
The Important Things of Life
Women, Work, and Family in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1880-1929
Dee Garceau(Author)
University of Nebraska Press
Published on 15. January 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-0-8032-4348-4 (ISBN)
Description
Sweetwater County lies in southwestern Wyoming, and has stood as a significant symbolic geography for the "new Western Woman's" history. As the county in which Elinore Pruitt Stewart (Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Nebraska 1990) said she proved up her homestead in 1913, it is a fitting locale for the study of western gender relations. The Important Things of Life examines women's work and family lives in Sweetwater County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 1880's discovery of coal caused a population boom, attracting immigrants from numerous ethnic groups. At the same time, liberalized homestead law drew sheep and cattle ranchers. Dee Garceau demonstrates how survival on the ranching and mining frontier heightened the value of group cooperation in ways that bred conservative attitudes toward gender. Augmented by reminiscences and oral histories, Garceau traces the adaptations that broadened women's work roles and increased their domestic authority. Hers is a compelling portrait of the American West as a laboratory of gender role change, in which migration, relocation, and new settlement underscored the development of new social identities.
Reviews / Votes
"An important contribution to the history of women and families in the West and ... to the larger history of women in America and to the history of immigration."-Elliott West, author of Growing Up in America in the Twentieth Century: A History and Reference Guide -- Elliott West "A compelling portrait of the changing informal networks that women of many ethnicities and different class backgrounds used in town and on the range."-Karen R. Merrill, Princeton University -- Karen R. MerrillMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
illus, maps
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
354 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8032-4348-4 (9780803243484)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Dee Garceau
The Important Things of Life
Women, Work, and Family in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1880-1929
E-Book
01/2022
1st Edition
University of Nebraska Press
€20.99
Available for download
Person
Dee Garceau is an assistant professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis Tennessee.