“The historian John Faragher, based on comparative research of men’s and women’s accounts of the westward journey, has concluded that “not one wife initiated the idea [of emigrating to Oregon or California]; it was always the husband. Less than a quarter of the women writers recorded agreeing with their restless husbands; most of them accepted it as a husband-made decision to which they could only acquiesce. But nearly a third wrote of their objections and how they moved only reluctantly” (Faragher:1979, p. 163).
