n as separate from the rest of the world as if we had been living on an island in the ocean (Custer, xxix).
This paper will examine the lives of officers' wives in the Frontier Army in order to show that these remarkable women had to adjust their entire form of being in order to succeed at what was a largely thankless and inordinately difficult task: setting up a home within a military outpost. These women were confronted by the prevailing thought of the time that held that a woman's role in society was creating a moral oasis within the home for their husband and children. Conditions in Army outposts, with the squalor, the cramped quarters, and the constant moving did not lend themselves to the separation of the public and private spheres that society dictated. The officers wives had to adjust to the Army reality in order to succeed; those that attempted to adhere to the expected codes of feminine behavior that prevailed in the late nineteenth century were doomed to lead lives of "glittering misery" (Stallard, 7).
First, we will examine the roles that women were expected to play in the nineteenth century. Then we will briefly discuss how the West was generally different than the rest of the country when it came to women. We will then focus on the Frontier Army and examine what the conditions were like for officers' wives and what adjustments they had to make to deal with living in the shadow of the Armed forces. We will examine the challenges they faced in creating a home, how these challenges created a bond for them, and lastly the horrific situation that many faced when they gave birth in army outposts or on the campaign trail.
American middle class women during the nineteenth century grew up in an era that featured well-defined notions of what a woman's specific roles and duties were. Some historians have characterized the prevailing attitude of the time as "the cult of true womanhood" (Nacy, 10). According to...