Examining an eclectic group of western women s autobiographical texts canonical and otherwise Playing House in the American West argues for a distinct regional literary tradition characterized by strategic representations of unconventional domestic life.
The controlling metaphor Cathryn Halverson uses in her engrossing study is playing house. From Caroline Kirkland and Laura Ingalls Wilder to Willa Cather and Marilynne Robinson, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries, western authors have persistently embraced wayward or eccentric housekeeping to prove a woman s...