Owen Wister was born in 1860 to a prominent Eastern family. While at Harvard he was classmates with not only my esteemed relative Frederick Remington but Theodore Roosevelt as well. So out of that single class came three men who would not only love the West but come to embody everything that Americans felt the West to be. His dedication in his book is to Roosevelt: “Ten years ago, when political darkness still lay dense upon every State in the Union, this book was dedicated to the greatest benefactor we people have known since Lincoln. Today he is a benefactor even greater than he was then: his voice, instead of being almost solitary, has inspired many followers. The lost habit of sincerity gives promise of returning to the minds and lips of public men. After night half-a-century of shirking and evasion, Americans are beginning to look at themselves and their institutions straight; to perceive that selling your vote or casting it for unknown nobodies, are not enough attention to pay to the Republic. If this book be anything more than an American story, it is an expression of American faith.”
Wister was brought up in a United States reeling from the aftermath of the civil war. He saw not the fighting but the effects that it had upon the nation. The nation was starting to change rapidly in the form of the industrial revolution. No longer was the nation an innocent new democracy. The intercontinental rail system was formed in 1869, linking valuable resources to markets and businesses. People were flocking to the United States. 23 million foreigners came to the United States in the short time period of 1860 and 1910. Can you even imagine that many people in so short a time? Until 1960 most Americans lived on farms and in small villages. With so many people crowding into about 12 cities of course nasty problems cropped up. Horrendous poverty arose out of the flooded employment pool. Wages were low enough to keep these people in their poverty as well. Slums took over many cities along with crime, overcrowded housing, and horrific sanitary conditions. Upton Sinclair (remember him?) wrote about all of this in The Jungle (if you didn’t have to read it by now you really should go and pick it up, there’s a reason all of the high schools and colleges make people read it). Even with the arrival of the Labor Unions things were bad for American workers for a long time. This was a time of the self made man. Self made even if it meant destroying people in order to become so. This was shocking to Wister, he was brought up among what could be considered the old aristocracy of America: meaning old money. People who owned shipping yards, or had made their fortunes in the merchant trades. People who had slow rises to the top. It was the new batch of wealthy who Wister despised. To him, the represented everything that was wrong with the United States. For him they had no interest in using their money to assist the nation, they did not want to educate themselves in order to help other citizens, and had every interest in keeping the little man down. We do see this trend in the early 1900’s.
For Wister, the West represented the true American spirit. A place where one could rise to the top through hard work and good luck, and good character.
To me what is so amazing (for the time period) is that Wister includes women in this Western adventure. It’s where a young woman doesn’t need to feel tied down either. Molly is really quite an amazing woman if you think about it. From an upper class family that has fallen on hard times, she not only deserts the young man who is courting her but leaves for the West all by herself. This, I believe, was probably unheard of at the time, especially for a young woman brought up in Society. What does she find in the West? Well the Virginian for one thing, but before she gets to know him she thwarts suitors right and left. She is nothing if not an independent woman, having a blast and one hell of an adventure while she learns to ride and shoot and teaches the school children that everyone, even women share a kind of equality. Fantastic. I completely understand her unwillingness to get any closer to the Virginian. There are two factors at play here:
- She’s a snob. Oh yes, little miss independent just can’t shake that Society upbringing and bring her nose down out of the air long enough to see the Virginian as a peer.
- She loves her independence. She doesn’t want to get too bogged down with some man. It was just recently that she found out about this whole freedom thing and she thinks that she might like to keep things that way. Marriage and love tied a woman down.
What’s a girl to do?
