A Novel Post Modern Take
On the Western Novel
Evelyn Smith, Ph. D. in English, Texas Christian University (1995)
M.S., in Information Science, University of North Texas (2012)
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| Emma & Mayme Dickerson, early Texas telephone operators |
First of all, this review needs to come with a warning: Readers need to explore Jim Fergus’ alternative history western without any preconceived biases that reviewers might impose upon the work. Critics either love the novel or pan it primarily because of its anachronisms, such as May Dodd’s use of the words “ethnographer” and “bourgeoisie”, and its stereotyping of many of the female characters, or else reviewers praise it as a “fresh twist on the traditional Western” as the San Antonio Express did.
But even as readers labor not to let any reviews guide what would otherwise be a leisurely read of a “female western”, if they are familiar with the traditional romantic novel’s format, this familiarity will effect whether they are willing to allow a willing suspension of disbelief. Accordingly, readers will either admire Fergus’ homage to the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood by naming one of Dodd’s sidekicks Martha Atwood and pride themselves on catching his veiled reference to Isabella Bird’s A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879) in his depiction of Helen Elizabeth Flight's eccentricities, or else Fergus’ tongue in cheek cribbing will get in the way of the story.
Admittedly, this reviewer confesses that after Dodd took up with the Cheyenne, the musical theme from Dances with Wolves kept wafting through her mind. All of which should remind readers that when trekking along with Dodd, they carry a lot of literary and historical baggage.
Questions to Consider
Although
Fergus perhaps had Dee Brown’s historical best-seller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), in mind as he wrote the
novel, movies like Dances with Wolves and The
Last of the Mohicans undoubtedly influence the post-modern audience’s view
of Manifest Destiny just as much as John Wayne’s movies and Zane Grey’s
westerns have influenced readers. Do earlier depictions of the settlement of
the American West effect the enjoyment of the novel, or is it possible for
average readers to separate Dodd’s adventures from what they have previously
read or seen? This review contends that it's almost impossible to read One Thousand White Women without making these comparisons, as the following questions suggest:
- In the author’s interview at the end of the novel, Fergus emphasizes that he took great care not to stereotype the Native American characters. Even so, Fergus stereotypes Dodd’s fellow travelers at every turn. Certainly, authors can craft memorable ethnic characters such as Willa Cather’s My Antonia without stereotyping them while some novelists, like Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, use stereotyped ethnic characters to further emphasize their novel’s theme. In One Thousand White Women, do these stereotypes undercut the theme of the novel, or do they emphasize it?
- Does Dodd’s smugness get in the way of her being seen by readers as a sympathetic character? In answering this question, think back to novels where an unconventional strong minded nineteenth-century woman is a novel’s central character; for example, George Eliot’s Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss. Social critics during the nineteenth-century classified unmarried women as a social problem. Would such a stigma be enough of a problem that some women were willing to marry into a group of people most European-Americans believed to be savages? When pondering this question, consider the fact that one of the two locales that legalized prostitution during the nineteenth century in the United States was Waco, Texas where the city fathers confined prostitutes to an area known as “The Reservation”.
- Is this a romance novel, or does it focus on female friendships?
- Did class differences really come that much into play in the 19th-century in the American Midwest?
A Selected Annotated Bibliography
Daniel’s Reviews. One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd. (2009, January). Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/40630062
While May Dodd’s tale is “reasonably well written”, Fergus gives a 19th-century woman a 21st-century, liberated woman’s viewpoint. Responding to this blog’s initial review, readers’ commentary further debates the merits of the novel.
D. L. P. (2011, August). Book review: One Thousand White Women. Candid Culture. Retrieved from http://ireadcandidculture.blogspot.com/2010/08/book-review-one-thousand-white-women.html
Classifying One Thousand White Women as speculative fiction, the reviewer cautions that reviewers are harshly divided while he or she takes a more ambivalent course. Admittedly, D. L. P. cautions that the novel is shallow with an insipid plot and an author over sensitive to criticism; but then again, the average thriller shares these traits.
One Thousand White Women. (1998, March 1). Kirkus Review. Retrieved from
http://www.kirkusreviews.com.book-reviews/jim-fergus/one-thousand-white-women/#review
http://www.kirkusreviews.com.book-reviews/jim-fergus/one-thousand-white-women/#review
The reviewer finds much to like while summarizing a “long brisk charming first novel” as he or she finds it “an impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting”.
Reiss, Jane. (2011, October 11). One Thousand White Women and religious stereotypes. Beliefnet. Retrieved from http://blog.belief.net/flunkingsainthood/20
Reiss
bemoans Fergus’ stereotypes, most particularly of the religious characters, in
this female western while also noting that the plot is the standard cultural
exchange story—characters from a supposedly superior culture find themselves
changed by their interaction with a hunter-gatherer society.
