Texas Women: Their histories, Their lives

An ambitious scholarly work, Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives includes almost two dozen essays detailing different aspects of Texan history. Readers may be initially perplexed by the fact that Texas Women was not published in Texas at all. In fact, Texas Women is one of a series of books on southern women published by the University of Georgia Press. As such, Texas Women places the subject in the greater context of southern society. Most of the stories show how Texas women negotiated power in their communities within the overarching patriarchal structures, norms, and institutions. Texas Women is divided into three parts, arranged chronologically. The first part covers 1600-1880, from the time of the Spanish to the end of the Civil War. Although they gloss over pre-conquest Texas, the essays cover the important nodes in antebellum Texas. Part Two covers 1880-1925, a relatively short, but critical period of time in the fight for gender equality. Texas in the 20th century is addressed in Part Three. Texas Women also includes an Epilogue that deals primarily with methodology, and an afterword commentary by the three editors of the book, Turner, Cole and Sharpless.

All of the essays address the intersections of race, class, gender, and power in some ways. The essays in the first part of the book help readers understand the different roles and statuses of women in Spanish Texas versus Anglo Texas. This section addresses the status of slave women as well, especially in Eric Walther’s essay “Changing Borders and Challenging Boundaries.” Slaves generally had more opportunities to secure their own freedom prior to Texan independence, especially as the anti-abolitionist rhetoric reached a fever pitch in the middle of the 19th century. Juliana Barr’s “A Barometer of Power in Eighteenth-Century Texas” is unique in that it covers the lives of indigenous women, and how their liminal status allowed them to serve in the position of mediator between Spanish and Anglo settlers. While men were off fighting in the Civil War, even the white genteel women used to a strict order of gender roles had to assume some of the duties that were typically assigned to men. This was true elsewhere in the States, but had a special implication for Texas, which was perched between the western frontier and the firmly established Deep South. The shifting positions of women in Texan society led to tremendous changes after the war, especially with the dawn of industrialization. “A Ready Market” shows how many Texan women became successful businessmen, capitalizing on their new roles as well as the ample business opportunities Texas boasted even before the oil boom.
The period between 1880 and 1925 was characterized by the increasing presence of women in the public sphere. Political activism included not just women suffrage and equal rights, but also extended into rights for the poor and working class. Populism became entrenched in Texan values, and women were at the forefront of policy initiatives that expanded access to healthcare. Some raised awareness of the discrimination against Mexican Texans, as Gabriela Gonzalez points out in “The Ideological Origins of a Transnational Advocate for La Raza.” Once American women were armed with the right to vote, the period between 1925 and 2000 saw the strengthening of Texan identity and culture vis-a-vis the rest of the region and the rest of the nation. This section contains interesting articles like “A Cowgirl By Any Other Name,” which reveals the contradictions inherent in Texan gender roles and norms as a cowgirl resists adopting feminist rhetoric in spite of her gender subversion. Chapters on Latina women and African-American women help provide a more realistic vision of the changes taking place in Texas.
As the editors point out, the methodology for Texas Women was relatively straightforward. Texans readily identified themselves as being different and their independence caused many families to proudly record their own histories. This compilation helps bring to light the plethora of Women’s stories that shaped Texan society, and indeed the culture of the nation.


Works Cited

Turner, Elizabeth Hayes, Stephanie Cole and Rebecca Sharpless. Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015.


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