife (who has suspected lust has played a role in her husband’s
chivalry), saying Dixie was the victim of a kind of social prejudice that
cannot be overcome. Suddenly, Sabra sees the light and declares: “Maybe
if things had been different, she’d be like I am—married, safe. I’m
thankful I’ve got you and we’ve got our home.” Apparently she never
considers the fact that her life with Yancey has been anything but safe.
True, she had the newspaper to fall back on after he deserted her—but
there is no indication that he ever trained her in the running of this
establishment. She apparently took the bull by the horns and simply did
her best to survive until she became a success. The reality is that she no
longer needs him, and he took an enormous risk with her and his public
reputation by defending Dixie in court. His penchant for risk taking and
his overblown masculine egoism and individualism still seem to be major
motivating factors for his adventurism.
The rest of the film proves this quite handily. By 1929, he has once
again absconded to God knows where and left his wife and son to fend
for themselves. Amazingly, she still plays the role of the comrade wife as
she continues to list her missing husband as the editor and proprietor of
the newspaper. In the meantime, she has gone on to bigger and better
things. Her husband once considered running for governor but in his
absence she has become a Congresswoman for the state of Oklahoma.
Addressing a group near the end of the film she justifies this on the
grounds, true to the comradely paradigm, that women are natural help-
ers. “The women of Oklahoma have helped build Oklahoma into a state
of today.” Hence she concludes, “Holding of a public office is a natu-
ral step.” The audience seems to accept this analysis as the Chief of the
Osage congratulates her and a Congressman says, “We’re proud of what
a woman like you has done—alone.” The latter comment is an interest-
ing perception since so much of the building of this civilization in the
former wilderness was indeed accomplished mainly by her own work.
Yet this emerging paradigm of feminine independence where a woman
can be allowed to find fulfillment in the individualistic competition of the
public realm and the self-denying world of the domestic realm must still
exist in the shadow of the patriarchy in this early Depression era film.
At the end of the film while Sabra is touring an industrialized oil facil-
ity, news arrives of a man being killed there by sacrificing his life to save
others. It is Yancey. Sabra comforts him as he dies, and he offers his last
words of praise for his wife: “Wife and mother. Stainless woman.” In the
final scene we see a statue erected to him to honor his contributions and
sacrifices for the state of Oklahoma.
28 M. E. Wildermuth
Still, even this ending is wrought with fascinating ambiguities and

tensions. Sabra’s husband, after a life of adventurism and egotistical
individualistic pursuit of glory, nevertheless dies a death of complete
self-sacrifice. In his final moments, even though he is in the public realm,
he seems to engage in the side of the paradigm associated with women in
the private realm. And his praise of his wife is equally interesting. Indeed,
she did have much success as a wife and mother. But the phrase “stain-
less” could be taken more than one way. It evokes an image of a woman
of private domestic virtue. But it might also evoke the idea of her hard-
ness, her capacity for clean competition in the masculine public realm.
Either way, the film is testimony to how the comradely paradigm did
not and could not erase from cultural memory the advances women had
made in the Progressive era. Certainly the film takes an almost legalis-
tic approach to this New Deal paradigmatic marriage. The two spouses
are not allowed to seek employment simultaneously and are not allowed
to seek public office simultaneously. Nevertheless, Sabra’s professional
accomplishments are not to be overlooked, and it is as if the film has
some secret that keeps slipping out in an almost Freudian fashion,
despite the attempts to suppress it. Women have arrived. They can per-
form public and private functions equally well and can help strengthen
their community, their homes and their entire country by taking on the
tasks in the private and public sphere with equal gusto. And they are to
be congratulated for this. Certainly the incapacity of Yancey to do this
(except perhaps in death) is not seen as positive. And yet he remains the
wounded post-war Depression era male who is seen as an object of pity.
But somehow he does not fully command sympathy or respect on the
same level as his wife. Like many Western heroes, he seems to be neces-
sary at the initial stages of building a civilization. But, unlike his wife, he
seems to succumb to obsolescence by the end.
Not all films of the time are quite so reticent in dealing with emerging
post-Progressive era feminist issues—as we will see in our next feature
starring the remarkable Barbara Stanwyck.
Annie Oakley (1935)

George Steven’s Annie Oakley is a vastly more progressive film than
Cimarron, turning from the comradely ideal of relationships to embrace
something more like the companionship paradigm of the Progressive
era. Steven’s Annie Oakley (Barbara Stanwyck) is a female professional
who blends her public role as a professional sharp shooter in Buffalo

Bill’s wild west show with her domestic private capacities to suggest that
the domestic values of love and companionship can be extended to the
public realm even as Oakley manages to compete with and outperform
men in her profession, including the love of her life, fellow sharp shooter
Toby Walker (Preston Foster). This she can do because her relation-
ship with him, in true Progressive era fashion, is based on both physi-
cal attraction and professional respect. In short, Stanwyck in the role of
Oakley represents one of the most outstandingly independent heroines
of these early Western films.
Her special qualities as a heroine are evident from the film’s first
scene. She has already proven her capacity to balance the public and the
private when, after the death of her father, she earns money by shooting
quail (sold by local business people to the market in Cincinnati) to sup-
port the family that she treats as if they were her children even though
her mother is still helping to manage the family. Men gathered at the
local grocer and sheriff’s offices praise her fantastic abilities with a gun,
the sheriff wishing he were half the shot she is. Even more interesting
characteristics emerge in Annie when she arrives in a wagon, freshly
killed game and family of mother brother and sister in tow when she
sees a poster of Toby Walker being erected. “Gosh, ain’t he pretty?” she
declares—and then goes on to wager he’s probably “the greatest shot in
the whole world!” She refers to him as “pretty” more than once in the
film, in a gesture that suggests she is unafraid to admire his physicality,
as if to objectify him just as a man might a woman. But there is also gen-
uine respect for his professional accomplishments—respect that grows
despite the fact that her relationship with him will reveal that his own
excessive egotism and competitiveness—something he shares in abun-
dance with Yancey Cravat of Cimarron—ironically threaten his status as
a professional and as a human being.
In the course of the film it is revealed that Annie’s own natural
humility—already evident in the admiration of his reputation—is the anti-
dote to this excessive individualism in the professional realm. Annie’s fam-
ily life has taught her to show respect to the hierarchy of relations in social
circumstances. And yet it is not a slavish humility. At times she obeys her
mother’s wishes but at times she also usurps them when the family’s best
interests are at stake. This becomes evident when Toby comes to town
and a contest is arranged by the locals via Toby’s manager, Hogarth
(Melvyn Douglas). Much to her surprise, Annie finds that she is a vastly
30 M. E. Wildermuth
better shot than Walker and can easily beat him. Nevertheless, when her
mother, sounding very much like an advocate of the New Deal paradigm
of comradeship, says, “I hope you ain’t gonna be the cause of that young
man losin’ his position,” Annie deliberately throws the contest. Annie
later confesses to the men back home, however, that the other reason for
losing the contest was: “He was just too pretty!” She has a private set
of desires that go beyond just professional and domestic duties—some-
thing Sabra in Cimarron never evinced even when she was a congress-
woman. And when Hogarth offers Annie a job in the Wild West show
and her mother objects, Annie overrides the mother’s authority. This is
partly because Hogarth assures her she can still support her family as she
pursues new and more rewarding professional opportunities. But it is also
partly because of her attraction for the dapper young Walker.
This calls to mind Melosh’s discussion of the feminist companionly
ideal of the Progressive era with its equal emphasis on friendship and sex-
ual attraction as the ingredients of a real relationship. Interestingly, these
elements in the love affair also lead Annie to extend her domestic values
to the whole of the Wild West show. Bill Cody often ruefully refers to
the show as “One big happy family!” because he knows they are any-
thing but that. There are enormous ego conflicts between the male per-
formers as they relentlessly pursue their individualism to the point where
Bill and Toby cannot even agree whose picture should go on posters
promoting the show. Annie seems to sense the problem immediately and
goes to work first on the project nearest and dearest to her heart—Toby.
His fellow workers look at him and say, “That bronco’s just beggin’ to
be busted.” And so on her first day on the job she tests his ego and tells
him, “I let you beat me”—while flashing that polite yet utterly disarming
smile of hers.
Interestingly, he does not respond with the usual defensive display
of ego—most probably because he is learning to respect her and feel
the power of her charms just as she has with him. Indeed, after shoot-
ing practice rounds with her, he pays her a compliment while giving her
practical advice: “You can shoot as good as I can. All you need is color,
showmanship.” She seems to realize the advice comes from the heart and
wears flashier outfits and fires fancier gums, even as she maintains her pri-
vate tent with flowers that Bill provided for her. She shows that a balance
between private and public can be maintained that curbs the excesses of
individualistic competition while promoting a sense of cooperation. The
film implies that the companionship ideal can have profound implications
for society if its virtues are extended to the society as a whole. It can
promote a productive interaction between the public and private realm if
individuals can learn to respect one another as fellow competitors.
Still, the film shows that this is by no means an easy thing to accom-
plish. Frustrated with how the Wild West show’s dynamic refuses to
become civilized, Annie declares on one occasion, “What this family
needs is a good spanking!” In one interesting scene, the sheer implaca-
bility of these men’s egos is satirized when the scene’s first shot begins
with a shot of the long-haired Bill Cody’s head in close up from the
back. We do not know it is him, and almost any viewer would swear
this is a shot of a woman until he turns and we see that the supposedly
ultra-masculine Cody has been preening himself in a mirror. His own
men laugh at him for his preposterous vanity, and Hogarth jokes that
without his long hair Cody would be just another “shorn Samson.” The
scene nicely makes the point that the egotistical posturing and individu-
alistic competition of the men may have its sources in an attribute iron-
ically more commonly attributed to women—simple vanity. Adding to
the irony’s poignancy is the fact that Annie, often complimented for her
fine physical appearance, never succumbs to this attribute. Her respect
for herself and her fellow human beings, her insistence that something
like the familial dynamic’s respect for others should be maintained in the
public realm, prevents her from embracing the vanity all too common
among the pretty fellows like Cody and even Toby.
This capacity of Annie’s allows her to nurture a love affair with
Toby—quite possibly because she is the only one in their extended family
that earns his respect and shows it to him at the same time. She seems
to realize that much of his posturing is purely defensive—an attempt
to maintain his professional status but not something that is really part
of him. Publically, the two decide to let the show promote the image
of competition between them—but privately they confess their love
and respect for one another. Toby says that the public image is “good
for business” but he privately says, “I know you can beat me and I’m
proud of you.” They’ll have to pretend not to like each other. Her reply?
“Mister, I hate you to pieces.” And they kiss.
Unfortunately, his public reputation for his egotism continues to take
a toll. When he suffers an eye injury that creates problems for his shoot-
ing, he accidently wounds Annie in a shooting stunt. The entire com-
munity and the Wild West show assume that it was a deliberate act on
Toby’s part and condemn him. But Annie knows better. Recovering
32 M. E. Wildermuth
in bed she declares, “He’s sweet and kind. You don’t understand him.
None of you do.” His career is destroyed; he is forced to become a fire-
arms instructor to survive and disappears from the public eye—as if to
demonstrate the potential destructiveness of excessive individualism in
the public realm even when it is reduced to a pose. Meanwhile, Annie’s
career soars as she goes to Europe to entertain the crown heads and
admiring crowds. Hogarth confesses his love for her and is amazed that
her companionate love and friendship for Toby endures. He informs her
that Toby was exonerated of the charges brought against him due to his
eye injury.
She is eventually reunited with Toby when she returns to America,
mainly through the auspices of their colleague from the Wild West
show, Sitting Bull. Perhaps because he is such an outsider to the white
men’s world, Sitting Bull has always recognized their love and in an ear-
lier scene, sometime after he dubbed Annie “Little Sure Shot,” he had
suggested that they produce children together. As the ultimate outsider,
Sitting Bull can see beyond the competition and realize that these two
belong together with Annie having all of the qualifications for being
a “good squaw.” When they are reunited at Toby’s shooting gallery
(where she acquits herself again as an expert shot), Toby asks his skepti-
cal clients “Did I know Annie Oakley?” and their embrace shows he did.
Indeed, it was her knowledge of his deeper private character that
saved him from being the victim of competition and unrestricted indi-
vidualism that earlier feminists of the Progressive era had fought with
their efforts to curb the excesses brought about by industrialization.
Annie follows much the same strategy as they did. She shows that the
values of the private domestic realm can be extended to the public realm.
These values can have a positive impact on the individual and others if
given a chance. Although Annie is clearly not a career social reformer,
she shows how this kind of thinking can work as a metaphoric extension
of the companionly ideal. Annie and Toby have engaged in a kind of test
relationship as recommended by the companionly ideal as the prepara-
tion for a real marriage. And now Annie will no longer have to pretend
that she and her lover are competitors; the two of them can love one
another openly. In the process, the Western paradigm seems to be altered
to redefine what it means to be civilized and move away from savagery.
Competition can coexist with mutual respect. The public space of the
professional can borrow from the private site of domesticity to establish
a more productive paradigm than competition and individualism alone
can manage. In short, the Western paradigm can be made to recognize

