Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change 1700-1835
Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change 1700-1835Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, is a well-organized and well-supported novel by Theda Perdue. Perdue writes an informative account of the history of Cherokee "social life" and the role of women in Cherokee culture. She walks the reader through changes in trade, war, and general interaction of peoples. Perdue states, "The story of Cherokee women, therefore, is not one of declining status and lost culture, but one of persistence and change, conservatism and adaptation, tragedy and survival. (p195)" Theda Perdue portrays an image of women's cultural persistence throughout the novel. The novel is broken in the three main sections, Part 1 - A Woman's World, Part 2 - Contact, and Part 3 - Civilization. In these sections, Theda Perdue shows the outside influences on and changes in Cherokee society and conceptions of gender roles and norms. The first part defines the balance of life and gender in Cherokee culture before European interaction influenced a change. Part two explains how war and trade made an impact on t
The government's "civilization" program is briefly analyzed for the reader. Trade and war disrupted their lives in the eighteenth century, and the United States' 'civilization' program tried to restructure their world in the nineteenth. Perdue's story of continuous survival and persistence of women in society is effective and impressive. In conclusion, Theda Perdue does an excellent job at pointing out the significant role that women play in Cherokee society throughout history. Perdue gives extensive background in this section, vital for the rest of the novel, for both the expert and novice on Cherokee history. (p185)" "The story of Cherokee women, therefore, is not one of declining status and lost culture, but one of persistence and change, conservatism and adaptation, tragedy and survival. Theda Perdue also uses war to show the physical changes in society and the need for women to take on more responsibility. She provides the reader with abundant examples of the differentiation of tasks between male and female and how gender is constructed within the Cherokee culture. However, despite men's new "power" during this time, Perdue argues that the men could not stop the women from their actions because they were behaving "in a way that Cherokees expected wives to behave," and they controlled the production of food and could do with it as "they saw fit. Theda Perdue arranges the basis for her comparisons in this beginning section of the novel. Additionally, she makes clear how Cherokee women preserved and adapted to the American-European culture. Theda Perdue not only examines how Cherokees reacted to the government's "civilization" program as a whole, but also on an individual level as well with examples of individual accounts. In the second section, Perdue stresses the impact of outside influences, particularly European and American-European, on Cherokee culture and the reaction of Cherokee women to this impact.
Common topics in this essay:
Theda Perdue,
Ft Loudoun,
Perdue Perdue,
United States',
Culture Change,
American-European Cherokee,
Cherokee American,
cherokee women,
theda perdue,
Woman's World,
cherokee culture,
role women,
Cherokee Women,
Nebraska Press,
culture change 1700-1835,
cherokee society,
gender culture,
civilization program,
culture change,
government's civilization,
cherokee women gender,
women gender culture,
gender culture change,
women gender,
persistence change conservatism,
|
Acceptance Essays
