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영어

The American West was the society in which women were in bondage to their male counterparts. Women were obliged to conform to the social codes which set certain standards of what women should be. Their roles were confined within the carefully defined sphere of women's place. Women had to remain domestic and demure, and they required masculine guidance and protection. Literary traditions about women in the West and on the Plains, view women as vehicles for enlarging the male hero's sense of the challenge and terror of the land. Most women characters are conceived as conventionalized, standardized, or melodramatic types shaped by the concepts of heroines in historical and sentimental romances. The stereotypes of these women are not derived from the reality of women's lives but from the nineteenth century conventions of what women should be. However, with the emergence of the intellectual currents and social changes reflected in realism, naturalism, and feminism, there is evidence of a new image of female heroines who represent “new women.” Western American writers such as Willa Cather, Hamlin Galand, Marie Sandoz now begin to portray women as central figures of their plots. They, growing up in the Midwest during the passing of the frontier era, belong to the West and witness its change and development. They all use biographical elements in presenting the changing images of women in the West. Garland's works specially represent the man's viewpoint toward the new woman and his sympathy with women who try to liberate themselves from social constraint. Heroines in Main-Travelled Roads represent new women who have a choice to do what they want to do, and they are in control of their own destiny.