these values of early Progressive era feminism and recognize the value
of the female professional who can enjoy professional advancement with-
out succumbing to total self-abnegation. The Western can be purged of
its misogynistic tendencies. Genuine public empowerment for women,
as conceptualized by Progressive era feminists with their insistence that
domestic values would support and ethically enhance women’s agency,
could be represented openly in the Western.
However, not all Westerns of the time share these tendencies. Indeed,
others continued to show the stress of trying to enforce cultural amne-
sia in the face of women’s advancement. And the result, as usual, when
women professionals are represented, was the strained, conflicted
approach to more traditional paradigms.
The Plainsman (1936)

The Plainsman marks Cecil B. de Mille’s successful return to the Western
genre after his critical and financial failure with 1931’s The Squaw Man.
In the 1936 film, Gary Cooper represents the Depression era archetypal
male hero who embodies the masculine crisis of the New Deal paradigm.
He is wild Bill Hickock depicted here as a Union soldier returning to the
frontier after the war, out of work, still feeling ambivalent about military
service, yet no less loyal to his country. The opening scene of the film is in
the White House where President Lincoln, just hours before he is assassi-
nated, indicates to his ministers that men all across the country need work
and so the frontier “must be made safe.” We see an America in disarray,
for after Lincoln dies, corruption also abounds as is shown when men in
Washington send John Latimer (Charles Bickford) to sell Winchesters to
Native Americans since there is no market for them after the war’s end.
The film therefore already begins on an ambivalent note, since the
usually at least somewhat stable polarities of savagery and civilization
are upset by this clear corruption of the civilizing influences, which have
temporarily been enlisted on the side of savagery. Presumably the pro-
tagonists, Cooper, his friends Bill Cody, Cody’s wife Lou and Cooper’s
old acquaintance Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur), who are all united in St.
Louis, are intended to set the paradigm straight by establishing law and
order on the frontier. But that path is made even more complicated by
the complex gender relations that evolve as the unmarried Hickock and
Calamity Jane interact with each other and the wedded Codys.
34 M. E. Wildermuth
Hickock’s attitudes toward women and marriage are complex. Asked

