Riding Freedom

After staying with Charlotte for a month, Hayward has to leave to finish his work in Missouri and help his parents move. All this will take him over a year, so he asks Charlotte to come with him. He suggests that she have someone watch her property for her or have Ebeneezer take it over. She replies that she can’t because she doesn’t want to leave. She is happy to finally be on her own property and wants to keep working on it. She also tells him that she wants to stay because she has registered to vote in Santa Cruz County, and the election is in a few weeks. Hay is shocked: “Charlotte, you’ll be going against the law” (123). Charlotte asserts herself with Hay, telling him that she knows more about who to vote for than most men. She argues that women work hard and deserve the right to vote, even if many men disagree with her. Hay says he is not one of the men who disagrees, but he doesn’t understand how she will be proving a point if everyone thinks she is a man. She explains that people respect her opinion and ask her for advice on who they should vote for, but only because they think she is a man. After she votes and reveals that she is really a woman, her point will be made. When Hay asks if she really plans to reveal that she is a woman, she replies: “Maybe. But whether I let them know or not, I’ll be wearin’ these same clothes and tendin’ my horses and runnin’ this ranch, same as always” (124). After this conversation Hay rides away, stopping to wave at Charlotte and shout that he will be back.

On a rainy afternoon in November, One-eyed Charley arrives at the polls to cast a vote. A long line of men wait in front of the hotel. Charlotte wonders if the ladies in town care about the vote, “or if they were going about playing their roles like she was playing hers” (125). As Charlotte joins the line of men, they welcome Charley and discuss Wyoming giving the women the right to vote. One man expresses his disapproval and asks for Charley’s thoughts. Charley says, “I don’t think it hurts nothin’. Guess they know their minds as well as us” (127). Some of the men vehemently disagree with Charley, arguing that giving women the right to vote “will be the ruination of this country” (127). A little boy comes up to his father in line and tells him that a girl and boy are fighting in the street over who should be allowed to play in a game of baseball. The men chuckle and wonder when that little girl will learn to stop fighting. Charlotte reaches the front of the line and receives her ballot. She studies the names on the ballot: Ulysses S. Grant or Horatio Seymour. Charlotte wonders if her one vote will make a difference. She decides that it will:

“This was something she could do for that woman who stood up in front of all those laughing men and passed out handbills on the saloon steps. Something for those women out front who were pretending they didn’t mind that they couldn’t vote. For Vern, who hadn’t been allowed to speak up and should have been able to. And for that little girl outside who was already standing up for herself” (129).

After Charlotte casts her vote, she walks past the men, tips her hat, and rides home.

Ebeneezer arrives in the spring, before the mare gives birth. He inspects the property and complains about all the work that needs to be done, which makes Charlotte happy because it means he will stay and help her. The foal is born in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, and “Charlotte paced like an expectant father” (132). She thinks of the night when she was with Vern, tending to the sick Freedom. She thinks that Vern would tell her to relax and trust Ebeneezer. They are surprised to find the mare giving birth to twins, a colt and a filly. Ebeneezer asks what she will name them, suggesting “Worry and Trouble for the night they gave us” (133). Charlotte becomes serious and recalls what Vern taught her as a child: “Naming something’s important […] And a name should stand for something. A horse’s name should be fitting for a fine animal” (133). After thinking for a long time, Charlotte announces that the colt will be named “Vern’s Thunder” and the filly will be called “Freedom.”

The novel comes full circle from Charlotte’s early days as a girl who subverts social norms to her adult years as a woman who subverts the voting system by posing as a man. Charlotte’s life is based on the dilemma that to protect and provide for herself, she assume the qualities of a man. And yet she remains passionate about the rights of women and makes it clear that she would prefer to be Charlotte (rather than Charley) if she could: “I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m the same old Charlotte. Fightin’ and scrappin’ my way” (120). It is not her intention to lose her identity as Charlotte, but it is a sacrifice she makes to accomplish the dream she and Hay created as children. Charlotte offers a message of strength and hope to young readers through her refusal to be deterred. She will not quit disguising herself as Charley, she will not accept society’s limitations, and she will not be distracted by her love for Hay. Modern readers can recognize an ongoing struggle for women’s equality in her words: “Hay, I know more about who to vote for than most. Women are citizens of this country just like you. They work hard and make decisions sound as a man’s” (123). Charlotte is now a self-assured and emotionally mature woman. Early in the novel Charlotte can never cry, and at the end she gets “teary-eyed and [doesn’t] even try to hide it” (121). This careful representation of development from child to adult is an example of a bildungsroman, in which Charlotte experiences significant personal growth.