View source for 426--Week 11 Questions/Comments--Tuesday

I thought the ethnic differences in courting were incredible.  Spanish courtships was not unlike that pursued by Anglos, with more strictures.  The Native American courting rituals where the man sits at the foot of the woman's bed with her grandmother as a chaperone was kind of creepy and seemed really archaic.  What would you be thinking if your grandmother woke you up in the middle of the night with a guy sitting there watching you?  The creep-factor aside, I thought it and other NA methods of courtship were really interesting. -Lacey

I have to agree with Lacey on the creep factor.  Heh, that would disturb me greatly... more so with my mom's mom than dad's mom... but the thought gives me shivers.  I do have to say I liked how Riley incorporated so many different groups into the book, it gave a lot of easy C/C on the spot.  --Ashley Wilkins

I also would have to agree with both of you on the Native American courtship methods. But I think its also important to remember that the purpose of the book was to introduce the diversity of western marriage and families, and how they are associated today with the highest divorce rates in the nation.  I think the courtship chapter makes it clear that the limited contact between male and females of most cultures limited the options for whom they could marry and thus forced relationships.  Of course there were other factors as well. I was very intrigued by the common portrayal of women in these cultures. Would a rise in individualism among women in the west result because of strict familial patterns?  Or is it their portrayal in the journals, newspapers, forms of media of the day. Example: the woman who put herself as an add in the Waterloo, Iowa paper for courtship and then being compared to a piece of household furniture by an editor in an editorial. --Joe C.  

The first half of this book is interesting.  I like Riley's use of the term "cultural layering."  I also noticed that she used the phrase "women of color" like the authors from last week.  The practices of courtship and marriage certainly varied a lot between groups.  Some practices were shocking to me, like the picture brides marrying someone based on correspondence!  I had a small problem with Riley's discussion however.  I know that she was trying to show the dichotomy with the groups in the West, but I feel like Native Americans need their own assessment.  Their traditions may seem weird to us, but that is heightened when you take groups out of their context.  I don't feel it's right to lump them together like you can perhaps get away with (like her use of Anglo or Chicana) but the Chippewa can't be examined with tribes of the Southwest.  Also, their experience was different because unlike the other groups, they did not emigrate from another country.  I like her thesis though, that the interaction among and within families caused conflict.--Amanda 

I think you could say that about a number of the groups. I agree that I thought the same thing about her depiction of Native American rituals and practices, that even her descriptions of the different tribes contrasted each other. But look at the other groups, too. The "Anglos" included English, French, Irish, etc. The practices and rituals of each of these ethnic groups are as varied. Compare them to the Slavs and Jews and we're all over the place. - Celia

I thought it was really helpful how Riley showed how the different groups of people dealt with issues like courting for example.  Having the different groups right next to each other in certain categories really made the similarities and differences easier to notice. Writing it this way made her point a lot easier for me to understand and I felt like I retained a lot more information. -- Kari W.  

Riley starts chapter one with an argument that high divorce rates in the West are probably a sign that courtship methods were flawed. She backs this up by saying that it is reasonable to assume that poorly matched spouses are more likely to divorce. I don't agree with Riley's assumption. I can see her logic, but I think that divorce rates are more closely tied to expectations about marriage (emotional fulfillment, compatibility, etc) and the acceptability of divorce than to methods of courtship. -- Rebecca

I thought that this book has been quite fascinating so far. It's just more proof that we can't divide America into the North, South, East, and West and say 'this is how it was.' We bring up movies and books alot in class (ok, I bring up movies and books alot) but the part in Chapter 1 where men looked for women who would be able to work along side them and provide good domestic help reminded me of the movie "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." Also, the section about mail order brides and the men and women who advertised for spouses and wrote to each other reminded me of an obscure Judy Garland film called "Harvey Girls" where she goes out west to marry a man she had been writing to, only to be disapointed when she arrives. - Celia

Celia - I love that "Harvey Girls and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."  You're not alone in that.  -Kelly W.

The Native American courting rituals were crazy.  I don't even understand where some of them came from.  Courting and marriage practices seemed to vary drastically amongst the different ethnic groups.  I find the difference between the different groups interesting. -- Kellye S

I agree with Rebecca that poorly matched spouses was not more likely to cause divorce.  There have been many cases of arranged marriages that worked out fine and did not end in divorce.  People who were in situations like that dealt with the fact that their marriage was arranged and many times actually ended up eventually loving that person.  I think that the elements in living and surviving in the West along with the high expectations about marriage were the main causes of divorce. -- Kari 
W.  