by Bill Cody if Jane had ever tamed him, Hickock replies “Women and
me don’t get along.” He and Jane would seem to be a perfect match
since neither seems entirely comfortable with the blessings of civili-
zation. She certainly breaks the traditional mode represented by the
domestic Mrs. Cody. She is a professional woman—a mule skinner by
trade—wielding a whip with alacrity against both men and beasts. Unlike
Annie Oakley in our previous film, she is not known for her devotion
to monogamy, and when she is chided by Hickock for this, she says,
“Aw Bill, those fellers didn’t mean nothing to me.” She dresses like a
man and wears a soldier’s kepi hat, much like the one Hickock sported
in the film’s beginning. In a film where the relationship between civ-
ilization and savagery is as complex as this one, she might be the vey
ticket for resolving problems since she represents a professional woman
who has given up completely on the private domestic realm and focused
solely on cultivating only hard masculine values in the world of public
professionalism.
Nevertheless, it turns out that gender relations and the public/
private paradigm are also highly ambiguous here. When Hickock and
Bill Cody are drafted rather reluctantly to help out after a Sioux raid,
Jane stays behind to take care of the pregnant Mrs. Cody at the Codys’
homestead. Lou Cody introduces Jane to the finer feminine luxuries
including a dress that Jane models. Like Mrs. Cody, she begins to show
softer domestic values in this context. Like Mrs. Cody, she fears for the
men’s safety—it is already becoming clear that Hickock’s attraction
to her makes her more vulnerable to the feminine capacity for caring,
always present in the Victorian paradigm that asserted itself even during
the Progressive era. Jane’s capacity for sacrifice and self-abnegation also
emerges when a Sioux war party comes to the home and Jane sends Lou
off to save herself while Jane, still in the dress, pretends to be the lady of
the house. In an extremely disturbing scene, Jane is surrounded by the
warriors who turn off the lights as they close in on her. Apparently she is
gang raped by the men while Mrs. Cody rides away.
A nevertheless quite chipper Jane greets Cooper’s Hickock the next
day when, on his mission from Custer to meet with Sioux chief Yellow
Hand, he stumbles upon the war party, which refuses to sell Jane to him
but takes him prisoner as well. Here, under the threat of impending tor-
ture (Yellow Hand wants to know where Cody’s group is heading with
much needed ammo for their newly bought Winchesters), Hickock and
Jane both reveal their softer, sympathetic sides when they confess their
love for one another. It is the first of many occasions where men turn
out to have softer sides—all of which makes the relationship between pri-
vate and public, and masculine and feminine that more complex in a film
that does not seem to stabilize those aspects of the Western or New Deal
paradigms.
Things grow even more perplexing when Hickock is about to be tor-
tured for information and Jane breaks down, telling Yellow Hand all that
he wants to know. Afterward, she tells Hickock “I couldn’t help it.” He
knows full well that she did this completely because of her very deep
love for him. Nevertheless, he had told her not to do it because so many
men’s lives were at stake. Hence his reply; he never wants to see her
again. But he nevertheless expects her to go tell Custer what happened
so they can rescue Cody and the soldiers with him. He does not know, of
course, that she endured a gang rape to save Cody’s wife. No one does.
And when she tells Custer what has happened, her suffering is just begin-
ning. He chastises her for informing, and the entire town ostracizes her
for her actions. Given all the suffering she has endured, given the very
real feelings she and Hickock have for one another, the whole situation
seems horribly unfair to her.
Now, one might conclude that at least at this point, the film is finally
stabilizing its paradigms and trying to make some kind of implicit and
lucid assessment of its value system. Perhaps the point is that while pri-
vate values are important, the public values of duty to country and hon-
orable obligations to other men must always prevail. Perhaps Jane is
being crucified because she violated some basic tenants of the comradely
ideal and should have subordinated herself to her man—even if it meant
the death of both herself and Hickock. Perhaps the softer feminine traits
of sympathy and self-abnegation have a place in the Cody cabin but not
on the frontier where only masculine values can tame the nation Lincoln
wanted to unite. Perhaps the definition of civilization here is a paradigm
where the feminine must always be subordinated completely to the mas-
culine. Perhaps that is what the film is trying to say.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not really seem to support
such a reading. When we rejoin Hickock with Cody and the men who
are under attack from the Sioux, we see that some of the soldiers there
are cracking up under the strain of combat. Hickcock uses jokes, sooth-
ing talk, anything to keep the men from completely losing control of the
situation—and he does not really seem to blame them for this. They have
36 M. E. Wildermuth
simply had too much—and the only thing that keeps them from falling
apart is when Custer arrives with the rescue mission. And later, when
Hickock returns to the town where Custer is stationed and he hears the
criticism of Jane he says, “She’s a woman isn’t she? Women talk a little
too much sometimes.” But then he adds “And men talk a little too much
sometimes too.” In the context of all that has happened, it’s difficult to
assess exactly what he means here. He’s defending Jane but what is the
basis of the defense? His love for Jane? His awareness that men can be
just as soft and vulnerable as women? Either way, it would seem to sug-
gest that the previous paradigm where masculine values seemed to pre-
vail has just been undercut by the strange blurring of gender boundaries.
Adding to the complexity of it all is that Hickock decides to become
something of a rogue when he feels he must search out John Latimer
and end his (more or less sanctioned) career as a gun runner by killing
him. In another scene, the highly domestic, deeply religious and paci-
fistic mother Mrs. Cody asks Hickock who has the right to make such
judgments? Who has the right to decide who lives or who dies? He has
no real answer for that. Meanwhile, her husband is dispatched by Custer
to bring Hickock back. Luckily, Cody is relieved of his duty when he
and Hickock learn of Custer’s demise at the Little Big Horn. However,
Hickock decides to hunt Latimer and eventually kills him at a town
called Deadwood.
Coincidentally, this happens in a saloon run by Calamity Jane who still
keeps her clientele in line with her bullwhip. Earlier, Hickock has con-
fessed to her that he thinks maybe Mrs. Cody was right. Maybe no one
has a right to judge who is wrong or who is right. Maybe the Codys
are right about settling down. Jane is delighted but is so shocked that
she asks him if he is feeling alright. She cannot believe that the domestic
values are winning out in the heart of this man. Could he be changing?
Could she be changing too and is she now ready to settle down with this
man she loves so earnestly?
Unfortunately, she never has a chance to find out for certain. After kill-
ing Latimer, Hickock soon finds himself surrounded by Latimer’s accom-
plices. One of them, an informer who has worked on both sides of the
law, shoots Hickock in the back during a card game with the men where
Hickock has prophetically stated “A man’s got to lose sooner or later.”
Disappointingly, Jane has failed to protect him in this encounter and can
now only comfort him as he dies. She kisses him and says, “That’s one
kiss you’ll never wipe off” and she is right because he is gone.
His reputation is safe because as General Merritt has said to Cody, as

they ride in a relief mission to help Hickock that arrives too late, “In
matters where sympathy is concerned, the government has been known
to bend.” That sympathy is, however, too late to help Hickock. And
Merritt’s discussion of this softer feminine value just adds more confu-
sion to the paradigm. Like Hickock, he is suddenly suggesting that such
domestic style values are better than the public masculine values, at least
on some occasions. But just how does it all add up? Hickock is the trau-
matized post-war male who, like Cravat in Cimarron, somehow winds
up being a self-sacrificing male. But as in that 1931 film, the gender par-
adigm seems under strain. Indeed, this De Mille film seems even more
confused. Calamity Jane never has a chance to redeem herself. The femi-
nine virtues seem at once good and bad—as do the masculine ones. The
whole question of the corruption of civilization in the case of Latimer
goes unresolved since Hickock is only able to resolve it by taking the law
into his own hands—a gesture that he questions under the influence of
female values that seemed earlier to be completely discredited when Jane
betrays the U.S. cavalry.
The film ends with a crawler that says: “It should be as it was in the
past […]. Not with dreams but with strength and courage shall a nation
be molded to last.” Perhaps this is meant to sum up the film’s implicit
ideology but it simply leaves too many questions unanswered. How
can strength and courage—such stereotypically masculine values—have
any value in a world as confused as that of the film? There seems to be
some attempt to set up a comradely ideal to stabilize gender boundaries
but this is clearly not done with any degree of success. Calamity Jane
is a woman crucified on the crux of the private and public paradigm as
a woman professional, and Hickock seems to suffer a similar fate. The
Codys seem to be held up as an ideal couple and yet they are not capa-
ble of helping themselves. Mrs. Cody would be raped and possibly mur-
dered without Jane’s help, and Bill Cody is likewise ineffectual without
Hickock’s help. Perhaps the idea is that in the frontier people like Jane
and Hickock are necessary for making possible the world of the Mr. and
Mrs. Codys when civilization finally arrives. But for all that, the values
of the public and private realm seem strangely impotent in this film.
And there is no suggestion as in Annie Oakley that these values could
ever become mutually supportive in a resuscitation of the Progressive
era gender paradigm. Instead, a contradictory paradigm emerges in De
Mille’s film, suggesting once again that attempts to erase the progressive
38 M. E. Wildermuth
image of the female professional results not in amnesia but in tortured

confusion.
Nevertheless, De Mille tackles the gender paradigm again just a few
years later, and with the redoubtable Barbara Stanwyck by his side, scores
a bull’s eye.
Union Pacific (1939)

De Mille’s Union Pacific outlines new progressive gender roles mainly
through the character of Molly Monihan (Barbara Stanwyck) who, as
the postmistress of the titular railway line, represents a woman equally
comfortable with her roles in public and private thus making it possi-
ble for the film to put forward a companionable marriage ideal rather
than the strained comradeship of the previous film. Monihan falls in love
with two men, Jeff Butler (Joe McCrea), the railroad’s wrangler who
keeps order on the line, and Dick Allen (Robert Preston), who works
for Sid Campbell (Brian Don Levy), who seeks to sabotage the rail at the
behest of a corrupt businessman named Barrows. Barrows seeks to pre-
vent the Union Pacific railway line from making progress towards uniting
with their competitor line Central Pacific, so as to make a profit from
the latter line. De Mille’s epic paints a Depression era-based portrait of
corporate corruption and its ugly effects on (Irish) labor and uses its pro-
tagonists to show how such corruption must be defeated from within.
Monihan’s relationships with Butler and Allen make this possible since
she is the key to resolving the conflict between the slightly corrupted
Allen and the incorruptible Butler. Her stance occupies a place where the
professional and the domestic values meet, and her influence on the men
in their public lives allows a productive interaction between public and
private that redeems Allen and defeats Barrows’ plans by destroying his
henchman Campbell.
Monihan’s position as postmistress on the train establishes her as a
special character, much like the one she played in Annie Oakley. She is
not just a bureaucrat working in the caboose of the train her father oper-
ates; the young Irish woman can handle the equipment on the train as
well as anyone else. Arguing with Butler at the break wheel, she does
not hesitate to slap him to put him in his place. And yet there is a touch
of the old pacifism we see in maternal figures in New Deal art, drama
and film. When one of Campbell’s shady gambling colleagues (played by
Anthony Quinn) kills a young man called Patty O’Rourke, she blames
Hell on Wheels for claiming too many men’s lives. And yet, when Butler
takes Quinn’s winnings from him, she praises his tough approach to jus-
tice (“Tis a fine thing you’ve done”) and has no complaints when Butler
later kills the gambler. At the same time, she brings her domestic val-
ues to the saloon when she insists that everyone donate money to sup-
port O’Rourke’s widow. Indeed, she is comfortable throughout the film
maintaining her stance in both the public and the domestic world simul-
taneously. Towards the end, when she, Butler and Allen are trapped on a
wrecked train that is being attacked by a war party of Native Americans,
she continues to observe her pacifistic Christian values, shouting “Saints
forgive me for taking human life” even as she fights them first with a
Winchester and then, her ammunition expended, with no less than a
broom. During a break in the fray, her domestic side surfaces again when
she decides to cook a meal, her reasoning being “We’ll not be dying on
an empty stomach.” And in the end of this sequence it is her profession-
alism that saves the day. The train’s telegraph having been destroyed dur-
ing the wreck, she tinkers together a makeshift replacement that allows
her to send a message to bring reinforcements. And just after that she sits
down to pray, crucifix in hand, the help arriving just when her two male
friends had lost faith and were about to end it for all three of them with
the last bullets they had saved.
Her real significance is in how she uses these complex values of hers
to civilize the men in her life with her sympathetic values that never for-
sake her strong discipline and love of the law. Butler and Allen do not
seem initially to share this unusual complex of virtues that make her so
special and so irresistible to them. Butler’s devotion to the law is truly
admirable but he seems to see things always in black and white terms;
there is no compassion in the man. Allen, on the other hand, cannot rec-
oncile feeling and reason. His conscience tells him that what Campbell
wants is corrupt, but his love for Monihan is so great that he is willing
to break the law to acquire the money that will allow him to marry and
settle down with her. The two men seem to lack the wholeness that she
has, and this makes them problematic characters that cannot easily chart
a course for themselves or find love with Molly in a world as corrupt
as this one where the distinctions between civilization and savagery have
been so blurred by human greed.
It is, of course, not that easy for Monihan to steer a course between
compassion and justice given her deep feelings for the men and given her
initial strong attraction to the caring Dick Allen, whom she eventually
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dann das Pigment nach der Peripherie hin in immer feinerer
Vertheilung aus. Je allmählicher letztere vor sich geht, um so
zierlicher ist das Bild, das die Endplatte unter stärkerer
Vergrösserung gewährt (Fig. 9 a, Taf. X). In dem mittleren Strange
bildet das Pigment grobe dichtgedrängte Schollen, die weiter nach
der Peripherie feiner werden und durch weitere Zwischenräume
getrennt sind, dann als Häufchen feiner brauner Körnchen
erscheinen, bis endlich in den Randparthieen der Platte solche
Körnchen nur noch ganz vereinzelt zu bemerken sind.
Oft hört die Pigmentirung aber auch ziemlich plötzlich und nahe dem
Grunde der Endplatte auf, wie an dem Haare von Nyctinomus
limbatus (Fig. 8) und dem von N. bivittatus (Fig. 7) zu sehen ist.
An Haaren mit nur wenig verbreitertem Ende ist dies in der Regel
durchweg ziemlich dunkel, nur die äusserste Randzone erscheint
etwas heller (Fig. 10, 11 auf Taf. X).
Die Spatelhaare an den Füssen sind abweichend von denen im

