Exploring the Frontier: A Deeper Understanding of the Wild West - Essay Sample

Introduction

The frontier is depicted as a total wilderness where there is no civilization. The paths that are chosen are full of plains and shrubs, not yet fully developed. The depiction of the West and the frontier by Tommy Lee Jones in the Homesman is true as it offers a deeper understanding of the area. I previously stereotyped the frontier as a place that was very cold and backward in terms of civilization, and its people were barbaric. However, I got insight into how different the people were. Some of the hardships that face the people of the West include the cold winter which causes them to freeze and die. The people have to keep warm to avoid the wrath of the cold and have to store food to avoid starvation. The people are also faced by disease, violence and poor harvest all of which threaten their lives. The women are faced with insanity; they are driven mad by the harsh life at the frontier and their men. Moving to the east to deliver the women bears challenges to both the women and the men. On their journey, Cuddy and the rest are faced by hostile natives, freighters who kidnap them, the death of Cuddy and cold weather that at times becomes unbearable.

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The men and the women at the frontier have different experiences majorly caused by their respective gender roles. The hardships of the frontier lead three women into depression and later madness after Arabella loses her three children to Diphtheria. Gro Svendsen is sad after the death of her mother and driven to the edge by domestic violence. Theoline who is forced to murder one of her children because she did not want to risk starvation after the poor harvest. Women are treated as servants to men. They are treated as the weaker gender. They mainly take part in house chores while the men do business around the frontier. Cuddy was transporting the three women back to the east to seek medical attention for their mental instability. The women were to be taken to a church in Hebron in Lowa. The men at the frontier all refuse to take the women, so Cuddy volunteers to take a man's spot at the lottery and the responsibility falls on her. The husbands to the three women view them with disappointment and pity that would be shown towards broken tools and are not up for the task of taking them east. The situation illuminates the stereotype that women were viewed as tools at the service of men and expected to submit to their will.

Cuddy is strong-willed and builds her life through her business. She intimidates men, and the idea of marriage becomes a distant one to her. She seems independent and self-sufficient, but the fact that she is single makes her lonely and depressed. She propositions men such as Bob Giffen and George Briggs in a quest to fill the void she feels. Cuddy's gender role is to be a wife and bear children. She looks forward to being married to get a partner to help her build her legacy. Cuddy as a woman is self-sufficient, but society expects her to be humble and less productive to get a husband. She is expected to submit to a man and be meek to fit the role the society has placed upon her. Cuddy feels like she has failed in getting herself a partner and in being a woman, and this drives her to commit suicide.

Briggs realizes the kind of hardships that the West presents especially for a woman. After his encounter with the three women who become mad due to the atrocities they face at the frontiers, he feels for the female gender. He does not want the girl to go through the same trouble and therefore advised her to stay. His interactions with Cuddy and her suicide also prompt him to ask the girl to remain in the east where there is civilization instead of going west where misogyny is heightened. Briggs, however, chooses to go back to the frontier since he feels that the east, the civilized town of Iowa, is not a place for a man like him. Briggs has spent a better part of his life at the frontier and feels like that is where he belongs. He does not think that civilization is for a man like himself and opts for the harsh conditions that await him in the west. The wild territories of the west feel much safer than the new civilized east.