Bret Harte's fiction contributed significantly to the development of the western as a literary genre. One of the first authors to fictionalize the American West, he created humorous stories depicting the offbeat gamblers, prostitutes, miners and outright outlaws of 1850s California. These social deviants play a central role in his short stories: "The Luck of Roaring Camp", "Miggles", "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". In a literal sense, many of them, like recurring character John Oakhurst, are fugitives; figuratively speaking, these characters represent a set of values ​​contrary to the status quo of mid-19th century America. Their deviance positions them in a distinctly new reality, one that 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 Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Gender roles seem to blur and blend on both sides in Harte's work. In defining the West, these characters contrast with Easterners and unwittingly unravel their own social identities. J. David Stevens' essay, "'She War a Woman'" compares the rugged mountain girl Miggles to her Eastern sisters, a proper 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, offers herself the freedom to adopt masculine roles (578). And this is how she adopts them, while maintaining feminine beauty and taking care of her invalid partner. The men find themselves in a similar situation in "Luck", adopting stereotypically feminine roles after the boy Luck encourages them to become domesticated guardians. Axel Nissen, in his essay “The Feminization of Roaring Camp,” analyzes the story drawing parallels with Harte's contemporary treatise Catherine Beecher, The American Woman's Home. Nissen defines Home as Beecher's attempt to delineate a clear and comprehensive framework of female identity and the woman's role in the home that reaffirms the rigid gender boundaries of the domestic woman and the dominant man. His argument continues that comparing these two texts constitutes a "battle between the sexes" (381), with Harte appearing to criticize the exact social expectations that Beecher claims to support. Women imitating men and men imitating women are a recurring aspect of Harte's fiction. By dismantling their normative roles, this hybridization of masculine and feminine roles illustrates a new society, contrary to what Easterners were accustomed to at home or were supposed to discover the West. Harte further emphasizes his excluded protagonists by placing them in locations that isolate them from the civilized world. world and pit nature against them. Miggles and his beastly escort, a trained bear, live in a log cabin several miles from the nearest train station. Given the argument that she embodies both masculine and feminine roles that separate her from her conventional counterparts, it is illuminating to find her home so far removed. She expresses her weariness to her guests: “I couldn't find any woman to help me, and a man I didn't dare trust. ” (Harte 163), implying that the traditional man and woman would discriminate against women who cross boundaries like Miggles. To use the postcolonial term, the heroine is othered because of her social deviance. Likewise, John Oakhurst and his companions in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" are treated similarly..