I feel like Riley romanticizes Native American culture. She keeps making these sweeping, positive generalizations about aspects of Native American culture. Like on the bottom of page 53 she says "Ojibway women and men worked at different duties, yet extended mutual respect to each other and their work." Isn't that a pretty big claim? Another example is on page 18, "Despite the grace and civility of Native American methods of identifying mates..." I would not characterize their courtship methods that way. It seems like too much of a value judgment, which I believe is not super useful in a historical analysis, since value judgments are so much a product of one's own perspective. -- Rebecca

Going off of Celia's comment, as historians we tend to like when things fit into neat little boxes and unfortunately, this book and the Johnson article just elaborates on how impossible that is.  The American West is such a broad topic to cover that no two families were truly alike.  The American West in the nineteenth century especially since it was such a transitional time for some white families traveling out west and since they were now interacting with Native American families who had a completely different lifestyle in general. Unfortunately for historians, there was no "typical nineteenth century family" and I feel like we keep coming back to this point each week, just more and more disappointed about how true it is. -Kelly W. 

I also really enjoyed reading the first two chapters of Riley's text on Western families. However, the structure of the work was confusing at times. The second chapter in particular, I felt, may have been easier to follow if the pros and cons of each aspect of marriage had been grouped together instead of in two separate sections. I did enjoy the fact that she spoke to the experiences of a variety of races, even though, as Rebecca has pointed out, she does make rather broad generalizations about some of the groups, particularly Native Americans. --Sarah Gardner 

I found this book very interesting.  I thought some of the traditions and practices the author discussed were unique, and I enjoyed reading about them.  The thing I liked the most about this book was it’s breadth.  I like that more than one or two groups or kinds of people were touched on.  I feel that all too often, when a book is focused on one particular group of people, the reading gets slow.  This was a nice change. –Andrew B

On the bottom of pg. 25 Riley makes the claim that many courting rituals simply disappeared due to the diverse traditions clashing and then eventually ending. From what we’ve seen so far rituals and practices of marriages and courtships are certainly diversified across the region: ethnically, religiously, and differentiated by class. These rituals and practices also changed. I think it is a tough statement to make. Instead, I would argue that practices simply changed with the times and cultural changes, as does the notion of family, and that this practice happened throughout American society, not just the West. I personally would need more concrete examples to understand Riley’s point about courtship rituals. – Mary Beth 

I found it very interesting that intermarried couples not only had difficulties in find a job but also a place to live.  The couples were subjugated against based on the spouse with the lowest rank in society.--Joyce


== Pictures ==
I really liked the pictures provided on pages 33-41.  They provided the idealized woman stereotype and what women actually did and wore.  The pictures also allowed a glimpse at what people wore to weddings, including the traditional garb and adopted American garb as shown in picture number 12. --Ashley Wilkins

I have to agree with you as well Ashley.  But the pictures section also reminded me of how men and women sent pictures of each other through letters as a way of courting.  Would these be the type of pictures that women would send to men in the west? A few of them seem to show that women's domestic duties included work outside the home, especially pictures taken of the Native American women. --Joe C.

I don't think these pictures were the kind that women were sending to the men, rather the ones of the native women might have been a part of a photographic study and the others for record keeping purposes or to send home to the photograph.  This was the era where photographs took off, as well as the concept of sending "family portraits" to friends and family.  I thought the contrast between ethnic modes of dress displayed in the portraits quite interesting.  It is also neat that you can see that the people who lived then liked to mix and match their ethnic clothing with American styles of dress.  It is quite fascinating looking at that from the viewpoint of assimilation. -Lacey

The one picture that really stood out to me was the one of Lake Andes in South Dakota.  As we grow up we're taught about a stereotypical "western story" with the saloons and the ranches, so seeing that the towns when they were first being settled actually did look like this kind of surprised me.  But it was also comforting to know that this typical western town wasn't complete fallacy.  -Kelly W.

I agree with Ashely about the inclusion of the pictures in Riley's work. I really felt that they added to the text. One picture that struck me was the one of Doctors from Hawaii. The caption states that "married couples often combined cultures in their dress." Did anyone else notice that it was the woman who was maintaining the traditional dress in this image while the man had adopted American clothing? I wonder if this image is also speaking to the fact that men were more likely to adopt American ways then women or if women were more likely to try and hold on to traditional customs? --Sarah Gardner

The “wanted” picture of the runaway wife seems a little strange to me.  The caption reads, “For the recovery, or information leading to the recovery.”  It sounds as if the woman is a murderer or something, or a lost dog.  –Andrew B

The picture 11, of the bridegroom couple portrait-it looks like the groom is much older than the bride, which was not unusual I suppose but I still feel bad for her! She barely looks 15 and he is probably in his 30s.---Joyce