FREE ESSAY ON WOMEN IN WESTERNS

WOMEN IN WESTERNS

Women in Westerns
Women's roles in western movies are very diversified. Although the roles are very
different from each other, they are very stereotypical. Almost all women characters in
western movies play one of the following: a mother, school teacher, prostitute, or an
outlaw.
Through comparing three western movies, all ranging in different eras from 1932 to 1994,
it is clearly shown that whether it's the loving mother or town prostitute,
women characters often play a minor part compared to the men, yet they are very important
to the whole development of the film.
Jean Aurther plays a very loving mother and wife in the 1952 film Shane. The opening
scene perfectly depicts the stereotypical mother. She stands near a window washing
dishes. She is watching her son play outside. A strange man rides up on his horse and
begins to talk to the little boy. The woman peers out the window at the hansom mysterious
man. As he catches her looking at him she quickly hides her face as if not to be seen.
Her husband then comes out to talk to the stranger. The window and her face is always
seen in the background as the two men talk but she often hides from the view of the
window. Finally she comes outside and stands next to her husband without speaking as her
husband introduces "the little woman" to the stranger.
This opening scene depicts the woman as inferior to her husband. She is doing housework
in the background and is not heard. She does not speak except for the polite invitation
for dinner to the stranger. She then silently leaves the scene to go inside to finish up
fixing the dinner.
Jean Aurther's character as the "typical" wife tends to all of the household duties
including all of the cooking and cleaning and takes care of the garden. She is always
looking after the little boy making sure that he is not getting into any trouble.
During the dinner scene the wife does all of the serving at the table. She sits down as
the men eat but does not eat dinner herself and does not speak unless a question is asked
by her husband. She serves the dessert and clean up afterward.
The other women in this film are represented in the same manner. In the town store, women
and girls are folding clothing silently as they watch what goes on around them. As a
fight breaks out in the saloon that is joined to the store, the women run out and hide
for their safety. Men joke around with each other as they complain about their wives
taking too long to get ready to go to town. They then admit that it's worth the wait
because they are so beautiful.
Women in this movie are depicted as very worrisome. They discourage their husbands from
fighting in a begging manner that is over dramatized. They just want everyone to get
along and stay away from gruesome fights that might lead to shooting. They act the same
way towards their children as they are always worried about them staying out of trouble
and getting to bed at an decent time.
They are good mothers and wives yet that is all they are depicted as. The women in the
movie Shane are flat characters and we only see one side of them thus giving the
stereotypical view that women are only valuable for the services they provide for the
family.
In The Shootist, released in 1976 only has three women characters in the whole film. Two
are very minor characters and one is a main character. Although two are minor, each woman
depicts a very different role. There is the pure, the evil, and the hardworking. 
The leading lady is also a wife and a mother but she is very different from Jean
Aurthur's character in Shane. Mrs. Rogers played by Lauren Bacall is a widowed mother of
a teenager who runs a hotel service from her home. Bacall's character is a very stern and
orderly woman and is very meticulous about running the hotel efficiently. Mrs. Rogers
puts up a very tough front perhaps due to the trauma of losing her husband only one year
prior.
She politely invites a stranger to stay in her home, not knowing that he is a famous
gunslinger dying of cancer, yet lays down the rules immediately. She has no problem
telling anyone her opinion whether it is a man or a woman. 
When Mrs. Rogers finds out that the man is actually the well known gunman J.B.Books, she
is very angry. She didn't want that kind of presence staying in her home and she is mad
that he lied to her about his identity. She, without hesitation, proclaims her
disapproval to Books. He then reveals to her that he is dying. Mrs. Rogers feels sympathy
for Books and tells him she has no intentions of throwing him out, yet she still put up
an angry front.
The presence of the Shootist drives out the other lodgers. This angers Mrs. Rogers but
she feels she can't abandon Books in this time of need. She tends to his meals and cleans
his clothes and does favors if he asks, but all along she openly voices her distaste to
Books about his life style and his actions. There is a connection that happens, perhaps a
mutual attraction between the two but Mrs. Rogers worries about what others might think
of her. She even breaks into tears in front of her son about Books cancer, but she would
never let the shootist see her cry. She never lets her guard down.
Mrs. Rogers tends to Books needs up until the day he died but still did not approve of
him.
