Essay on The Expansion Of The Westward Expansion

The Westward Expansion has often been regarded as the theme of American history, and gender was shaped by the everyday interactions in the nineteenth-century West that made history. Westerners found what motivated them to construct gender roles, and came up with a single definition for femininity and masculinity.
Even with the influence of gendered ideas on social life, Americans thought the West would offer women uncommon opportunities to reinvent themselves like so many men did. Women were considered physically weaker but morally superior to men, and they were tired of being looked down upon. They decided when they moved across the country, that was going to be a new start and they would get to show the men what they had to offer. When being in the West for some time, they realized what motivated them to construct gender roles, and it was the new beginning for women’s suffrage. With women having the thought of them making a change in the world and being someone, they were not going to miss that opportunity. They did everything in their power to make a change physically, geographically, and politically. In the autobiography A New Home, Who’ll Follow? by Caroline Kirkland, her and her husband travelled across the United States to Michigan where they planned to start a new life. She noticed that some of her acquaintances there seemed to be presenting themselves one way, but were completely different people. She recalls, “But unfortunately Mr. B’s character had no means…