June 26, 2024: WesternStudying: The Virginian

[75 yearsago this week, the firstnetwork TV Western, Hopalong Cassidy debuted. Fewgenres have been influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’llAmericanStudy Hopalong and other Westerns—add your responses &analyses in the comments, pardner!]

On how ahugely influential novel adheres to the stereotypes and how it defies them.

I’veblogged about Owen Wister’s bestselling novel TheVirginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) on two prior occasions, in thispost on Walt Longmire and this one onblue jeans and cowboys. I hope those communicated my sense of the novel’s importance,so check them out if you would and come on back for some further thoughts.

Welcomeback! Wister’s novel isgenerally credited with establishing many of the key elements of the iconicWestern hero, and I would agree with that interpretation: the novel’s protagonistis a man with no name (he’s sometimes called “Jeff,” but that seems like a humorousnickname due to famous fellow Southerner Jefferson Davis rather than an actualname) who has a longstanding rivalry with a brutal villain that culminates in aduel where he guns down his rival, after which he wins the hand of his far moreinnocent love interest (a schoolmarm, no less). If I had to sum up that iconicand influential character and story type, it would be in one quote that wouldgo on to become ubiquitous in the genre: “When you call me that, smile!”The protagonist says that now-famous line to his villainous rival Trampasafter he has beaten Trampas at cards and been called “a son of a bitch” inresponse, and if that doesn’t all sum up the genre of the Western, I’m not surewhat does.

As I’vehighlighted before in this space, particularly when it comes to thehistory of Black cowboys, those iconic images of cowboys aren’t particularlyaccurate to the historical realities. And interestingly enough, Wister’s cowboycharacter actually connects to some of those historical realities in ways thathave been less well-remembered than the stereotypical details. For example, henot only works as a cowboy at the powerful JudgeHenry Garth’s ranch, but performs that work so impressively that he ispromoted to ranch foreman. And in that role, he is required to take part inevents that reinforce the community’s power structures, such as the hanging ofa cattle thief named Steve with whom he had been friends. As I’ll think about abit more in tomorrow’s post, over time the gunfighter hero would entirelydiverge from the working cowboy type, but in Owen Wister’s influential originstory those two roles were strikingly intertwined.

NextWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?