Mrs. Rogers is a very strong character who although still takes care of a man's needs, is
very opinionated about voicing her aversion for it. She unlike the character in Shane is
not a flat character. Her emotions and sympathetic behavior is actually felt and
understood by the viewer.
The other two female parts in this movie are very minor yet very opposite. An old
girlfriend of Books comes into town after hearing the bad news about him. She seems
sympathetic towards him at first and he mistakes her moral support. She wanted to marry
him to carry his name into a book deal about Books's life that would written by the
famous "Mrs. Books". This offended Books and he threw her out. He did not want to be
remembered by a fiction story in a book. As the woman is leaving she wishes a horrid and
painful death to Mr. Books. She is a nasty greedy character who makes the viewers even
more sympathetic to the dying gunman.
The last female character is on the train when Book boards. She is smiling and announces
what a beautiful day it is outside. She is young and pretty and full of pure innocence.
She enlightens Books and he smiles for the first time in the movie. It is his birthday as
well as the day he dies. The girl brings a sense of completion into Books life. Even
though it has been full of killing and cruelty she brings morality that Books can truly
appreciates.
In the third 1994 movie, Quick and the Dead, the female role is completely different from
the first two movies. Sharon Stone plays a leading woman role that is much like a typical
male hero in a western movie. The hero rides into town, saves the day, and then rides off
into the sunset just as mysteriously as he came in.
Although Stone is similar to a male in a western, the woman has a more developed
character. By the end of the movie we know of her past and more background than we would
typically know about a male character.
As the male dressed woman rides into town she acts very masculine. She smokes a cigar as
she walks into the saloon. She orders a drink and sits down. She is rude to anyone that
tries to talk to her including the young girl who says she's never seen a woman with a
gun before. Men still look at her as a sex object and don't really take her toughness
seriously. She comes back at them with a smart remark and a careless attitude. 
Stone's character acquires the name "The Lady" while in the first bar scene and that what
she is known by throughout the film.
Her past is told by flashbacks of her father's death. As a little girl, it was up to her
to save he father's life but in result she was cause of his death. This was of course a
traumatizing ordeal that had affected her life. Perhaps that is why she comes across to
others in the town at first as a tough, masculine type character.
This is where we see more depth into "The Lady". She has such strong guilt and love for
her father and such hatred towards the town mayor who she realizes is the one that handed
her the gun that day. She defends the good in the town and looks after the other women.
This is shown when Lady kills a man for having sex with a young girl. She then feels bad
for killing another human being. Her emotions are very prevalent to the viewer causing
sympathy towards the character. This is what sets her aside from a typical male in a
western.
Ironically enough The Lady saves a preacher in the same situation that she had killed her
father, which results, into her participation of the town's shooting contest. Her aim and
gun skills had obviously improved and the viewers are left unsure what has happened in
her life since she was a little girl. 
She gets upset at the fact that the preacher used to be an outlaw despite the fact that
he has changed his ways. She dislikes those who kill and doesn't want to be a part of the
shooting contest.
Stone's character has one very feminine moment in this film. She is invited to dinner
from her enemy. She uses her femininity as a weapon and shows up to dinner in a beautiful
dress. This again gives more depth into her character. It brings out the true sensitive
woman inside of her that she likes to keep hidden behind a very tough front.
During the shooting scenes, the Lady is scared. She is nervous and does not want to be
put in this situation. Lady honestly doesn't want to hurt anyone innocent. Her hatred
makes her determined to see the mayor dead in the end. She uses quick thinking and
ultimately gets him back in the end. She then of course is the hero of the town and then
rides off alone, perhaps a more healed person. Lady had resolved issues that had been
stirring deep inside of her for so many years.
Although not present in any of these films, saloon girls are often part of western
movies. These prostitutes are looked at only as sex objects by male characters. This type
of representation is demeaning and unrealistic for women. Much like the loving mother,
prostitutes are flat characters with no known background. This again gives a one sided,
stereotypical view of the woman.
In these three movies, women are depicted very differently. Even though the films were
created years apart, there is one thing that they all have in common. Women are important
support characters in western movies. They bring in a different flavor into the film no
matter what type of character they are represented as.
Women should not be overlooked as minor background characters because if females were not
present, the western would not be complete.
Bibliography
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