Gesichte meist fast ohne Pigment und lassen daher auch keinen
Unterschied in der Färbung von Schaft und Endplatte wahrnehmen.
Manche von den Borsten (Fig. 11, 17), die wir als erste Andeutungen
von Spatelhaaren erkannten, bilden offenbar eine Vermittlung
zwischen den auf den ersten Blick ganz isolirt stehenden Haaren
von ausgeprägter Löffelform und denen, die oben als erste Gruppe
der vom Körperhaar abweichenden beschrieben wurden. Für diese
Auffassung ist auch bemerkenswerth, dass bei solchen
gewissermaassen rudimentären Formen die Cuticularschuppung
stärker als an den echten Spatelhaaren hervortritt (Fig. 17).
In anderer Richtung deuten auf eine innere Verwandtschaft der

Spatelhaare mit den gewöhnlichen des Körpers die eigenthümlichen
Formen, zu deren Beschreibung ich nun übergehe.
Bei einigen Arten von Nyctinomus bemerkte ich unter dem
Binoculare neben Spatelhaaren von bekannter Form solche, deren
Endplatte in einen feinen fadenförmigen Fortsatz auszulaufen
schien. Prüfung bei stärkerer Vergrösserung ergab, dass dieser
fadenförmige Anhang, der sich an die Endplatte in der Mitte ihres
distalen freien Randes ansetzt, in seiner Structur dem Körperhaare
sehr ähnlich ist (Taf. X, Fig. 1, 2, 2 a, 13). Er ist pigmentlos und
besitzt stark vorspringende, in Trichtersegmenten geordnete
Cuticularschuppen. Der Anhang zeigt ziemlich regelmässig eine
bestimmte Gliederung. An der Übergangstelle in die Endplatte (Fig.
13) verjüngt er sich etwas, darauf folgt ein kurzes cylindrisches
Stück, dann wieder eine meist tiefe Einschnürung und hierauf das
Endglied, das etwa viermal so lang ist wie das erste und vom
dickeren Grunde ganz allmählich in eine feine Spitze ausläuft (Fig.
2).
Diese eigentümliche Form hat ein Seitenstück unter den modificirten

Haaren unserer ersten Gruppe. Figur 12, 12 a giebt ein solches
Präparat wieder. Das Haar, das sonst ganz den früher
beschriebenen (Fig. 18) gleicht, trägt an der Spitze einen Aufsatz
von ganz derselben Form und Beschaffenheit wie an den eben
geschilderten Spatelhaaren.
Als ich, noch im Anfange der Untersuchung, den Anhang an den

Spatelhaaren bemerkte, lag die Frage nahe, ob er nicht regelmässig
vorkomme und, wo er fehle, erst nachträglich verloren gegangen sei.
Indessen musste diese Frage nach eingehender Prüfung verneint
werden. Der Ansatz haftet an der Platte ziemlich fest und ist auch in
sich gegen Zerrung und Biegung widerstandsfähig, am leichtesten
erfolgt die Zerreissung an der eingeschnürten Stelle, aber auch erst
bei einer bestimmten Gewalteinwirkung (wie am Präparate der Fig.
13, Taf. X geschehen). Es wäre also schwer denkbar, dass ihn bei
der Mehrzahl der Exemplare alle und bei den übrigen die meisten
Haare verloren haben sollten. Auch ergab die genaue Untersuchung
der isolirten Spatelhaare, dass die Endplatten immer einen
vollkommen unversehrten Rand besassen. Man muss daher wohl
annehmen, dass die Bildung nur manchen Spatelhaaren und
vielleicht nur bei bestimmten Species zukommt.
Vergegenwärtigen wir uns die Entwicklung dieser Haare, so ist klar,

dass die die Papille überkleidende epitheliale Matrix hier zuerst eine
Zeit lang ein Gebilde producirt, das einem Körperhaare gleicht,
[39]und dass dann mit einem Mal in der Production eine Änderung
eintritt, sodass das Erzeugniss ein Spatelhaar wird.
Einen analogen Vorgang können wir vielleicht aus der

Entwicklungsgeschichte der Feder heranziehen. Dieselbe Papille
und Matrix, die eine Dune des jungen Vogels erzeugt hat, producirt
später auch eine bleibende Feder des ersten Gefieders, die daher
die Dune auf ihrer Spitze trägt (vergl. G e g e n b a u r , Vergl. Anat.
Bd. 1, p. 139; G a d o w in Bronns Klassen und Ordnungen des
Thierreichs, Vögel, I. Anatomischer Theil. Leipzig 1891, p. 524 u.
525). So spielt sich der Vorgang aber nur bei der Bildung des ersten
Gefieders ab, später entwickeln sich nach der Mauser die
Ersatzfedern direct ohne vorhergehende Erzeugung einer Dune.
Auch in unserem Falle scheint mir der Gedanke nicht ohne weiteres
abzuweisen, ob es vielleicht nur die zum ersten Male gebildeten
Haare sind, die einen solchen Anhang besitzen. Zur Entscheidung
dieser Frage wäre es nöthig, von den einzelnen Arten Reihen
verschiedener Alterstufen zu untersuchen, die mir nicht zur
Verfügung standen.
Bei einigen Arten der Gattung Nyctinomus kommen im Gesicht

Haare, die in der Form irgendwelche Ähnlichkeit mit Spatelhaaren
besitzen, überhaupt nicht vor. Immer aber finden sich dann an den
Stellen, die bei anderen Arten welche tragen, Borsten oder Stacheln,
die sich durch Dicke, Länge und histiologische Structur von den
anderen im Gesichte vorkommenden längeren und steiferen Haaren
deutlich unterscheiden. Ihr Schaft ist glatt wie bei den Spatelhaaren,
dunkel pigmentirt, meist mit deutlichem axialem Strange (Fig. 24).
Ich glaube daher, dass diese Borsten auch im morphologischen Sinn
als Vertreter der bei den anderen Arten vorkommenden Spatelhaare
zu betrachten sind.
Besonderes Interesse bietet in dieser Hinsicht Cheiromeles

torquatus. Typische Spatelhaare finden sich hier nur an den Füssen
und zwar abweichend von Molossus und Nyctinomus ausschliesslich
auf einem am Aussenrande der ersten, nach Art eines Daumens frei
beweglichen Zehe, gelegenen Felde, das die Figuren 11 b–d, Taf. XI
in verschiedenen Ansichten wiedergeben. Die hier vorhandenen
Spatelhaare sind, wie schon erwähnt, die längsten von ziemlich
typischer Form, die ich überhaupt beobachtet habe. Von den
Spatelhaaren an den Füssen der Molossus- und Nyctinomus-Arten
unterscheiden sie sich ausser durch die viel ausgeprägtere Form
und die grössere Länge auch durch bedeutend dunklere Färbung,
die freilich immer noch heller ist als bei den Spatelhaaren im
Gesicht.
Im Gesichte besitzt Cheiromeles unterhalb der Nasenlöcher eine

dichte Gruppe kurzer, steifer und dicker Borsten, die im ganzen
etwas abgeplattet sind (Taf. X, Fig. 22, 23). Kurz vor dem Ende
verjüngt sich der Schaft ein wenig, während das Ende selbst wieder
eine breitere, quer abgeschnittene Platte vorstellt, die etwas gegen
den Schaft gekrümmt ist. Offenbar sind diese Haare als modificirte
Spatelhaare aufzufassen.
An den seitlichen Theilen des Gesichts, wo die Molossus- und

