If you are a frequent reader of this blog (is there such a thing? ha ha), you may have noticed I've gone silent since the beginning of the year. There's a happy explanation - I've been writing obsessively on a new book project. I started in January and am two or so chapters from finishing a rough draft - Yay!
This post is not about that project, though. In the course of researching and writing, I have come to have IMMENSE amounts of respect for 19th-century women - well, women of any time period, really, but since my story is set in 1880, 19th-century women are foremost on my mind.
This has especially been true the past week. The characters in the story end up on a ranch in Wyoming, which I chose to have be a real historical ranch - Tom Alsop's ranch near Laramie. So this is a large and profitable cattle operation. As I worked on those chapters, I realized there was probably only one woman on the ranch - Tom's wife, Mary. And then I began to find out all the things Mary would be responsible for, not just her household of Tom and their four young children (which would be demanding enough), but also as sort of the "operations manager" of the ranch. Tom probably had a "staff" of 20 or so cowhands (I'm speculating) who had to be fed. There was probably a bunkhouse cook for the hands, so Mary wasn't responsible for making their meals. However, the food for the cook had to come from somewhere, and that's where Mary's responsibilities begin.
There wasn't a Sysco to pull up and drop supplies at the bunkhouse door. Someone had to grow the potatoes and milk the cows and make the butter and preserve the beef so there would be food year-round, and guess what? Anything having to do with food was "women's work." (Unless, of course, it was a farm where growing food was the main thing - but even then, "putting up" food would be up to the woman.) Just the thought of everything that would have to be done to grow and store enough food to feed 25 or so people is exhausting!
Add to that all the other things women had to manage - sewing clothes (store-bought clothes were really too expensive for most people), washing and ironing those clothes, getting three meals a day on the table, cleaning up after those meals, keeping their home clean, childcare , healthcare....it is overwhelming. Add to that the fact that limited birth control meant those women were probably pregnant or nursing an infant during most of this work.
There are people squawking about "warrior ethos" and what great heroes "warriors" are. I'm sorry. I think the real heroes of the past are all those nameless women. During this women's history month, I want to take a moment to say - respect to you, ladies!
