The Virginian

Young Molly Stark Wood comes from a fine old family in Bennington, Vermont that traces its lineage back to Revolutionary War hero Mary Stark, a fiercely independent woman whom Molly resembles in appearance and personality. One of Molly’s most precious possessions is a miniature portrait of her great-grandmother Stark, which she consults during times of stress.

At age 20, Molly travels to Wyoming territory to teach at Bear Creek’s new schoolhouse. There, she meets and falls in love with the Virginian, but she resists his courtship for fear of her family’s disapproval. They become friends anyway, and Molly learns quickly from him many Western skills such as horseback riding, camping, and weaponry. Though old-fashioned in her chaste behavior, Molly is otherwise quite modern, venturing onto the frontier, believing in her right to a profession, and matching the Virginian in verbal jousting. She even saves his life, and, nursing him back to health, realizes that their minds are a wonderful match.

Like the Virginian, Molly experiences intense feelings; unlike him, she expresses them freely. As much as he resists frank talk about the ugly dangers of his profession, she cajoles him into bringing her into his confidence. Their differences find ways to meet in the middle; each of them helps the other become less rigid and more understanding.

Molly learns that quality takes many forms and that her cowboy is more worthy than most people high above him in social station. Her small rebellion against her family’s wishes about her career flares up into a much larger revolution when she rejects their social snobbery and marries the Virginian against their wishes. She must struggle, however, with her fears that the Virginian’s pull on her soul might drag her into life as the wife of a cold killer. She comes to accept him as he is, and he rewards her by revealing his compassionate nature. She, in turn, teaches him to trust her with his confidences. 

The narrator, a young dandy from the East on a summer sojourn in Wyoming Territory in the 1870s, meets the Virginian, a cowhand at Judge Henry’s Sunk Creek Ranch, and becomes involved in the Virginian’s many adventures. The narrator remains as nameless as the Virginian, except for a short time when he’s referred to at the ranch as “the tenderfoot,” a sobriquet he earns on account of his clumsy ineptitude.

Always cheerful and friendly, he makes friends easily, and he is a careful observer of the locals, especially the Virginian, with whom eventually he becomes close friends. He also is an enthusiast of the wide-open beauty of the West, and his descriptions of the scenery often wax lyrical. During his frequent visits to Wyoming, the narrator relates the story from his own perspective; otherwise, he simply tells the tale from an omniscient viewpoint.

Deeply sympathetic to his friends among the pioneers, the narrator understands them not as stick figures but as fully fleshed, complex humans who face the trials and navigate the dilemmas of life on the frontier.

The narrator is based on the author, Owen Wister. Born in 1860, Wister met young Teddy Roosevelt when they were students at Harvard; they both heard the romantic call of the West, visited it many times, and shared a lifelong friendship founded on common beliefs about America and its frontiers. Wister made several pilgrimages to Wyoming and finally gave up his law career to write about it and about American history, including a biography of President Ulysses S Grant. Widely considered the father of the Western, Wister’s book The Virginian started a craze for tales of the Old West that, over a century later, still tug at heartstrings in America and elsewhere. Wister died in 1938.

A bad man who tries to bully the Virginian when they meet, but suffers humiliation at his hands, Trampas burns with the desire for revenge. While working at the same ranch, Trampas finds sly ways to make the Virginian’s life difficult. Trampas falls in with cattle rustlers and evades the Southerner’s attempt to catch him, murdering Shorty, a man the Virginian liked, and, on the day before the Virginian’s wedding to Molly, challenging him to a duel. The Southerner accepts and dispatches Trampas with little effort, bringing an end to years of edgy hostility. Trampas personifies, not the perils of the wilderness, but the dangers from people who seek the license of wildness.

Rancher Balaam is known for his cruelty to horses. He believes they must be beaten, or they will rebel and become wild. Balaam’s name is appropriate: The Biblical Balaam rode a donkey that halted at the presence of an angel, but Balaam, unable to see the angel, beat his animal until it received the gift of speech and rebuked him. Rancher Balaam buys a horse, Pedro, from Shorty and proceeds to mistreat it, at one point beating it nearly to death in the presence of the Virginian, who stops the cruelty by giving the rancher a thrashing of his own. Balaam represents the type of settler who, growing wilder with unrestrained power, becomes a kind of untamed beast in his own right. 

Small, dim-witted, and something of a coward, Shorty also has a good heart and displays a kindness toward animals generally absent in other cowboys. Shorty works hard but fails to save his earnings, instead losing them at poker. He loves his horse, Pedro, but must sell him for quick cash to Balaam the rancher, who mistreats and finally kills the pony. Trampas lures Shorty into his schemes as a cattle rustler, and, when he becomes inconvenient, Trampas murders him. Shorty represents the sort of person who has no advantages from the start, whose prospects are hopeless thereafter, and who is fated to be tossed around cruelly by an indifferent world.

Steve, an early friend of the Virginian, drifts into cattle rustling, and the two become alienated. The Virginian, hunting down the thieves, captures Steve and must oversee his execution. This troubles the Virginian, who wrestles with his conscience, especially over Steve’s refusal to say goodbye to him at the end. Guilt-ridden, the Southerner begins to think Steve’s ghost is haunting him. He finally discovers a note from Steve that explains his coldness as a put-on for the other captors, and that he still respects his old friend. Steve represents the kind of friendship that goes awry when two people’s moral viewpoints begin to diverge; his life choices force the Virginian to rethink his own values. 

Judge Henry owns the Sunk Creek Ranch in Wyoming, where the Virginian works as a cowhand and later as foreman. The judge is a wise and kind employer who looks out for his people. Mrs. Henry helps the Virginian improve his writing skills, and the judge counsels Molly when she frets over her fiancé’s work as a vigilante for the ranch.

Molly’s Bear Creek neighbor and confidante, Mrs. Taylor chides her new friend for turning away from her love for the Virginian because he appears too unpolished: “Since the roughness looks bigger to you than the diamond, you had better go back to Vermont. I expect you'll find better grammar there, deary” (323). When the Virginian is seriously wounded, they work together to save him, and as he convalesces at Molly’s cabin and the couple grow fonder of each other, Mrs. Taylor at last feels vindicated. 

Molly’s great-aunt lives in Dunbarton, New Hampshire, a day’s ride from Molly’s family, the Woods, and far from their snobbish attitudes. The great-aunt takes Molly under her wing, encouraging her to follow her dreams and giving her blessing—something Molly can’t get from her own mother—when she chooses the Virginian for her husband. 

Scipio, a cook who accepts a position at the Sunk Creek Ranch, appreciates the Virginian’s smarts and wit, and they become friends. Scipio often plays Greek chorus to the narrator, offering him—and the reader—perceptive asides about the Virginian and his often-enigmatic behavior. Ever loyal to the Virginian, Scipio protects his back when he faces Trampas in a duel.