Nyctinomus-Arten Spatelhaare besitzen, finden sich bei Cheiromeles
nur dicke Borsten verschiedener Länge. An manchen der kürzeren
von ihnen ist das Ende gegen den Schaft etwas abgesetzt und
gekrümmt, wodurch sie sich den Borsten unterhalb der Nase
anschliessen (Fig. 25). So zeigt uns denn Cheiromeles
nebeneinander eine Reihe von Übergängen von typischen
Spatelhaaren zu den Borsten und Stacheln gewöhnlicher Form, die
wir im Gesicht einiger Arten ausschliesslich antreffen.
Eine Eigenthümlichkeit dieser Borsten bei N. brasiliensis und

africanus mag noch Erwähnung finden. Sie scheinen vielfach, unter
Lupenvergrösserung betrachtet, weissliche Knöpfchen zu tragen,
sodass man sie für Spatelhaare halten könnte. Thatsächlich rührt die
Erscheinung daher, dass die Borsten am Ende eine kurze Strecke
pinselartig sehr fein aufgefasert sind (Taf. X, Fig. 27) und die
zwischen den Fasern festsitzende Luft das Licht diffus reflectirt.
Zwischen Borsten mit intactem und aufgefasertem Ende findet man
Übergänge; in Fig. 26, Taf. X ist z. B. eine Borste abgebildet, bei der
eine geringe Verbreiterung und dellenartige Einziehung des Endes
die bevorstehende Aufsplitterung anzeigt. Es handelt sich hier also
jedenfalls nicht etwa um ein durch Abbrechen des Schaftes
verursachtes Kunstprodukt, und auch für die Annahme, dass die
Zerfaserung erst post mortem durch Maceration im Spiritus
aufgetreten sei, scheint mir kein Grund vorzuliegen. Ähnliche, wenn
auch nicht so regelmässige, Zersplitterungen der Spitze beobachtet
man auch sonst gelegentlich an menschlichen und thierischen
Haaren (vergl. W a l d e y e r , Atlas 112 u. 175, 1884; Fig. 38 u. 139).
[40]
Was die Frage nach der f u n c t i o n e l l e n B e d e u t u n g der

löffel- und spatelförmigen Haare und der ihnen entsprechenden
Borsten und Stacheln anlangt, so würde es sich in erster Linie darum
handeln, ob sie nur als eine besondere Form der gewöhnlichen
Haare oder als „Tasthaare“ im engeren Sinne betrachtet werden
müssen. Da eine Untersuchung auf nervöse Endapparate an
unserem Materiale von vornherein ausgeschlossen war, musste ich
mich darauf beschränken, aus der Structur des Haarbalges vielleicht
einigen Anhalt zur Beurtheilung zu gewinnen. Am geeignetsten wäre
zu dem Zwecke das Exemplar von Nyctinomus sarasinorum
gewesen, das sich, wie alles von den Hrn. S a r a s i n gesammelte
Material, durch vortrefflichen Erhaltungszustand auszeichnete. Da es
aber der Typus und bis jetzt das einzige vorhandene Exemplar der
Art ist, so mochte ich es nicht beschädigen, und entnahm daher
Hautstücke von der Oberlippe und den Feldern an den Zehen eines
Exemplars von Nyctinomus plicatus, wo allerdings die Conservirung
sehr viel zu wünschen liess.
Die Haarbälge sind recht derb und massig, besonders mit Rücksicht
auf die geringe Grösse der Haare, und ihre dichte Anhäufung ist es
wesentlich, wodurch die schwielige Verdickung an den Zehen
bedingt wird. Doch konnte ich von einer cavernösen Structur der
Balgwandung, wie sie für „Tasthaare“ als charakteristisch gilt und
letztere auch als „Sinushaare“ bezeichnen lässt, an Durchschnitten
hier nichts wahrnehmen. Da ich indessen bei der Kürze der
verfügbaren Zeit erst wenige Präparate anfertigen konnte und da die
Gewebe durch jahrelanges Liegen in dünnem Spiritus sehr gelitten
hatten, will ich ein abschliessendes Urtheil hiermit keineswegs
ausgesprochen haben.
Auch die Angaben über die Lebensgewohnheiten der Molossiden,

die bisher vorliegen, sind zu dürftig, um über die besondere Leistung
dieser Haare mehr als Vermuthungen zu gestatten.
Die Haare im Gesichte mögen, wenn sie doch als Tasthaare zu

betrachten sein sollten, im Dienste des allgemeinen, bei den
Fledermäusen so hoch entwickelten Hautsinnes stehen, man könnte
aber vielleicht auch daran denken, dass ihnen eine Funktion bei der
Nahrungsaufnahme zufällt. Nach D o b s o n (Catal. 1878, 403) wäre
die grosse Dehnbarkeit der oft mit tiefen Falten versehenen Lippen
der Molossiden von günstiger Wirkung beim Verschlingen der
vorzüglich aus „grossen rundleibigen Käfern“ bestehenden Beute.
Dabei könnten die vornehmlich auf der Oberlippe befindlichen Haare
wohl eine Rolle spielen.
Die Zehen benutzen die Fledermäuse allgemein, um den Pelz zu

ordnen und von Parasiten zu säubern, wobei die Spatelhaare an den
Füssen, ob ihnen nun eine specielle nervöse Funktion zukommt oder
nicht, ganz dienlich sein könnten. Von Interesse ist in der Beziehung
folgende Angabe O s b u r n s 15 über Nyctinomus brasiliensis: „First
one and then another wakes up, and withdrawing one leg and
leaving himself suspended by the other alone, a d r o i t l y u s e s
t h e f o o t a t l i b e r t y a s a c o m b 16, with a rapid effective
movement d r e s s i n g t h e f u r o f t h e u n d e r p a r t a n d
h e a d 16. The foot is then cleaned quickly with the teeth or tongue,
and restored to its first use. Then the other leg does duty.
Perhaps the hairs with which the foot is set
m a y a i d t o t h i s e n d 16. I often have seen them do this in
confinement; and probably the numerous Bat-flies with which they
are infested may be the cause of extra dressing. It is impossible to
imagine a more perfect or effective comb than the little foot thus
used makes ..“. Aus den Angaben O s b u r n s ist allerdings nicht zu
entnehmen, ob er die kurzen Haare an den Aussenseiten der Zehen
bemerkt hat oder ob nur die langen gekrümmten Haare auf den
Nagelgliedern aller Zehen gemeint sind, die D o b s o n (Catal. 1878,
403) „prehensile hairs“ nennt, ohne aber diese sonderbare
Bezeichnung näher zu begründen 17. — Merkwürdig bliebe dann
freilich die besonders mächtige [41]Entwicklung der Spatelhaare an
der grossen Zehe des Cheiromeles, der doch nur ein sehr
rudimentäres Haarkleid besitzt. — Hier sei auch darauf hingewiesen,
dass die Molossiden unter den Fledermäusen am meisten geschickt
sind, sich auf ebener Erde laufend fortzubewegen, wobei natürlich
die Hintergliedmaassen die Hauptarbeit zu leisten haben (vgl.
D o b s o n , Catal. 1878, 403; S c h n e i d e r , Nouv. Mém. Soc. Helv.
XXIV, 1871, S.A. 8–9).
Bei alle dem wird man sich bezüglich der Function der Spatelhaare
auch gegenwärtig bei der Ansicht bescheiden müssen, die
H o r s f i e l d (Zool. Res. 1824, VIII. Cheiromeles, 6. S.) aussprach,
als er zum ersten Male die Felder an den Füssen von Cheiromeles
und Nyctinomus plicatus beschrieb: „It is doubtless of importance in
the economy of the animal, but its use remains to be determined.“
Für eine solche Untersuchung käme zunächst der europäische

Vertreter der Molossiden, Nyctinomus cestonii, in Betracht, der u. a.
in Italien und Griechenland heimisch ist. Doch ist das Thier dort
selten und gehört überdies zu den Arten, denen im Gesichte
Spatelhaare fehlen. Dagegen finden sich Arten mit typischen Haaren
gemein und in Menge in manchen tropischen Gegenden (vgl. die
Bemerkung A. B. M e y e r s oben S. 18), und da ja neuerdings
immer häufiger auch in feineren anatomischen Untersuchungen
geübte und entsprechend ausgerüstete Forscher dorthin kommen,
so bietet sich wohl einmal Gelegenheit, die wahre Bedeutung der
eigenthümlichen Gebilde aufzuklären.
Im Anschluss an die Schilderung der löffelförmigen Haare der

