Amy, played by Grace Kelly in High Noon, plays an interesting character in the fact that she has power, something that is not seen in westerns of this time frame. Amy threatens to leave on the noon train without her husband Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper. When he stubbornly refuses to give in, Amy decides to leave without him. Jane Tompkins would have said that "ladies just talk and talk; that is all they do" (63), yet in this scenario, Amy talked and did what she said she was going to do. Yet, Amy would choose her husbands life over her religious beliefs, shown when she shoots Ben (a gang member) from behind. This is important and shows that even though Amy feels man enough to go against what her husband wants her to do, the position she is in "represented by language, always associated with women, religion, and culture, is allowed to appear in Westerns and is accorded a certain plausibility and value" ( Tompkins 55).
The Ballad of Little Jo shows the struggle of a woman in society and the battle to escape the stigma of bearing a child out of wedlock. Josephine disguises herself as a man when she goes out west in order to free herself from being a sexual prey to men that come along her way. Yet when Jo falls for Tinman, she drops her guard and the two begin a relationship. Jo had to hid her identity in order to create a life for herself that provided the least amount of stress as possible due to the stigma behind women in the west. "Women , like language, remind men of their own inferiority; women's talk evokes a while network of familial and social relationships and their corollaries in the emotional circuity" (Tompkins, 66). Due to this stereotype that the west had, Joe felt that in order to get away from the prostitution and to create a life in cattle and farming she would have to become to opposite sex. When the town found out that Rancher Joe was a women, the reactions where that people felt betrayed and that she had made a fool out of them.
Amy, played by Grace Kelly in High Noon, plays an interesting character in the fact that she has power, something that is not seen in westerns of this time frame. Amy threatens to leave on the noon train without her husband Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper. When he stubbornly refuses to give in, Amy decides to leave without him. Jane Tompkins would have said that "ladies just talk and talk; that is all they do" (63), yet in this scenario, Amy talked and did what she said she was going to do. Yet, Amy would choose her husbands life over her religious beliefs, shown when she shoots Ben (a gang member) from behind. This is important and shows that even though Amy feels man enough to go against what her husband wants her to do, the position she is in "represented by language, always associated with women, religion, and culture, is allowed to appear in Westerns and is accorded a certain plausibility and value" ( Tompkins 55).
ReplyDeleteAdditionally in High Noon, the idea of vengeance plays a large role. It both fears the town as well as Jane, which leads to him risking his life by facing the gang.
The Ballad of Little Jo shows the struggle of a woman in society and the battle to escape the stigma of bearing a child out of wedlock. Josephine disguises herself as a man when she goes out west in order to free herself from being a sexual prey to men that come along her way. Yet when Jo falls for Tinman, she drops her guard and the two begin a relationship. Jo had to hid her identity in order to create a life for herself that provided the least amount of stress as possible due to the stigma behind women in the west. "Women , like language, remind men of their own inferiority; women's talk evokes a while network of familial and social relationships and their corollaries in the emotional circuity" (Tompkins, 66). Due to this stereotype that the west had, Joe felt that in order to get away from the prostitution and to create a life in cattle and farming she would have to become to opposite sex. When the town found out that Rancher Joe was a women, the reactions where that people felt betrayed and that she had made a fool out of them.