In the book "Hondo," by Louis L'Amour, the protagonist, Hondo Lane, is the perfect example of a big, tough guy living in the West; a scavenging gunslinger of the desert. Early the book, Hondo and his dog Sam, came across a ranch that was occupied by Mrs. Angie Lowe and her son Johnny; who have been abandoned by his father for months now. Throughout the whole book, Hondo is trying to avoid the Apache Indians, but because the Apache's great knowledge of the wilderness; this poses a big challenge for him. Not only was Hondo given a gender role by the author, so were the rest of the men and women that Hondo came across on his journeys. .
Gender roles are a set of behavioral actions that are usually considered 'appropriate' for that certain gender. Louis L'Amour used the characters in Hondo to define how stereotypical gender roles play a role in their lives and in Western literature. L'Amour believes men are the more dominant ones of the genders and what they want goes. It is also their job to teach their sons how to be a man and how to perform a man's duty. One day when Angie is home, Vittorio and men from his tribe ride to her ranch so she could potentially find herself a new husband.
In Apache culture, it is the men that pick the woman that they wish to be with for the rest of their lives. Notice how the men pick the woman, and before the woman can officially be with the man, the man must fight another Apache to show he is stronger and will better protect his new loved one. This here shows two examples of feminism. Why do the men have to fight after they pick their woman? Why is the man the one that gets to choose the woman? You don't hear of two females fighting over the man, this is because men were looked at as the big and tough ones that had to fight to protect their families. If the women disliked the man that chose her, too bad for her; woman had no say in pretty much everything.
