W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A . C O M
37
B.M.
Bower
Mary
Maclane
May
Vontver
Women
Writers
of water and yellow mud." Her question of her husband, Manley,
is a vast understatement of her disappointment and determina-
tion: "Isn't it all — deliciously — primitive?"
en there's
MARY MACLANE (1881-1929). I like to introduce
her when people point to women as a "civilizing" influence. Fiery,
feminist, and openly bisexual at the crack of the twentieth cen-
tury, Maclane shocked Butte with e Story of Mary MacLane,
which sold over 100,000 copies. She described the town as a
"promiscuous" mix of "all nationalities and stations... warped, dis-
torted barren, having lived its life in smoke-cured Butte." Casting
her eye up and down the social ladder, she captures the delicate
smell of "cocktails and whiskey-and-soda" from the "automobiles
of the upper crust" and the "rolling, rollicking, musical profan-
ity of the 'old sod' that falls more from the cigaretted lips of the
10-year-old lad than from his mother who taught it to him."
FROM HOMESTEADS TO SUFFRAGE
From the 1920s to the 1940s, women writers were making
their presence known in the state. Women were voting, attend-
ing college, and — at what was then known at Montana State
University in Missoula — English Professor H.G. Merriam
encouraged a number of women writers.
MAY VONTVER (1892-1990) who studied with Merriam, pub-
lished a story, " e Kiskis," in the university literary magazine,
e Frontier in 1929 and it was reprinted world-wide. A Swedish
immigrant and homestead teacher, Vontver tells the story about
deep divisions in a homestead schoolhouse between the children
of ranchers and the newly-arrived immigrants. Vontver who later
became county superintendent of schools in Petroleum County,
published a novel, the Mistress of Langston.
by
CAROLINE PATTERSON
CONTINUED
