The End Of The Western Unit

Of course each western has their own whores/town sluts and then their prestigious women but what i thought was interesting was the different ways the women were portrayed in each of the films we viewed in class during the western unit. In the production Stagecoach there was a portrayal of each type of women figure. We had the looked down upon town prostitute Dallas(Claire Trevor) and the noble wife of a army captain Lucy Mallory(Louise Platt) compared to the group of prostitutes in Unforgiven. Well in Stagecoach you have only two main women figures and one is looked down upon like mentioned before and the other one is high class and thinks that she deserves better but i like how Ford had Dallas take care of Mrs. Mallory so well when she was ill showing the other judgmental people that even though she is a slut and everything she still has emotions and feelings for herself and others. That she could have completely left Mrs. Mallory alone and let her die giving birth or not help take care of her baby especially after how Mrs. Mallory had treated her in the stagecoach but she overcomes her mistakes and ignores the details that hurt her badly to take care of this women who had always shunned her. And i really think that this was a fantastic idea for Ford to create because in a way Dallas is showing the other members of high class that she still is a human being and that she completely deserves to be treated like one.
Where as in Unforgiven there are many prostitutes and that the entire movie is about Will Munny(Clint Eastwood) trying to go out and punish those who had hurt the prostitute which i find ironic to the previous movie because Dallas had to earn her respect and here we have random cowboys on the loose searching to kill for the prostitutes and it just shows them at a higher level than everyone else and like i said before it's really strange but cool. But then once again you have a single women figure and this case it's Will's wife who had cured him from everything bad like from drinking alcohol and killing people which is interesting because this is another example of women having power in this movie and based off the description of Munny before marriage seemed as though God himself couldn't even save him and this women he meets happens to save him....hmmm very interesting ey? I find it amusing that even though these two productions are considered westerns, their portrayal of women in each of the films are different and that in one they have to earn their approval from society and in the other society is protecting them from the bad and how they are able to cure the bad soul. Westerns are amazing!! :]]]