Gender and Genre: An Introduction to Women Writers of Formula Westerns, 1900-1950

Norris W. Yates presents here a number of women writers who have been overlooked in studies of Western formula fiction, arguing that their work constitutes a subgenre of the western novel. Like women writers of serious fiction, they appealed to the prejudices of the mass market on a superficial level but presented subtexts that contradicted or subverted those prejudices.

Writers such as B. M. Bower, Caroline Lockhart, Vingie E. Roe, Honoré Willsie Morrow, and Katharine Newlin Burt drew more on the conventions of the domestic novel than those of the dime novel Western. They deemphasized violence, especially gunplay, and portrayed active rather than passive heroines. They frequently manipulated the traditional ending, allowing the heroine to retain a portion of her premarital individuality and independence. In these ways the writers supported and yet subverted Western-style images of ideal femininity and male hegemony.

Gender and Genre will appeal to fans of the western novel as well as scholars in American literature and women's studies.

Norris W. Yates is professor emeritus of English at Iowa State University. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.