Her Best Shot by Laura Browder is extremely well-organized and presents a thoughtful, logical history of the interaction of women and guns in the United States from Civil War days onward. In the introduction Browder outlines what will be discussed in each chapter. Every chapter deals with a time period; however, each also deals with many of the same topics as they are expressed within that time period. The topics discussed are women’s rights, racial equity, sexuality, femininity, violence, and the interaction of women with guns.
The first chapter, which covers the Civil War and shortly afterwards, makes mention of earlier women soldiers—both real and fictional—in the United States and Europe. Browder discusses how at that time the prevalent reason behind why women were not given the vote was because they did not serve as soldiers. Supposedly their physical and emotional weakness rendered them incapable of the rigors of war. But, many women did serve as soldiers during the Civil War. Some went because they did not want to separate from their husbands. Others went for the thrill of it. The ones that the public accepted with little criticism were those whose “patriotism was irreproachable; [and] cross-dressing and violence were downplayed” (37). The public also preferred those who were “white.” Pauline Cushman failed to meet this standard because of her French and Spanish forbearers. Browder also delves into popular literature of that time to find evidence for how women soldiers were viewed. However, sometimes Browder can provide too much of a good thing. It did not take a six-and-a-half-page synopsis of Britomarte, the Man-Hater whose four heroines embody viewpoints of women and guns and femininity during the Civil War, to establish the idea of changing womanhood and equality with men.
After the Civil War, shooting became acceptable for genteel women under certain circumstances. Trap shooting in the Midwest and the East was considered perfectly acceptable. But it was in the West that female shooting flourished. Browder exhaustively comments on what made guns and women in the West acceptable. As with earlier shooters, females who favored traditional feminine roles and who could be considered “white” by the stringent standards applied during the late 1800s, were the most admired. So Annie Oakley who shot in dresses, let her husband run her career, and did embroidery in her tent between shows, possessed appropriate femininity. Others, such as Lillian Smith, shunned the traditional trappings of womanhood and opted for cross-dressing and loose morals. And to complete the negative picture, she had minority status. Oakley had “a major advantage over Smith when it came to public relations” because Oakley was white (91). By the standards of the day, Annie Oakley was the crowd pleaser.
In the 1920s, pundits claimed that, as women demonstrated through short hair, shorter dresses, and activities outside the home, they were becoming less feminine in the traditional sense and more aware of their sexuality. A woman and a gun were seen as terrifically unfeminine and an indication that a woman had turned her motherly characteristics to creating demons. Ma Barker is a good example of what the public saw as a woman who espoused crime and led her children into her evil ways. While J. Edgar Hoover “blamed mothers for the waywardness of male gangsters, he [also] suggested that women were themselves to blame for their own criminal behavior” (127).
Literature viewed gun molls slightly differently. Detective magazines were popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Short stories explored the deviousness of girl gangsters and their love for the “glamorous” mobster life. At times these women were well-meaning, but deceived, and ended up heroines.
In the 1970s through the 1990s, guns served as raw power that equalized the sexes. The new motherhood, of both extreme left and right groups, came from finding power through violence made possible through guns. As flappers and their perceived rejection of womanly values were the scapegoat of the 1920s, feminism was the culprit in the late-twentieth century. “For [Weatherman Susan] Stern her go-go dancing, her feminism, and her involvement in violent revolutionary politics are inextricably intertwined. Her perspective uncannily mirrors the fears of J. Edgar Hoover and the racial theorists of the early part of the twentieth century that women’s sexuality would erupt in violence and disorder” (174).
Writer Carolyn Chute is a far-right militia leader who abhors femininity. It is through her use of a gun at target practice that she is able to assume leadership of a militia and relate to her followers. Chute’s novels surprisingly dwell on women as objects of men, however, rather than on the masculine role that she adopts. “Her novels display an unabashed longing for the most repressive forms of patriarchy,” writes Browder (207). Her first novel was published in 1985. In 1995 she founded her militia in Maine. In her work and her life Chute constructs a tribe that she can use as her own. “Chute’s tribal vision seems to enable her, personally, to find a space within which to exist. Moving between two worlds, one of liberal intellectuals and the other of a constructed ‘folk,’ Chute creates a vision of tribalism that gives her a place in the world she writes about” (197).
Laura Browder claims that “no matter what the gun industry and its allies do to pretend otherwise, guns remain a charged symbol of women’s access to full citizenship, of women’s capacity for violence, and of women’s sexuality” (230). The issues surrounding guns and women today in many ways echo those of 150 years ago. As women participate actively in the Iraq conflict, there are examples of both the feminine warrior and crazed sexual and violent woman. Browder states that this is an excellent time to analyze women and guns. In Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America, Browder asks interesting questions and provides solid evidence that answers them, effectively showing their current relevance.
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[Review length: 980 words • Review posted on September 8, 2009]