1000 White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
In this book, Jim Fergus attempted to write an a pseudo-realistic book in a journal format, but what was his intention in writing this book? He is a journalist,so was his intention for his readers to be more aware of the Cheyenne as a culture, tribe, or the travesties committed against Native Americans? Was his intentions to challenge himself to write from a female perspective and so broaden his own view? Was his intentions to try to write something to fool his readers into thinking this was a true story? Or simply for 21st century entertainment?
Jim Fergus did not inform/teach me anything new about the Cheyenne or the 1870's time period, in fact the whole book reeked of 21st century to me from the "Noble Savage" idea of the Native Americans, the extremely progressive views of almost every woman, the attitudes and spoken and written language.
Jim Fergus also failed in his attempt at writing from a female perspective in my mind. Why? To me most of May Dodd's thoughts/actions/motivations seemed more male than female, especially because I feel that that almost everything in the book related to sex, except the end where everything is "resolved" in a violent encounter, and that case he seemed to be trying to get us to think of the things that happened with the Native Americans, so good job there.
Examples of May Dodd's male thinking:
She was raised in very wealthy elite circles of Chicago, spoiled with all she could want. She falls madly in love with a "lower society" man and has sexual encounters with him not married (ok, I can buy that up to this point), then when finding out she is pregnant she runs away with him but refuses to marry him when he asks her to. And Why? Because she dislikes marriage! Even though he is supposedly the love of her life and she lives with him and has two children, and seems very content at being a mom. Not what most woman would do!!! Especially at that time when marriage was really everything in life. Jim Fergus easily could have married them and then killed off the guy, why didn't he? Typical male marriage view point, or 21-st century woman, but not then. Secondly, she was raped repeatedly and boiling water was put in her vagina every day in the insane asylum! That does something to any woman, yet she doesn't seem to suffer ANY side-effects, problems, consequences, or emotional trauma. It is written as if she just had to endure some kind of medication or medical infliction, no big deal. Plus as soon as she is out of the insane asylum, she is right back to trying to seduce someone! Nice, Typical male! Even though she had been with the "love of her life", she doesn't seem to morn him much and gets over him pretty fast, maybe because she feels he betrayed her, but still it seems like if she gave up so much for him, she would be pretty crushed emotionally over him. To me this is more man-like than woman-like. She does miss her kids and keeps talking about that, so that is something, but I think having your children taken from you would be more crushing than he depicts it.
May Dodd also gets interested immediately in the next attractive guy she meets and seems bent on seducing him and flirting with him regardless of anyone or anything. In fact, she knows he is "a good Catholic" that he is moral and honorable, yet she still does all she can to lure him and in fact when they are finally together, Fergus writes that she felt her need of him was such that her need overpowered and swept away his needs to be moral and upright. Talk about selfish! Reminds me of....a shallow playboy!!
Then as soon as May heads off of to live with the Cheyenne, she switches her tune to, well I am going to be faithful to my husband, even though I don't know him or even understand his culture. And proceeds to educate him sexually! What is with this lady? Oh yeah, it really is a man writing this!
As I was reading reviews of this book I came across one that I really thought hit the nail on the head! This is an excerpt:
"Few pages go by in which Fergus doesn't attribute to May Dodd words and ideas that would be completely foreign to any woman living in the 1870s -- even a woman as progressive as May is supposed to be. For most of the novel, May sounds less like a 19th century woman of any background or educational level, and more like a Volvo-driving Web designer from San Francisco who's on her way to pick up her daughter at soccer practice, has to drop her off at the ex-husband's for his weekend visitation, and then, before going to her newly purchased fixer-upper in the Mission District, plans to stop by the polling place to vote for Dianne Feinstein."
If Jim Fergus was attempting to write a book in such a way to fool readers into believing it was a true story, as it seems from his interview and notes at the end of the book, then he really didn't achieve his goal. He may have done some research on the Cheyenne or insane asylums, but he doesn't seem to even have read a woman' s journal from the 1860-1890's. The journal does not read as journal entries or letters to me, who writes every last thing someone says or does? And who writes in vernacular, accents, or bothers to write swear words unless they are coming from themselves in response to something? This book would have been better if he had done either one of two things: made it a believable fictitious biography or just simply wrote in normal prose.
If Jim Fergus wrote this novel for pure escape-ism, entertainment, or reading enjoyment without too much thought to historical accuracies, language, ideas, then I would say he was successful and I would think better of this book. I can see why people have rated it 3, 4, or 5 stars if that was what they like and they enjoy romance novels. If that was the case, I think he should have re-titled this book and marketed it differently.
Another question I ask myself in deciding if a book is good or not is how believable are the characters? Does it have heroes or heroines that teach us something or change in such a way it enriches the story? Do they have depth?
