| − | The legal status of women in the 19th-century trans-Mississippi West has drawn the attention of numerous interpreters, whose analyses fall into three types: 1) the Turnerian Frontier Thesis, which argues that the West was, among other things, a liberating experience for women and men; 2) the reactionists, who view the West as a place of drudgery for women, who reacted unfavorably to the isolation and the work in the West; and 3) those writers who claim the West had no effect on women's lives, that it was a static, neutral frontier. The history of Montana shows that the Turner thesis best explains the improvement in women's status in Montana and the achievement of suffrage in 1914.<ref>Judith K. Cole, "A Wide Field for Usefulness: Women's Civil Status and the Evolution of Women's Suffrage on the Montana Frontier, 1864-1914". ''American Journal of Legal History'' 1990 34(3): 262-294</ref> | + | The legal status of women in the 19th century trans-Mississippi West has drawn the attention of numerous interpreters, whose analyses fall into three types: 1) the Turnerian Frontier Thesis, which argues that the West was, among other things, a liberating experience for women and men; 2) the reactionists, who view the West as a place of drudgery for women, who reacted unfavorably to the isolation and the work in the West; and 3) those writers who claim the West had no effect on women's lives, that it was a static, neutral frontier. The history of Montana shows that the Turner thesis best explains the improvement in women's status in Montana and the achievement of suffrage in 1914.<ref>Judith K. Cole, "A Wide Field for Usefulness: Women's Civil Status and the Evolution of Women's Suffrage on the Montana Frontier, 1864-1914". ''American Journal of Legal History'' 1990 34(3): 262-294</ref> |