Settling the Imagined West: Victor LaValle’s <i>Lone Women</i> , Black Women, and the Revision of The Frontier Myth

Abstract As a foundational concept in American history, the frontier remains a powerful image and metaphor even in contemporary culture. The mythical dimension of the frontier gave shape to American national heroism, which was constructed as white and masculine due to the racialized and gendered implications of the frontier narrative. Victor LaValle's latest novel, Lone Women (2023), introduces Adelaide, a Black woman, who moves to the Montana frontier. Within the framework of Richard Slotkin's theory of the frontier myth, this article analyzes the use of frontier tropes in Lone Women—namely, the harsh environment of the frontier, the cultural and racial Other, and regeneration through violence. LaValle employs such tropes to position Adelaide as a frontier hero and thus undermine race and gender as a basis of frontier heroism. By foregrounding the mythical processes that contributed to the development of white supremacy, LaValle criticizes the frontier narrative for its exclusionary rhetoric of the “monstrous” Other. At the same time, Lone Women offers an empathetic, collaborative, and accepting alternative to one of the central cultural myths of the United States. This article suggests that Lone Women is not only a significant revision of the cultural narrative of the frontier myth but also a reclamation of the place of African Americans, and African American women especially, at the center of the national mythology.