Life of an Ordinary Woman
The book, 'The Life An Ordinary Woman' is story about the life of Anne Ellis from early childhood to adulthood. She reveals much about life in the early days of Central Colorado during the nineteenth-century. Much of her life was marked by poverty and a harrowing hand-to-mouth existence, far from what most envision life to have been like in this era.The traditional view of the family in the nineteenth-century was one of the perfect middle-class families living in a small community. The man was the breadwinner for the household and went off to work everyday to provide for his family. The woman worked in the home, taking care of the chores, the cooking and tending to the children. Most women were subservient to their husbands and were rarely heard from in society. They were considered property and only did as they were told. The children were treated very much the same as the women. They were to be seen but never heard.The existence of life on the mining frontier was similar, yet very different, in many ways to what we view as tradition family lives. The circumstances made women extraordinarily dependent on men for physical comfort and safety. Husbands moved their families with them, or sent for them, as they moved fro
People and technology have evolved over time but some things will never change. There are still people in today's society that live a hand-to-mouth, and the reasons are not far from being the same. We are acustom to many common things that these women would have considered an extraordinary luxury. The burden of blame fell most heavily on the wives. George failed to make it in Chance when their mining claim produced nothing. The thought occurs that with more children in the family, the more hands there were available to provide financial stability. The families did whatever was necessary to provide for themselves while the father was gone. It was not uncommon for a young lady to be married to a man, ten to fifteen years her senior. This grand plan also failed and George moved back to Cripple Creek, leaving Anne and the two children to survive on fifteen cents a day. Anne's family moved many time during her lifetime, following her father and later her stepfather and her husbands as they sought work in the mines. Anne finally took matters into her own hands after being left behind in Chance. There were many wives and children that were left at an old mining camp while the husbands were off on a new venture. It was not uncommon to see families with five or six children. Dust, mud, and pollution from the mines and ore mills forced most wives into an endless cleaning battle.
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