Molossiden ist es vielleicht angezeigt, einen Blick auf die bisher
überhaupt beschriebenen Formen von Säugethierhaaren zu werfen.
Eine daraufhin vorgenommene Durchsicht der Literatur lieferte mir
ein ziemlich dürftiges Ergebniss. Zwar darin stimmen alle Autoren
überein, dass die Mannigfaltigkeit ausserordentlich gross ist, was die
Massenentwicklung und die feinere Structur des einzelnen Haares
anlangt, aber die Grundform, die mit ganz verschwindenden
Ausnahmen überall wiederkehrt, ist immer dieselbe spindlig-
fadenförmige.
Als merklich abweichend verdienen vor allem die Grannenhaare von
Ornithorhynchus Erwähnung. M a u r e r 18 beschreibt sie
folgendermaassen: „Der Schaft beginnt in der Tiefe zugespitzt, er
verbreitert sich dann rasch, so dass sein Querschnitt die Form eines
langen Ovals mit leicht bogenförmig gekrümmter Längsachse zeigt.
„Nach oben gegen die Talgdrüse zu wird der Schaft etwas dünner
und rundlich, und so tritt er aus der Balgöffnung hervor. Er setzt sich
in einen langen drehrunden Abschnitt fort, der sich endlich zu einem
lanzettförmigen Plättchen verbreitert. Dasselbe endet in einer
abgestutzten Spitze.“
Da mit dieser Schilderung die Abbildung in W a l d e y e r s Atlas (Tat.

VIII, Fig. 100) nicht übereinstimmt, untersuchte ich selbst diese
Haare und fand M a u r e r s Darstellung bestätigt. Die Abbildung bei
W a l d e y e r giebt, wie mir scheint, nicht ein „ganzes Grannenhaar“
wieder, wie es in der Figurenerklärung heisst (W a l d e y e r , Atlas,
189), sondern nur den oberen Theil eines solchen. Man müsste sich
das untere dünne Stück reichlich doppelt so lang denken wie die
breite Endplatte, um eine zutreffende Vorstellung von der
Gesammtform dieses merkwürdigen Haares zu erhalten. Die feinere
Structur der einzelnen Theile finde ich vollkommen in
Übereinstimmung mit den Beschreibungen und Abbildungen
W a l d e y e r s (Atlas, 190; Taf. VIII, Fig. 101–103).
Ähnliche Haare wie die eben beschriebenen des Schnabelthiers

finden sich nach M a u r e r 19 auch bei Perameles gunni Gr. [42]
Ausser diesen habe ich keine von dem allgemeinen „faden-

spindligen“ 20 Grundtypus wesentlich abweichenden Haarformen
erwähnt gefunden, und die l ö f f e l f ö r m i g e n H a a r e der Molossi
sind ihnen als ein weiterer interessanter und bis jetzt isolirt
dastehender Befund dieser Art anzureihen.
Die Liste auffallend gestalteter Haare wird sich möglicherweise am
ehesten bereichern lassen, wenn man mehr, als es bisher im
allgemeinen geschehen zu sein scheint, sich nicht auf die
Untersuchung des gewöhnlichen Körperhaares beschränken,
sondern grundsätzlich bei jeder Thierart alle Stellen des Körpers
einer genauen Prüfung unterwerfen wird, an denen der Charakter
der Behaarung modificirt erscheint. Hätte M a r c h i dies beachtet, so
würden ihm, der eine ganze Reihe von Molossiden-Arten sehr
gründlich auf die Beschaffenheit des Körperhaares untersucht hat 21,
die löffelförmigen Haare gewiss nicht entgangen sein.
Es soll nunmehr das Verhalten der löffelförmigen und der ihnen

gleichwertigen Haare bei jeder der untersuchten Arten, besonders
mit Rücksicht auf die t o p o g r a p h i s c h e V e r t h e i l u n g , kurz
beschrieben werden.
Wo von derselben Art mehrere Exemplare vorlagen, liessen sich

öfter gewisse individuelle Schwankungen in der Zahl und wohl auch
in der Formentwicklung dieser Haare wahrnehmen, dagegen fand
ich die Verbreitung und Anordnung immer durchaus
übereinstimmend, so dass sich für jede einzelne Art eine für alle
Exemplare zutreffende Schilderung geben lässt. Auch das
Geschlecht ist in dieser Hinsicht ohne Einfluss.
Die Anordnung der Arten folgt im allgemeinen der in D o b s o n s

Catalogue 1878, mit einigen im Interesse der bequemeren
Darstellung gebotenen Abweichungen. Es empfahl sich mit dem
Genus Nyctinomus zu beginnen und mit Cheiromeles zu schliessen.
Von den Nyctinomus-Arten sind zunächst die behandelt, die im
Gesicht echte Spatelhaare besitzen, dann erst jene, denen sie dort
fehlen. Die drei D o b s o n noch nicht bekannten Arten (sarasinorum,
astrolabiensis und loriae) habe ich den nächstverwandten angereiht.
Für das Verständniss der Beschreibungen seien folgende
Bemerkungen vorausgeschickt. Die Haare sind gemeinhin als
„Spatelhaare“ bezeichnet, und es werden im allgemeinen drei Grade
der Ausbildung unterschieden: t y p i s c h e Formen, entsprechend
den Figuren 4, 5, 7, 8 auf Tafel X, m i t t l e r e (Fig. 9, 16, 3) und
w e n i g a u s g e p r ä g t e (Fig. 10, auch 14 und 15). Die absolute
Länge der Haare ist, wie früher schon bemerkt, immer sehr gering.
Als gewöhnliches Durchschnittsmaass ist circa 1 mm anzusehen,
unter „sehr langen“ Haaren sind solche von etwa 2–2,5 mm Länge
(Fig. 1, 6, 14, 15) verstanden, unter „kurzen“ solche unter 1 mm (Fig.
2 a).
Die Figuren auf Tafel XI sollen in der Mehrzahl dazu dienen, eine
Anschauung von einigen typischen Anordnungen der Spatelhaare im
Gesichte verschiedener Molossiden-Arten zu geben. Es ist zu dem
Zwecke der Kopf fast durchweg in der Ansicht von vorn und etwas
von unten gezeichnet, sodass das Gebiet der Schnauze, der Ober-
und Unterlippe möglichst vollständig vor Augen liegt. In die
Umrisszeichnung aller dieser Theile sind dann unter Controlle
mittelst des Binoculars die Spatelhaare oder die ihnen
entsprechenden Borsten nach Zahl und Anordnung möglichst genau
eingetragen und durch Punkte oder durch Striche mit verdickten
Enden angedeutet. Andere als Spatelhaare oder ihre Vertreter sind
dabei nicht berücksichtigt.
Bei jeder Art werde ich, soweit sie mir bekannt geworden sind, auch
die Angaben früherer Autoren, die sich auf das Vorkommen dieser
Haare beziehen, anführen, in der Synonymie folge ich dabei der
Autorität von D o b s o n s Catalogue 1878.
Exemplare, die aus der Sammlung des Königlichen Naturalien-

Cabinets in Stuttgart hergeliehen waren, sind als solche
gekennzeichnet, die anderen, bei denen nichts bemerkt ist, gehören
dem Dresdener Museum. [43]
[Inhalt]
Molossi
Als erster und wohl auch einziger Autor, der auf den Besitz von
Spatelhaaren als einen allgemeinen Charakter der Gruppe
aufmerksam gemacht hat, ist B u r m e i s t e r zu nennen. In der
„System. Übers. d. Thiere Brasil. I. Säugethiere. Berl. 1854“ sagt er
(S. 66) bei der allgemeinen Charakteristik der Gattung Dysopes (=
Molossus und Nyctinomus): „Die breiten Lippen sind … mit einem
dichten Wimpernsaume besetzt; Schnurrhaare fehlen oder stehen
sehr vereinzelt, dagegen sieht man k u r z e , h a k e n f ö r m i g
a u f w ä r t s g e b o g e n e B o r s t e n i n d e n L i p p e n .“ 22
Ferner S. 67: „die Zehen sind kurz, dick, klein, ausserhalb mit
langen, steifen, gebogenen, abstehenden Wimperhaaren besetzt;
die erste und letzte Zehe etwas erweitert und u n t e r h a l b m i t
s t e i f e n H ä k c h e n b e k l e i d e t .“ 22 Offenbar sind hier die
Spatelhaare gemeint, die ja in der That bei geringer
Lupenvergrösserung von ihrer eigenthümlichen Form kaum mehr als
die Krümmung des oberen Endes erkennen lassen.
Aus B u r m e i s t e r s weiterer Darstellung geht übrigens hervor,

dass er die Haare mit Sicherheit nur bei zwei Molossus-Arten
(temmincki und perotis) und möglicherweise noch bei Molossus
rufus obscurus und Nyctinomus macrotis beobachtet hat. Die älteren
Angaben von H o r s f i e l d über Nyctinomus plicatus (vergl. unter
diesem) erwähnt er nicht. Aber wenn auch B u r m e i s t e r s
Verallgemeinerung demnach für jene Zeit wohl nicht ganz begründet
war, so ist sie doch jedenfalls richtig gewesen.
Daneben wäre noch A l l e n zu nennen, der in der allgemeinen

