True women & westward expansion - Caughfield, Adrienne (Texas A & M University Press, 2005)
Paralleltitel: True women and westward expansion
Includes bibliographical references (p. [165]-174) and index
Domesticity and expansionism -- Cultivating the "Garden of the South-West" -- Women and Texas independence -- Fighting for the cause of civilization -- A feeling of destiny -- Slavery and expansion -- A magnificent empire -- Of politics and true womanhood
"Adrienne Caughfield mines the diaries and letters of ninety Texas women to uncover the ideas and enthusiasms they brought to the Western frontier. Although there were a few notable exceptions, most of the women drew on their domestic skills and values to establish not only "civilization" but also their own security. Caughfield sheds light on women's activism (the flip side of domesticity), attitudes toward and race and "civilization," the tie between a vision of a unified continent and a cultivated wilderness, and republican values. She offers a new understanding of not only gender roles in the West but also the impulse for expansionism itself."--BOOK JACKET.