35.3: Feminism Displayed in The Female American Through The Crazy Ex
Everything about this book screams FEMINISM, especially in the time frame this book is placed in. Back then, women were seen as objects or accessories and they were viewed as their only sole purpose was to reproduce. But in The Female American, all of those things were exploited. Even before the narrator starts to talk about her own journey, she begins with the story of her father and his interactions with the Indians. Right in the first couple of paragraphs the Indian women and their attributes to the narrative as whole become very evident.
The native American women seem to have almost as much power as the men do. They have their own slaves, they choose who they want to marry and they are allowed to rule as queen without a husband or in others words a king. These women with a blink of an eye can send their own tribe’s men on errands to do whatever they please. Now the best character to represent this is princess Alluca, but before people start in about how she tried to kill the narrator’s father as well as killing her own sister in the process remember, that no other women would have been able to do this at this time. She had enough power and enough respect from her own people that they would kill for her. She became queen without a husband and ran the tribe strongly while carrying the weight of the death of her father and the wounds of rejection. What other woman could have had the opportunity to have done that at this time? She was a ruthless woman who knew what she wanted and did what she had to, to acquire it. Sure, she was the villain throughout her entire existence in the book but she was a woman who grew up with a sense of equality within her family between the men and the women.
Alluca was not all bad, after the death of her sister, she herself passed away because of guilt and on her deathbed, she sent an apologetic letter with gifts to the narrator’s father saying “Receive a heart that, whilst it lived, loved you, and had you received it, it had never been wicked….. This was accompanied with a very great present of gold dust, and her bow and arrows, of exquisite workmanship, for me” (57). Alluca got her heart broken and just like every other crazy ex she wanted her revenge. Yes, she did take it too far but she had the power to commit the crime that she did. She was a lady who could shoot arrows and did not wince at the sight of death. For a woman who grew up in the era she did, her actions and personality revealed that she was stronger than any other women and even some men at the time.
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