Einleitung zu seinem „Monograph of the Bats of North America“
(Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. 43, 12–13; 1893) unter der Rubrik „Haar“
folgende, allerdings viel weniger bestimmte, Bemerkung macht:
„Bristles (setae) usually surmount warts (verrucae) [sc. in der ganzen
Ordnung]. They are best developed on the face of Molossi, though
they may be found in the group last named on the upper surface of
the interfemoral membrane.“ „Fringes of bristles adorn the margins
of the toes in Molossi.“ Ich bemerke dazu, dass ich solche Borsten
auf der Rückenseite der Interfemoralmembran nur bei Cheiromeles
torquatus beobachtet habe, wo sie schon H o r s f i e l d bekannt
waren (vgl. später unter Cheiromeles). Allen giebt, soviel ich sehe,
für seine allgemein gehaltene Bemerkung keine speciellen Belege.
Nyctinomus Geoffr.
Arten mit Spatelhaaren im Gesicht
1. Nyctinomus plicatus (Buch. Ham.)
Tafel XI, Fig. 1 u. 1 a, Tafel X, Fig. 5, 9, 9 a, 10, 11, 16 u. 17
Von dieser weit — von Vorderindien bis Tasmanien — verbreiteten

Art standen mir zur Verfügung Exemplare von Port Darwin (N
Australien) 5 (Stuttgart), Jobi (Insel im Norden von NW Neu Guinea)
3, Java (SW) 1, Sumátra (NO) 1.
K o p f : Der obere Nasenlochrand tritt wulstig hervor und ist mit
Höckerchen besetzt, nach abwärts fliesst er in der Medianlinie mit
dem der anderen Seite zu einer kurzen Leiste zusammen. Letztere
besonders deutlich an dem Exemplare von Sumátra, demnächst an
denen von Australien. Oberlippe sehr dick, mit circa 10 tiefen
senkrecht zum Mundrande stehenden Falten. — Spatelhaare sehr
typischer Form mässig zahlreich auf dem Felde zwischen
Nasenlöchern und Mundrand, doch erst unterhalb der medianen
Leiste. Am seitlichen Mundrande weniger zahlreich, zu je 2–8 auf
den K ä m m e n der Falten bis nahe an den Mundwinkel, in den
F u r c h e n nicht. Form hier, je weiter seitwärts, um so weniger
typisch, doch vorwiegend noch mittel, aber auch Übergänge zu
Borsten einfacher Art (Fig. 11, 17 auf Tafel X). In den seitlichen
Parthieen des Gesichts entfernt vom Mundrande keine Spatelhaare,
wohl aber in den medianwärts gelegenen Theilen oberhalb der Nase
bis gegen die Ohren hin und zwar hier vorwiegend längere dicke
Borsten wenig ausgeprägter Form (wie in Fig. 14, 15, Tafel X). —
Auf dem Unterkiefer bei den Exemplaren von Port Darwin zerstreut
in zwei Gruppen nahe dem Mundwinkel, bei denen von Neu Guinea
und Java vereinzelt hier und da, bei dem von Sumátra fehlend.
Diese Borsten dick und wenig typisch, ähnlich Fig. 25, Tafel X. [44]
F ü s s e : Die Felder am äusseren Rande der ersten und fünften

Zehe dicht bestanden mit Spatelhaaren meist wenig ausgeprägter,
seltener der mittleren sich nähernder Form. Vom proximalen zum
distalen Ende des Feldes nehmen die Haare an Länge zu, so dass
sie z. Th. denen von Cheiromeles (Tafel X, Fig. 6) gleich kommen,
doch sind diese langen Formen am Ende nur ganz wenig verbreitert.
— Die langen (bis gegen 1 cm) gekrümmten Haare, die sich auf der
Dorsalseite der Nagelglieder a l l e r Zehen finden, endigen
zugespitzt, sind aber wie die Spatelhaare hell und glatt. Vollständige
Übergänge zwischen beiden Haarformen habe ich indessen nicht
beobachtet. Dies gilt auch für die folgenden Arten.
H o r s f i e l d in den Zoolog. Researches, London 1824 bemerkt
über das Gesicht seines N. tenuis (= plicatus) unter „Character
naturalis“: „Labrum laxum plicatum … v e r r u c i s p l u r i b u s
r u g o s u m , s e t i s q u e o b t u s i s o b s i t u m 23.“ Und später:
„The lips and lateral parts of the face are extremely rough, being
covered w i t h n u m e r o u s m i n u t e w a r t y p o i n t s , which
are i n d i v i d u a l l y t e r m i n a t e d b y a s h o r t s t i f f
b r i s t l e 23.“ Vermuthlich sind hier die Spatelhaare nebst der
muldenartigen Vertiefung der Haut an ihrem Grunde gemeint.
Ganz klar und zutreffend sind dagegen die Felder an den Füssen
beschrieben (H o r s f i e l d , Zool. Research. 1824, Nyctinomus
tenuis): „A series of delicate hairs, about one line in length, extends
along the whole of the exterior side both of the thumb and of the little
finger; a few hairs of a greater length are scattered through these
and likewise stretch forward, and spread over the claw. These hairs
rise nearly erect or vertically from the finger, and are not directed
horizontally outward, as in Cheiromeles. The separate hairs are bent
or hooked at the extremity; their colour is silvery gray. This regularly
defined series of hooked hairs must not be confounded with the long
lax hairs which are observed in all the fingers of the Nyctinomi, and
which, according to M. G e o f f r o y , must also be placed among the
generic characters.“
2. Nyctinomus sarasinorum A. B. M.
Tafel XI, Fig. 2 u. 2 a, Tafel X, Fig. 3, 4 u. 28
1 Exemplar von Central Celébes. Verhält sich dem vorhergehenden

sehr ähnlich. Spatelhaare auf dem Felde zwischen Nasenlöchern
und Mundrand sehr typisch, vielfach mit s-förmig gebogenem
Schafte. Seitwärts auf den senkrechten Wülsten verschwinden die
Haare in grösserer Entfernung vom Mundwinkel als bei plicatus.
Oben und medianwärts von der Nase lange Spatelhaare (wie Fig.
14, 15, Tafel X), aber sparsamer als bei plicatus. Unterkiefer ohne
Spatelhaare. — Die Felder an den Füssen etwas länger und
schmäler als bei plicatus, dicht mit Haaren wenig ausgeprägter Form
bestellt.
3. Nyctinomus bivittatus Hgl.
Tafel XI, Fig. 3, Tafel X, Fig. 7, 12, 12 a, 14, 15 u. 18
3 Exemplare von Keren, Bogos, NO Afrika (Stuttgart). Zwischen den

Nasenlöchern eine kurze senkrechte Leiste; Oberlippe mit tiefen
Falten. Unterhalb der Nasenlöcher und der medianen Leiste typische
Spatelhaare nicht sehr dicht gestellt, gegen den Mund hin in scharfer
gerader Linie abschneidend. Seitwärts unter Abnahme der typischen
Form zu 3–5 auf den Kämmen der Falten. Oberhalb der Nase lange,
wenig typische dicke Haare. Um von dieser Region eine
Anschauung zu geben, ist der Kopf dieser Art von der Seite
dargestellt. Auf dem Unterkiefer vereinzelt helle kurze, aber dicke,
wenig typische Spatelhaare. Unter den Haaren der „ersten Gruppe“
fand ich am Kopfe dieser Art solche mit fadenförmigem Anhang an
der Spitze (Fig. 12). — Form der Haare an den Füssen wenig
ausgeprägt.
4. Nyctinomus brachypterus (Ptrs.)
Tafel X, Fig. 13
1 Exemplar von Lagos, W Afrika (Stuttgart). Auf dem Felde zwischen

Nase und Mund ziemlich weitläufig kurze Spatelhaare, deren
Endplatte breit und ziemlich flach ist. Auf den Falten des seitlichen
Theiles der Oberlippe ebensolche, nur noch kürzer, so dass die
Endplatte fast unmittelbar über der Hautoberfläche steht. Die mittlere
Parthie des Gesichts oberhalb der Nase ganz ohne Spatelhaare.
Unter den am weitesten nach oben und medianwärts stehenden sind
einzelne von wenig ausgeprägter Form, deren [45]Endplatte einen
fadenförmigen Anhang trägt. — Unterkiefer frei. — Haare der Felder
an den Füssen ziemlich dicht und mittlerer Form sich nähernd.
5. Nyctinomus pumilus (Crtschm.)
Tafel X, Fig. 2 u. 2 a
2 Exemplare von Ägypten (Stuttgart), 1 von Massaua, O Afrika, 3

von Akusi, W Afrika (Stuttgart). Spatelhaare ähnlich wie bei plicatus
zwischen Nase und Mund, auf den Falten der Oberlippe und median
oberhalb der Nase, aber überall spärlich und vorwiegend nur mittlere
Formen. Einzelne, z. Th. sehr kurze, Haare (siehe die Figur) auf der
Spitze mit fadenförmigem Anhange. Die Haare auf dem Felde vorn
an der Schnauze zeigen, namentlich an einigen Exemplaren, eine
Sonderung in eine obere und untere Gruppe angedeutet, wie sie
schärfer bei der folgenden Art besteht. — Am Unterkiefer wenig
ausgeprägte Spatelhaare sehr spärlich jederseits nahe dem
Mundwinkel. — Felder an den Füssen ziemlich dicht behaart, Haare
am Ende meist nur wenig verbreitert.
6. Nyctinomus limbatus (Ptrs.)
Tafel XI, Fig. 4, Tafel X, Fig. 1 u. 8