To men, Jim Fergus' characters range from completely dumb and unbelievable to aggravating, cliche, and stereotypical, to decent, ok, but not really anything special or memorable. So, not too many that could be labeled truly believable, although there are a few.
May Dodd: I found May to be an extremely annoying main character and heroine. For several reasons listed above, she is definitely over-sexual and used language that was questionable. She is forward, pushy, disrespectful, and rebellious to any type of rules or authority. Even though she claims lots of different reasons for the things she does or why she does them, her real intentions always seem to be thumbing her nose at her family and rebelling against what they represent (another late 1900's/early 2000's character trait). She may have had a terrible relationship with her mother and father (and it fact her father seems a monster for what he did) and that made her who she was, and if that was the case instead of hinting at things and using those situations to move the storyline, I think she would have been a better character (and a better book) if Jim Fergus had explored those relationships and emotions. She seems to enjoy "scandalizing" her sister in what she writes about in her journal letters and thinks it funny to think what her parents would think of that. Somehow, even though she was raised in an elite white society, she has the amazing ability to see everyone equally, unless they are uptight religious missionaries or "dumb blondes" (like the Captain's finance). How open-minded she is! She is flippant about personal things and religion and doesn't think twice about trying to get the Captain to notice her above anyone. She doesn't respect the culture she came from nor the one she is becoming a part of, (she tries to get out of work, she pushes herself into "male-only" areas, and she deliberately does not try to be tactful of etiquette of the society she lives in and laughs at the consternation she causes. While full of flaws herself, she thinks herself better than most everyone else. Truthfully, I am not sure why she was like that, did she start out "bad" and then turn "good", nope, she pretty much was the same at end. Did she turn selfless at the end and risk herself to save others or the culture? Nope. What was she trying to accomplish? (Besides have a baby) Get to know the Cheyenne as a people and get them to voluntarily go on the reservation? Perhaps that was it, she did help that some but ultimately that was their choice. I felt at the end of the book, Fergus tries to almost make her into a saint! Not sure what she did for me to overlook all her faults and consider her a "hero". I think believable characters need flaws, but let's have something that helps us LIKE the character.
Captain John: I do have to give Jim Fergus some credit here. He used an actual historical figure, so he does a pretty good job giving him some depth. He has good qualities, he has conflicts, he has to make hard decisions, he has flaws, like being prejudice and racist toward Native Americans and he can be a bit of a bully, like the situation with the battery and the bucket of water at the fort. And of course, he becomes the fallen hero in the end when he attacks the village and shoots the boy.
Chief Little Wolf: Descent character. I think he could have given him more depth, though. Jim Fergus is definitely stuck in a "Noble Savage"thought process about Native Americans. He is savage and primitive, but beautiful and pristine, in a way. Innocent, but violent and callous at times without realizing implications. Wise yet not really understanding. So, this is basically how he represents all Cheyenne.
Phemie: Wow! I cannot believe anyone wrote a character like this and the editors let them get away with it. Maybe they thought it really did represent the time, I don't know. So stereotypical! She was born into and raised in slavery, sold, beaten and raped, escaped on the Underground Railroad, which I am not sure is historically accurate, as it ended in 1861. Then comes west to start a new life after living in Canada for awhile. She keeps talking about all the things her mother taught her about Africa (although they outlawed slaves from Africa in 1808) but was separated from her at the age of 8. But somehow, she remembers all the things her mother taught her about the African bush, so she can become a warrior with the Cheyenne and the only woman one at that? (Which by the way, is inaccurate, since in the warrior societies within the Cheyenne they did allow women, usually one per group, but they could NOT be married.) She also can sing spirituals and is the best "athlete" of the group. Yikes! Another reader who reviewed this book said of Phemie:
"So the one black woman was embarrassingly cliche. Like, she sings and dances and goes Back to Africa worse than that Different Strokes episode where Arnold and Willis play the drums and change their names. She starts wearing a loincloth and hunting as a warrior. Yeah. The second she is introduced she offers up this elaborate back story that sounds like someone skimmed the back cover of Roots at Blockbuster. Don't they have editors around here? Please tell me SOMEONE else remembers that the slave trade ended in 1808? (Phemie can't be more than 25 in 1875, yet she claims her mother was taken from deepest Africa and had her at a young age.) Ok, but surely everyone knows that Civil War began in 1861, making escape to Canada unlikely and unnecessary? (Phemie claims to have escaped a cruel master 10ish years before 1875, no mention of the war.) Sigh."
Narcissa White: Do all white evangelical missionary ladies have to be uptight, uncaring, rude, mean-spirited and prudish? Come on! Can we please have a different nemesis or arch-rival than that old card? And there was nothing to her.
The Kelly sisters: Irish, bawdy, thieves, prostitutes, been in prison, swearing, drinking, smoking, etc....Really? Are you kidding? Talk about using all the stereotypes in one book!
