Bret Harte's fiction contributed largely to the development of the Western as a literary genre. One of the first authors to fictionalize the American West, he told humorous stories depicting offbeat gamblers, prostitutes, miners and outright outlaws in 1850s California. These social deviants take central roles in his tales: "The Luck of Roaring Camp ", "Miggles", "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". On a literal level, many of them, like recurring character John Oakhurst, are fugitives from the law; figuratively, these characters represent a set of values ​​that run counter to the status quo of mid-nineteenth-century America. Their deviance places them in a decidedly new reality, which has brought popularity to Harte and mystique and wonder to the Wild West. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Gender roles seem to blur and merge along both sides in Harte's work. In defining the West, these characters contrast with Easterners and unintentionally reveal their own social identities. J. David Stevens' essay, "'She War a Woman'" compares the rugged mountain woman Miggles to her Eastern sisters, a decorous Frenchwoman and a decadent Virginia City belle. Miggles, whose name alone suggests androgyny, according to Stevens, rejects the normative behaviors of these women and in doing so allows herself the freedom to adopt masculine roles (578). And so she adopts them, while retaining her feminine beauty and care for her invalid partner. Men find themselves in a similar situation in “Luck,” adopting stereotypically feminine roles after the boy Luck encourages a new drive in them to become domesticated caretakers. Axel Nissen, in his essay “The Feminization of Roaring Camp,” analyzes the story by drawing parallels with Harte's contemporary treatise, Catherine Beecher, The American Woman's Home. Nissen defines Home as Beecher's attempt to paint a clear and complete picture of female identity and a woman's role in the home that reaffirms the rigid gender boundaries of the domestic woman and the dominant man. His argument goes on to state that the comparison between these two texts comprises a “battle of the sexes” (381), with Harte appearing to criticize the exact social expectations that Beecher believes he is upholding. Women emulating men and males emulating women are a recurring aspect of Harte's fiction. By breaking down their normative roles, this hybridization of male and female roles illustrates a new society, unlike what Easterners were accustomed to at home or expected to discover in the West. Harte further emphasizes his marginalized protagonists by setting them in places that isolate them from the civilized world. world and turn Nature against them. Miggles and his bestial escort, a trained bear, live in a log cabin several miles from even the nearest train station. Considering that she embodies both masculine and feminine roles that separate her from her conventional counterparts, it is enlightening to find her home located in such a remote location. She expresses her weariness to her guests: "I couldn't find any woman to help me, and a man I dare not trust." (Harte 163), implying that the traditional man and woman would discriminate against boundary-crossing women like Miggles. To use the postcolonial term, the heroine is considered different because of her social deviance. Likewise, John Oakhurst and his companions in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” are treated the same way. Poker Flat assumes that.