Outside the Law: Women Criminals in Arizona History :: Essays Papers

Outside the uprightness Wo custody Criminals in azimuth History Throughout history, men and women have ofttimes been stereotyped into specific roles. Men have frequently been characterized as beingness much forceful and violent than their female counterparts. Men have excessively often been portrayed as adventurous pioneers while women were considered to be more frail and delicate. Nowhere has this stereotype been more prevalent than in azimuth history. In the years before statehood, Arizonas reputation as part of the wondrous West was legendary. From stagecoach robberies and public house fights to the shootout at Tombstone, the early geezerhood of the Arizona dirt are filled with stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Of course, most of these stories involve the men of Arizona history. Men were typically cast both as the confidential bad guys who robbed the stage, and as the noble sheriffs who struggled to uphold the law. Women, when they were remembered at all, were most frequently cast as virtuous pioneer women, struggling to retain womanhood in the rough Arizona frontier, or as wanton saloon women with few redeeming characteristics. As can be expected, however, most of these stereotypes of women in Arizona history are sorely misguided. It is true that women in the ordinal century were expected to anticipate by certain standards of womanhood. According to capital of Minnesota Knepper in his article, The Women of Yuma Gender, Ethnicity, and Imprisonment in Frontier Arizona, 1876-1909, these standards were ...the cardinal virtues of submissiveness, piety, purity, and domesticity (241). Women in the Arizona territory had the doubly difficult duty of being expected to abide by these standards of womanhood while simultaneously fighting an undeveloped territory where any signs of weakness were shunned. There was a group of women in 19th century Arizona who did not fit this stereotype of female passiveness and decorum. These wer e women who, for one reason or another, broke the law and were branded as criminals. Some of these women broke the law deliberately with shocking disregard to in the flesh(predicate) life or property. Others broke the law reluctantly, only trying to die hard themselves or their families. Yet others were victims of an unfair morality bias against women. When they were punished for their crimes, few of them received leniency from the court based on their gender, while others were do to suffer horrible indignities because the system had no place for women criminals.