Gretchen Fathauer- Large, ugly woman who couldn't get a man, so she comes to the Brides program, talkative, loud and strong, and oh yeah, she is Swedish!
Anyhow, the other ladies of the party, are quite the handful. Amazing that the first train load of brides for the Cheyenne are so diverse, and yet hold up to their cultural stereotypes. Plus, if you are going to actually write seriously about a real time period, come up with some REAL names and not so trite and cutesy, geesh.
Reverand Hare: A despicable character who is the "religious representative of the group". Overly religious, and forceful of his own opinions, but not helpful to the women. In fact, he end up abusing Indian boys. How is that NOT surprising? Let's move on from using Christian representatives as the bad guys again.
The two characters I like the most:
Helen Flight: Finally, a character that really is believable (other than her ridiculous name) and has depth. Jim Fergus came up with someone who could have been historical accurate. There were several British women of this time that traveled in different parts of the world to travel, write books, and explore. They were independent thinkers of the time. I think he portrayed her well. (And Gertie, too I felt was historical an accurate character type, both of these are examples of what different non-typical societal women of that time were like.)
Brother Anthony: Good character, thoughtful, good, helps others. Has a reason for coming out to the wilderness and finally a religious character that isn't all negative stereotypes and bad. He makes the end of the book better than the beginning.
Last question I ask myself after I read a book is about the storyline. Did Jim Fergus create a believable storyline? How did the story progress? Were the events out of the realm of reality or stayed within a believable frame work?
The premise of the story was a great idea. A historical what-if. I think Jim Fergus was very original in coming up with that idea. However, I do think he bit off more than he could chew. First of all, the story in itself could have been believable, had not the characters gotten in the way. I thought the storyline was interesting at first, then got bogged down for a bit with interesting tidbits here and there, and a bunch of sex and romance that was not believable at all. But after awhile, it was downright annoying, I mean, the leader of the "group" gets the Captain and the Chief, the twin ladies get twin warriors and then end up having twins? And there is a black man in the tribe for Phemie? That is absolutely ridiculous and something I would only expect to see in the writing of kids in a writing workshop in middle school or high school. Also, all the ladies get pregnant right away, except Phemie and Helen, and all give birth around the same time? Not one gets sick, loses a baby (except by abortion), or has any problems? In fact, everyone does so well now they are out in the wilderness and not in "society" anymore they actually flourish! Let's have a little more respect for your readers!
Second of all, all the sexual things aside, does Mr. Fergus understand OB/GYN issues? Even though the ladies talk to each other easily about sexual intimacies, they never once mention pregnancy/birth issues or seem to have any OB problems. No real mention of morning sickness, fatigue, or even how much their bodies change! In the birth process, they all give birth relatively easy, with not many problems, but what about infections or nursing issues or all of that? That would have been a very interesting insight in Cheyenne life, if Jim Fergus had mentioned that at all and it would have been more believable for women.
Then there is the whole modern philosophy about Native Americans that permeates the book. People like Jim Fergus like to think they are bigger people because they think so highly of how the Native Americans were like, that they actual get quite patronizing about their societies. This is the "Noble Savage" idea, as I mentioned before, brutal, yet innocent, beautiful but primitive, perfect societies, yet lacking in "knowledge". I find this belief very insulting to Native Americans. They were human people in every aspect, not humans that are a little lower on the evolutionary ladder, or in perfect commune with nature that they are all-wise. They are not people lacking in societal ideas or family groups, just a different culture! They may not have had Shakespeare or orchestras, but they had lots of music, poems, oral literature. They had complex societies. The biggest offense I took from this book was the wedding night consummation scene, where May Dodd realizes that Captain John was right when he said the Native Americans do make love like animals, because that is all they could learn from! I am utterly shocked that Jim Fergus would write that of the Cheyenne and think he was going them a favor, as a glance into their life. Really? And that May Dodd feels like part of educating her husband is to show how to really have sex, like only white or highly advanced societies know that. Give me a break.
Overall, Jim Fergus might have done some research about the Cheyenne, but I personally feel he didn't really do very good research on the rest of it. And so, I highly recommend not to waste your time with this book, when there are plenty of good, great, and wonderful books out there! Unless you really like and enjoy graphic romance novel and lurid sex scenes, then I guess this is a book for you and you will disagree with all I have said.
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Customer reviews
Wow! This is, by far, the most fascinating and addicting book I’ve had the pleasure of reading in such a long time. Fergus somehow manages to capture, and correctly convey, the lives, emotions, and plight of women with the skill and experience of a woman. I am impressed! But more than that, this book grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go from start to finish. I envy Fergus’ writing style and only aspire to hone my own writing craft to his level. Thankfully, there is a second book!
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catsholiday
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