66 pages • 2 hours read
Owen WisterThe Virginian
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1902A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Wildness Versus Civilization
Frontiers are places where one world meets another. At the edge, each bleeds across, affecting its counterpart. As the American West opened up after the Civil War, settlers poured in, seeking adventure and the promise of a new and better life. They left behind the comforts of civilization to blaze paths into the wilderness. In The Virginian, the civilized East confronts the West, the town confronts the country, and the tame faces off against the wild.
Easterners travel from their cities to the West in search of the wilderness and its excitements. They gape at Indians, stare at wildlife, and ogle cowboys. Though thrilled, they also regard the frontier as primitive and undeveloped; they overlook the subtleties and complexities of territorial life and underestimate the sophistication required to survive in the harsh environment. Even Molly, despite her eagerness to embrace the West’s wildness, still shies from it when it takes the rough-hewn form of the man she loves. His ways differ from those of her snobbish Vermont relatives, and Molly has trouble reconciling her heart with her need to conform to the civilized biases of her hometown.
People arrive by train, then transfer to stagecoaches, and finally travel by horseback and foot to reach their destinations. The transit system, then, slowly strips them of their comforts even as it requires them to apply new skills simply to travel. Similarly, towns give way to villages and finally to ranches and farms, and at each the comforts of civilization become scarcer. Where comforts are lacking, locals abandon the need for them, take advantage of their newfound freedom, and some become dissolute. The Virginian realizes this, and his behavior remains civil even in an untamed land. He refuses to give up his humanity simply because his world is wild.
Some settlers absorb the wildness and become the thing they first feared. Rancher Balaam, for example, brings domestication to the territory but whips his own animals, ruling over his peaceful creatures like a wild beast.
The frontier attracts people who wish to live free from the restraints of civilization; among them are bad men who enjoy untrammeled power to harm others. Opposing them are people of good character who act with deliberation, carefully consider their options, and use violence only in self-defense. The Virginian is an exemplar of this type; his patient dismantling of Trampas highlights the book’s moral refrain.
The Virginian’s lifelong quest to distinguish freedom from license informs much of his character’s growth. Molly, in turn, must realize that, simply because she has left the East behind, she hasn’t discarded its biases. She learns to embrace her man’s unique facets rather than seeing him as an unpolished gem in need of a setting. Together, they find ways to balance their differences; they create, in their growing relationship, something new that combines the best of wildness and civilization.
Duty Versus Law
In the big city, law and order come from legislatures and courts and police. In the countryside, absent formal law enforcement, settlers must protect themselves, not just from wild animals, but from human predators. The actions they take, up to and including lynching, raise difficult moral issues. The book examines carefully these conundrums, especially in the ways that the Virginian wrestles with his duties and his conscience.
As foreman of his ranch, the Virginian can fire his enemy Trampas out of spite, but he refrains, as much to demonstrate to the other cowboys that his administration follows rules and procedures and not whims. Trampas takes advantage of this forbearance, stirring up the ranch hands against the Virginian and poaching cattle on the side.
Finally, livestock thievery becomes too much, and the judge tasks the Virginian with hunting down the rustlers. His posse captures two of the perpetrators; tradition demands that they be hung for their crimes. Quite aside from his guilt over executing a man who once had been a friend, the Virginian suffers rebuke from Molly, who believes she cannot live with someone who kills outside the law. Judge Henry offers to her a solution to her moral dilemma. He says that the law and order starts in the citizens who authorize it, and, without effective enforcement in the Western territories, it becomes the settlers’ responsibility to retake that authority and protect their lives and properties by their own hand, at least until formal law enforcement becomes a practical reality in the region. Thus, vigilante acts that would be treated as crimes in the big city become a solemn duty out on the frontier.
The Virginian also must defend his honor against Trampas. Without honor, no one in the territory would hold the Virginian in esteem, and few would work with or for him. His livelihood, to say nothing of his self-respect, require him to stare down Trampas’ threats and bullying. Otherwise, “I could not hold up my head again among enemies or friends” (474). The locals generally dislike Trampas, and the Virginian’s decision to accept the man’s ultimatum in a showdown is popular nearly everywhere except in the heart of his fiancée. She is adamant that he mustn’t duel.
Molly fears that accepting his terms means she will fall under the sway of a man too wild to live with. This echoes the civilized world’s fear about the frontier: If people move to a world without rules, what’s to stop civilization from collapsing? The rules do exist in the hearts of people like the Virginian. His is an ancient code that deplores evil, sympathizes with the helpless, and stands tall against the wicked, even if that means going against the sensibilities of city people.
Pride Versus Love
His heart armored by reticence, the Virginian seldom reveals his true feelings. Molly wants to know him better, but try as she might, she often fails to learn her love interest’s thoughts and plans. He fears that knowledge of the dark dealings in his life might harm her, and he has an ironclad rule against hurting the innocent. Molly, though, is made of stronger stuff.
Meanwhile, Molly’s own pride prevents her from fully admitting the Virginian into her heart. For all his manly charms, and despite his thoughtfulness and intelligence, he is a mere cowboy. Thus, pride and rigid standards form walls between the two lovers. If they are truly to bond, they must step over or around those parapets. Fate forces them to do so by putting the wounded Virginian into Molly’s care for several weeks, and they enjoy long hours of conversation, growing closer and feeling safer in each other’s company.
At the same time, the Virginian’s fine mind chips away at his rigid rules of behavior. In fact, only when he becomes willing to give her up—to admit defeat and let her go, in the belief that who he is will never make her happy—does he win her. His honest concern for her happiness overwhelms Molly’s snobbery, and she begs him not to leave.
As their nuptials approach, she still must struggle with the moral crisis of his vigilantism and his need to fight Trampas. Each time, Molly relents and defers to him, but it is her acceptance of him that helps the Virginian finally to open up completely to her, and on their honeymoon, he talks freely about the things he cherishes in life. She loves him all the more for these revelations. They discover that mutual acceptance brings a love that deepens with every conversation and every shared experience: “It was a new bliss to her to know a man's talk and thoughts, to be given so much of him; and to him it was a bliss still greater to melt from that reserve his lonely life had bred in him” (497).
No longer concerned about the impression the Virginian might make on her relatives, Molly joins him in the uncomfortable duty of presenting themselves as a couple to her family. At first, these Easterners are tense with disapproval, but their hearts soften when they see that the newlyweds make a great match and that the Virginian would be worthy in any company. It is Molly’s great-aunt, however, who sees all the way into the depths of their love, and it is she who realizes that they have something special that no place, civilized or savage, can lay claim to. Theirs is theirs alone, built of mutual admiration and acceptance.
