Stefanie, I bet Owen thought of him as a diamond in the rough, a noble savage. In the Introduction (Penguin Classic edition) John Seelye calls him a “‘natural’ aristocrat.” Seelye also suggests that Wister saw the sense of honor as representative of at least two Virginians (Washington & Jefferson). The manners, of course, he learned from Molly.

Welcome, Julie!

Another vote for the ‘diamond in the rough’ theory here. As Susan mentions in her post, this is an idea straight out of James Fenimore Cooper - that some people are just born with a good moral compass, and no matter how they are brought up, it will always remove them from temptation and deliver them from evil. I, personally, prefer characters with interesting flaws, but The Virginian certainly has nice manners. So maybe Molly is useful after all?

Molly certainly draws the good features out of him.

So given all the novel’s flaws, how was it so well-received when first published? Were people so forgiving of lapses in writing back then? Certainly there were other fine writers during the time--Thomas Hardy comes directly to mind--who knew how to put together a solid story. Was it all the pure novelty? One of the introductions I read said it was considered a racy book--Wister has Molly and the Virginian bathing naked together, albeit at other sides of the same lake. Was American fiction still in its infancy, yet to produce something of outstanding quality?

Well, hey, despite its flaws I enjoyed it extremely. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I like Westerns, and I also like noble savages, especially when nursed back to health by beautiful young schoolteachers.

My neighbor the English Prof—whose area is 19th century American Lit—would certainly say no, American fiction was not still in its infancy in 1902. However, I’ve never read Moby Dick, and I haven’t read Hawthorne since The Scarlet Letter in high school, so I can’t be sure.

Perhaps, Quillhill, the book was like The Da Vinci Code or something. Not the best written book, but the story and the setting caught the imagination of the public. And still does. Something about self-reliance and a yearning for wild, open spaces where the government can’t reach that Americans in particular find so interesting.

I enjoyed it, too, in spite of my grouching. Thank you for chosing it, Ella!

I wonder if Wister’s friendship with Teddy Roosevelt had anything to do with its initial popularity or if being a western was simply reason enough to make people want to read it.

One of the things I found interesting in the book was the Virginain’s opinions about the literature that Molly gave him to read. I thought it appropriate that Ella equated Molly with Hamlet and his indecision since the Virginian admired Henry IV who he’s sure would play a good game of poker and play a winning hand no matter what he was holding. Falstaff would be good at whist (like Molly), but not the man’s game of poker. And we can imagine Hamlet would be horrid at poker!

Jane Austen had too much of the drawing room in it for him to even read her. He read Mill on the Floss though, fooled by George Eliot’s pen name into thinking it was a man who worte the book. Molly and the Virginian’s conversation goes like this:

“Oh, yes, yes. A fine book. But it will keep up its talkin’. Don’t let you alone.”

“Didn’t you feel sorry for poor Maggie Tulliver?”

“Hmp. Yes. Sorry for her, and for Tawmmy, too. But the man did right to drownd ‘em both.”

“It wasn’t a man. A woman wrote that.”

“A woman did! Well, then, o’ course she talks too much.”

Molly put up a show of not going riding with him after that but gave in anyway and when he left, sent him off with a Russian novel. Is Wister commenting on literature in general? Or is he commenting on the value of literature by men vs by women? Or is he completely innocent? Personally, I don’t think it’s innocent.

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I wonder if the book was popular because it was new and different. Were there any real Westerns written before this? One of my major gripes with the book was that it was so cliched. But if it was the first book to use those cliches, are they still cliches?

Stefanie, I thought the use of books as plot devices towards the end was kind of clever. Although if someone handed me “Kenilworth” to read, I would take it as a hint that they hated me and wanted me to suffer. I did like the Eliot exchange, thanks for quoting that.

Also: did it bother anyone else that there didn’t seem to be any character development through the book? Everyone we meet stays pretty much the same - even the tenderfoot is still a tenderfoot when he rides into the mountains with the Virginian after the hanging. Except for a token reference to the Virginian’s being too old to play pranks, he is the same person at the end of the book as he was in the beginning. What do you guys think?

Hadn’t considered the uses of literature in the story. Certainly Wister used them for humor.

Static characters would be tough to get away with today. Maybe Molly is the one who changes--she gives in to everything she thinks she wouldn’t like. But often in a narrator story it is the narrator who comes away changed by the story itself, and I didn’t get that feeling about Tenderfoot.

I think, besides Fenimore Cooper, Wister was the western writer and it’s his stories that set the tone for the genre. So technically, I think what we consider cliche today was novel in Wister’s time.

I noticed the lack of character development too. And eventhough Molly gives in to everything as Quillhill notes, I don’t think giving in can really be counted as development.

Here’s a mystery that maybe someone can solve. In the scene where Balaam is abusing Pedro, there is a moment when Balaam is on Pedro and the Virginian is watching, puzzled (this is on pg 227 in the B&N;edition), then the narrator says “Suddenly he [Balaam] was working at something. For a few seconds it had no meaning to the Virginian as he watched. Then his mind grasped the horror, too late.” Pedro falls to the ground with Balaam still on him. What was Balaam doing?

In the “Harper’s” version Balaam pokes out Pedro’s eye. Apparently Roosevelt didn’t like to read about such brutality so Wister took it out, although he didn’t amend a later reference to Balaam maiming Pedro.

Poor Pedro. I can’t believe the Virginian didn’t do something sooner. Too little too late by this point.

Ya, I just about lost it that chapter. :’-(

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I should add that Wister was involved in a similar situation except didn’t do or say anything, and later thought himself a coward for it.

Ah, so it was a scene written from guilt. Wister was able to rewrite his past and make amends to the poor horse he didn’t help in real life. Unfortunately, he still didn’t do enough.

Was anyone else bothered that Balaam didn’t get his comeuppence? Between Pedro’s abuse, and the fact that he runs off when he realizes the Virginian was walking into an ambush, he’s much more deserving of a shoot-out death than Trampas. Why don’t we hear anything else about him after that, especially since Mrs. Balaam is Molly’s friend?