Synopses & Reviews
To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land.
Review
Annette Kolodny permits us a privileged look at roots we may otherwise never have known we had.
Margaret Atwood
Review
[Kolodny's] ambitious study . . . radically revises our understanding of both American history and American literature.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
About the Author
Annette Kolodny is former Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. She currently teaches courses on ecocriticism and the American frontiers at the University of Arizona.