SOURCE: “Caroline and Will,” Midwestern Miscellany, Vol. 3, October, 1974, pp. 6-10.

In the following essay, Golemba explores in Kirkland's work what he defines as “the clash of wills” between men and women on the Western frontier.

The particular bead I wish to draw is not on local color, American culture or universal issues of ontology, time or art. Instead I would like to uncover the woman behind the pen, to investigate the personality, problems, ambitions and frustrations of this, Michigan's first accomplished writer. I call this paper “Caroline and Will” and I mean “will” in a two-fold sense—literally as the name of her husband and also symbolically as will-power, the passion to get one's own way, the ability to make one's desires prevail.

Caroline Kirkland realized it was a man's world, a world that erected imperious impediments to a woman's will. As her husband archly illustrated, a spouse...