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Summary Of They Saw The Elephant By Rann Levy

725 Words3 Pages

In the years between 1849 and 1855, thousands of people dared to take on the perilous journey to California filled with hardship, death, and disease for their chance at a “golden opportunity.” For many years, the Gold Rush has been seen as a male dominated even in history with little regard for women. However, JoAnn Levy, in They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush, attempts to debunk the assumption that the participants in the Gold Rush were exclusively male.
As expressed by Levy, women played fast and loose with stereotypes of the time and assumed that if men could go, they could too. As for the type of women that took on the journey, it varied. Some women came alone, many more with their husbands, fathers, brothers. Some came for the gold, to make their “pile” and some came to stay. With the use of primary documents such as, diaries, letters, journals, court documents and contemporary newspaper accounts, Levy is able to illustrate how these women and their accomplishments fought to overcome gender standards and formally take part in establishing California societies and shaping a …show more content…

One case study that shows this is Luzena Wilson. Wilson started out as a small cook who was ignorant to the fact that she could make a profit from her cooking until a man traded five dollars for one of her biscuits. But once she learned how to price her work, she, along with her husband were very successful and even bought shares in a hotel. Luzena stated, “Yes, we worked, we did things that our high-toned servants would now look at aghast, and say it was impossible for a woman to do.” Wilson is just one example of a female success story. The presence of women in the gold camps had established immense economic activity and instant wealth for them and their

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