The Luck of Roaring Camp

As a story that centers on a newborn infant being raised in an exclusively male prospecting camp, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” subverts gender stereotypes as the men become both “father and mother” to Tommy (5). Harte’s exploration of gender is at once humorous, lampooning the era’s strict gender roles and expectations, and serious, imagining the benefits of a more fluid and expansive vision of masculinity. In embracing nurturing roles and broader views of masculinity, the men improve, and the story’s biblical parallels imply that these changes lead to salvation.

At first, the men of Roaring Camp are the roughest representatives of their sex: gamblers, criminals, reckless, uneducated, and uncouth. While they embody certain masculine stereotypes about power and violence, they violate the era’s more genteel gender expectations like morality and financial stability. Harte exaggerates their failings with humor, describing how they ignore fatal shootings to continue a card game and fire off “only a few revolvers” (2) rather than an entire barrel of gunpowder to celebrate Tommy’s birth. They are excessively crass and unclean, taking bets on whether Cherokee Sal will survive childbirth. As the only woman in this environment, Cherokee Sal also does not adhere to gendered expectations; she is not the stereotypical angel in the house but rather “coarse” and “sinful.