{"id":142683,"date":"2020-02-10T09:52:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T14:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=142683"},"modified":"2020-02-10T09:53:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T14:53:10","slug":"zane-greys-westerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/02\/10\/zane-greys-westerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Zane Grey\u2019s Westerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revisited<\/a> is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. Here, Rae Armantrout revisits Zane Grey\u2019s novel <\/em>Riders of the Purple Sage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my Art of Poetry interview<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s Winter issue, my mother loved Westerns, especially Zane Grey. Only a few books were available in my household, and I read whatever I could get my hands on. Some, like The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, were forbidden\u2014but I was allowed to read Gone with the Wind <\/em>and Grey\u2019s Riders of the Purple Sage<\/em>. Presumably these were considered wholesome. This is highly dubious in both cases.<\/p>\n

The Paris Review <\/em>asked if I would write something about Riders. <\/em>Because I hadn\u2019t read it since I was around twelve, I remembered very little. When I reread it, I was surprised. Wikipedia says that this is the book on which the Western genre was founded. To me it seems more like a romance novel set in the West. To say the least, sex is in the air. Perhaps this is why the sage is so continuously purple. (I counted six uses of the word purple in the first page and a quarter.) I began to wonder if this book was the origin of the phrase \u201cpurple prose.\u201d This ambient sexual tension is all I remembered about the book from my first pubescent encounter with it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The plot centers on two couples who clearly want to have sex but never do. I remembered that much. What I didn\u2019t recall, what appears to have made no impression upon me at the time, is that the book is an anti-Mormon tract. It is set in southern Utah where \u201cgentiles,\u201d or non-Mormons, are threatened, harassed, and impoverished by the Mormon townsfolk. I don\u2019t know how that part slipped my mind. I was living in an evangelical household against which I was already in rebellion, and the theme of defying religious conformity should have made a larger impression on me.<\/p>\n

Of the four main characters, only one, Jane Withersteen, is a Mormon. She is unusual in that she\u2019s a single woman who has inherited and operates a large cattle ranch. This, of course, gives her a measure of autonomy that offends the Mormon elders. The bishop of the nearby town wants to force her into polygamous marriage, but she is holding him at bay. I don\u2019t want to spoil the plot for you (just joking, I will). As the book opens, the bishop and his henchmen are threatening Bern Ventners, a \u201cgentile\u201d ranch hand Jane has taken a liking to. Just in time to save the day, a mysterious stranger appears and undertakes to defend the outnumbered cowboy or, as the book always puts it, \u201crider.\u201d (Just as the sage is always purple, the ranch hands are always \u201criders.\u201d) The mysterious stranger is, almost needless to say, an infamous \u201cgunman\u201d called Lassiter. Someone recognizes him and the attackers decide to drop the fight. Actually, the Mormon elders decide to let a band of local rustlers led by an outlaw named Oldrig do their work for them. To defend herself, Jane decides to keep Lassiter around, although she also fears he will murder many of her fellow citizens.<\/p>\n

I do seem to have strayed pretty far into plot summary. The more important thing, certainly for me as a young girl, was the constant atmosphere of sexual threat. The Mormons are said to hold women prisoners. The outlaws are rumored to kidnap them. Sexual slavery is always in the background, though never named as such. Fortunately, there is Lassiter and his \u201cbig, black guns\u201d to hold it off. The guns are always described in terms of their large size. Jane swoons several times in the book, including at the sight of the guns. This despite the fact that she is often portrayed as an independent, strong woman.<\/p>\n

In one fracas, Bernt Ventners shoots Oldrig\u2019s infamous \u201cmasked rider,\u201d a horseman who makes terrifying runs through the Mormon villages without, it seems, actually harming anyone. Still, rumors abound about the fearful deeds of this desperado. When Ventners goes to check on the outlaw he\u2019s wounded, he discovers, only after removing the mask, that \u201che\u201d is really a slender young girl called Bess. This is the other thing I remember about the book. I was very much interested in the idea of an outlaw girl who was an expert rider. Ventners feels terrible about having shot a woman so he patches her up. After she says she wants nothing more to do with the rustlers, he undertakes to carry her to safety. He carries her to a hidden, paradise-like valley he\u2019s found and nurses her back to health. Even so, he is rather squeamish about her because he assumes she is \u201cbad,\u201d which seems to mean guilty (?) of having been raped. Worse, she admits to loving the gang leader, Oldrig. But then, pages later, comes the revelation that she is Oldrig\u2019s daughter, thus eliminating any chance of sexual abuse (at least in the quasi-Victorian mind of Zane Grey): \u201cShe was the rustler\u2019s nameless daughter \u2026 He had so guarded her \u2026 that her mind was as a child\u2019s. \u2026 That was the wonderful truth. Not only was she not bad, but good, pure, innocent.\u201d His passion for her grows, spiced by his memory of her as an outlaw boy. She is an emblem of potential female empowerment in the book, as is Jane Withersteen, but the narrative allows neither to hold onto her freedom for long.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the gunman Jim Lassiter is falling in love with Jane. He is quite the gentleman, though, and she doesn\u2019t suspect his feelings at first. She sees him as her protector. Despite his protection, however, her \u201criders\u201d defect and she loses both her cattle herds. Then Fay, the orphan girl she\u2019s raising (did I mention her?), is kidnapped. Finally, at the height of her desperation, she realizes that Lassiter loves her\u2014and she begins to love him in return. Sounds like a happy, if convenient, ending. But we\u2019re not quite through yet. While escaping from a posse of Mormons, Lassiter and Jane come upon Fay\u2019s captors and Lassiter kills them. Now with the child in tow, the twosome become a sort of nuclear family. Here things take a rather disturbing turn, at least for this reader. Despite the novel\u2019s flirtation with unconventional roles for women, