However, if Turner could step out of his own cultural biases and see women on the frontier for their real contributions, his theories would have read differently.
Migration to the west was done by families and family groups. Other than the early fur traders, later migrations involved family units. Women were the ones to maintain homesteads and stake their claim to the new world. Women were the ones to set down permanent roots in the new frontier. Their role as keepers of the home and children cannot be minimized, as these very activities were the ones that made occupation of the west a permanent endeavor. Without the women to perform their pre-determined jobs as keepers of the home and hearth, occupation of the west would have been a transient affair.
The women were considered the keepers of society and morality. It was their job to make certain that culture was maintained in the home. In the beginning, settlements were isolated, but they later grew into more complex structures. Women helped to shape the larger scheme of frontier culture by the way they kept their homes and the values that they instilled in their children within their cabin walls. The values that they instilled in their children became the values of the new frontier and eventually the new nation.
One of the most important contributions of frontier women arose from the situation in which they were placed. Unlike their city cousins in the east, frontier women were often placed in survival situations where they had to break traditional jobs in order to survive. They hunted and defended themselves. They had to do what they had to do to survive. This position often made them break traditional gender roles, thus redefining traditional roles. They were rugged and independent, an admirable quality the Turner attributes to frontier men, not women.
This newfound freedom and independence was a result of isolation from the rest of society. Eastern values were not likely to be reinforced on the frontier. There was no one to chastise a woman for breaking...
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