Je 1 Exemplar von Quelimane, O Afrika (Stuttgart) und von Kama, W
Afrika. Unterhalb der Nasenlöcher und der zwischen ihnen
befindlichen medianen Leiste ziemlich typische Spatelhaare in zwei
zwar nahen, aber doch deutlich unterscheidbaren Gruppen, die sich
hauptsächlich in querer Richtung ausdehnen. Die Haare der oberen
Gruppe sind kürzer als die der unteren und stehen in 2–3 Reihen,
die der unteren nur in 1–2. Seitwärts auf den Falten der Oberlippe
minder typische Formen. Sehr lange dicke wenig ausgeprägte
Spatelhaare oberhalb der Nase bis gegen die Ohren hin. Unter
letzteren Haaren auch solche mit fadenförmigem Anhang an der
Endplatte (Fig. 1). — Am Unterkiefer wenig typische Haare ziemlich
spärlich nach den Mundwinkeln hin. — Auf den Feldern der Füsse
die Haare locker gestellt, am Ende nur wenig verbreitert.
Über diese Art bemerkt P e t e r s (Reise n. Mossambique. Zool. I.

Säugeth. 56, Berl. 1852): „Die Oberlippe ist dick, faltig, am Rande
gekerbt und m i t k u r z e n s t e i f e n H a a r e n b e s e t z t “ 24.
Dass hier die Spatelhaare gemeint sind, ergiebt ganz klar die
Betrachtung der Fig. 1 a auf Tafel XIV (daselbst). Die Spatelhaare
sind da vollkommen richtig in der Seitenansicht des Kopfes (ähnlich
wie in unserer Fig. 3 auf Tafel XI) durch Punkte und Striche vom
Zeichner angedeutet.
7. Nyctinomus angolensis Ptrs.
Tafel XI, Fig. 5
2 Exemplare von Madagascar. Das Feld zwischen Nase und

Mundrand mit Spatelhaaren mässig dicht bestanden; die einzelnen
Haare im oberen Theile des Feldes kürzer, nach unten hin länger, in
ziemlich scharfer Linie aufhörend; Endplatten ziemlich typisch, aber
nur mässig gegen den Schaft gebogen. Haare geringerer Ausbildung
auf den Wülsten der Oberlippe und oberhalb der Nase, hier wieder
sehr lange und wenig ausgeprägte Formen. — Auf dem Unterkiefer
kurze Spatelhaare von nur angedeuteter Form spärlich in zwei
Gruppen nach den Mundwinkeln hin. — An den Füssen die erste
Zehe sehr stark verdickt, die Haare auf ihr und der fünften Zehe sehr
locker gestellt und kaum am Ende verbreitert.
8. Nyctinomus astrolabiensis A. B. M.
1 Exemplar von Deutsch Neu Guinea. Spatelhaare mittlerer und

geringerer Ausbildung in einfacher Reihe längs des medianen Theils
des oberen Mundrandes. Nach letzterem zu schliesst sich dann, wie
auch bei norfolcensis, noch eine Reihe von Borsten anderer Art (Fig.
19) an. Auf den seitlichen Parthieen der schwach gerunzelten
Oberlippe spärlich meist wenig ausgeprägte Spatelhaare. Sonst im
Gesichte fehlend. — Felder an den Füssen nach Form und
Ausdehnung ähnlich wie bei sarasinorum (vgl. Fig. 2 a auf Tafel XI),
sehr dicht mit am Ende wenig verbreiterten Haaren besetzt. [46]
9. Nyctinomus norfolcensis (Gr.)
1 Exemplar von N. S. Wales. Spatelhaare mittlerer Form in einfacher

Reihe im medianen Theile der Schnauze längs des äusseren
Randes der Oberlippe; spärlich an ihrem seitlichen ziemlich glatten
Abschnitt. Oberhalb der Nase fehlend. — Auf dem Unterkiefer sehr
vereinzelt helle Haare von kaum angedeuteter Form. — Haare an
den Füssen mässig dicht, wenig ausgeprägt.
10. Nyctinomus loriae Thos.
2 Exemplare von Brit. Neu Guinea. Am Kopf helle, wenig

ausgeprägte Spatelhaare spärlich in einer Reihe nahe dem
Mundrand auf dem medianen Theile der Oberlippe, sonst fehlend. —
Haare an den Füssen mit kaum verbreitertem Ende.
Arten ohne Spatelhaare im Gesicht
11. Nyctinomus brasiliensis Is. Geoffr.
Da bei dieser Art die den Spatelhaaren homologen Borsten am

besten entwickelt sind, so möge sie hier ohne Rücksicht auf die
systematische Ordnung zuerst besprochen werden.
2 Exemplare von Brasilien, 1 von Guatemala (Stuttgart). Unterhalb

der Nase zahlreiche dünne in unsere „erste Gruppe“ zu rechnende
Borsten. Nur bei éinem Exemplare von Brasilien unter ihnen spärlich
auch dicke der anderen Art. Letztere bei allen Exemplaren zahlreich
weiter seitwärts auf den Wülsten der Oberlippe sowie oberhalb der
Nase, hier z. Th. von beträchtlicher Länge (Fig. 27). — Am
Unterkiefer solche Borsten zerstreut jederseits von der Mittellinie.
Die Enden der Borsten, besonders der längeren, vielfach pinselartig
aufgefasert. — Felder an den Füssen ziemlich dicht mit Haaren
besetzt, die im ganzen etwas abgeplattet, am oberen Ende aber
nicht verbreitert sind, im übrigen den Haaren an den Füssen der
bisher besprochenen Arten gleichen.

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Feminism and the Western in Film and

Television 1st ed. Edition Mark E.

Feminism and the

ISBN 978-3-319-77000-0 ISBN 978-3-319-77001-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936577

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: chipstudio/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

1 Introduction: Is the Western an Inherently

2 Women Professionals in 1930s’ Film: Westerns

3 Women and Westerns in the Films of the 1940s 47

4 Women and Western Films in the Cold War 75

5 After the Cold War: From the 1990s’ Interregnum

6 Women and Television Westerns, 1954–2001 129

7 Conclusion: Some Reflections on Women, Violence

Introduction: Is the Western an Inherently

Critical studies of Westerns in film and fiction not uncommonly describe

© The Author(s) 2018 1

was as an Edenic garden to be cultivated and shared by men and women

“Indians and Mormons” and “claimed women’s right to […] discover

of the genre’s demography. Either way, first- and second-wave feminism

implementing a rhetoric of inclusion to enable readers with many takes

both seek companionship based on intellectual and sexual compatibility,

post-colonial conceptions of manifest destiny in the Old West. All of

essentialist assumptions about women and morality (4). Indeed, Gillis

ignore issues about colonialism and environment, they eventually turn

Women Professionals in 1930s’ Film:

The sound era is an appropriate place to begin our survey of women

© The Author(s) 2018 17

individualism,” the Progressives focused on “efficiency” in creating

throughout Dye’s and Muncy’s analyses, concomitant results were also

Interestingly, Hapke sees forms of rebellion against this culture in

for her to subordinate herself to her husband. She is capable of achieving

Still, even this ending is wrought with fascinating ambiguities and

Annie Oakley (1935)

who blends her public role as a professional sharp shooter in Buffalo

can manage. In short, the Western paradigm can be made to recognize

The Plainsman (1936)

Hickock’s attitudes toward women and marriage are complex. Asked

His reputation is safe because as General Merritt has said to Cody, as

image of the female professional results not in amnesia but in tortured

Union Pacific (1939)

Die Spatelhaare an den Füssen sind abweichend von denen im

In anderer Richtung deuten auf eine innere Verwandtschaft der

Diese eigentümliche Form hat ein Seitenstück unter den modificirten

Als ich, noch im Anfange der Untersuchung, den Anhang an den

Vergegenwärtigen wir uns die Entwicklung dieser Haare, so ist klar,

Einen analogen Vorgang können wir vielleicht aus der

Bei einigen Arten der Gattung Nyctinomus kommen im Gesicht

Besonderes Interesse bietet in dieser Hinsicht Cheiromeles

Im Gesichte besitzt Cheiromeles unterhalb der Nasenlöcher eine

An den seitlichen Theilen des Gesichts, wo die Molossus- und

Eine Eigenthümlichkeit dieser Borsten bei N. brasiliensis und

Was die Frage nach der f u n c t i o n e l l e n B e d e u t u n g der

Auch die Angaben über die Lebensgewohnheiten der Molossiden,

Die Haare im Gesichte mögen, wenn sie doch als Tasthaare zu

Die Zehen benutzen die Fledermäuse allgemein, um den Pelz zu

Für eine solche Untersuchung käme zunächst der europäische