Breaking Clean

By Judy Blunt
Knopf, $24
ISBN 0375401318

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Riding herd with the women of the West

City slickers take heed: here's the real lowdown on the ranching life -- from a woman's perspective. Judy Blunt's new memoir Breaking Clean debunks the romance surrounding the American West's most archetypal way of life, so well-known for its lone cowboys and rugged independence, its refusal to bow to the corporate gods.

Raised on the lonely plains of Montana, Blunt grew up far from shopping centers, hospitals, even schools. She learned firsthand the glories of being a cowboy, as well as the dark side of the trade. For Blunt, the dark side often loomed much larger. As a girl, she learned to round up cattle along with her brother. Yet when she looked around at the windy plains she loved so much, she understood that the land would never belong to her, and that she would never be regarded as a true equal in its work. The nearest public high school was so far from her family's ranch that she had to board with another family to get her diploma. During her first year in high school, she was nearly raped by the boy she was dating.

As a young wife, Blunt started out with the naive hope of a partnership in her husband's ranch. Fresh from her honeymoon, however, it became clear that her father-in-law, who still held the ranch title, meant to instruct her in every detail of her existence. In one of the book's most memorable passages, Blunt's mother-in-law drops in with Blunt's receipt from the grocery store and goes over almost every item, explaining how she could have saved money. When she buys a typewriter and begins to write, her father-in-law destroys the machine because she is late serving lunch to the ranch work crew.

Ranch women have their own breed of feminism -- if feminism comes down to sheer toughness, Blunt indicates. They ride herd alongside their husbands and fathers, as needed, then retire to the kitchen where men never share in the domestic chores. And yet, if Blunt's portrait is true, these women are as economically disenfranchised as the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice. They have no real share of their father's estate, and when they marry, they depend completely on the good will of their new relatives by marriage. Small wonder then, that for Blunt, "breaking clean" became the only option.