“Man’s Country. Out Where the West Begins”: Women, the American Dream, and the West in Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem
This paper examines the feminist perspective in Didion’s collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Throughout the text, Didion looks closely at the West and the changing social climate which surrounds her. Her essays chronicle women struggling to find a balance between the domestic and independence promised by myth the West. I analyze how women are granted only limited participation within the American Dream because of the masculine power structures which dominate our society. As the values of the American Dream shift, the women that Didion depicts attempt to find identity and independence despite the restrictive forces around them.
Joan Didion, Feminism, American Dream, Myth of the West, Women, Literature in English, North America
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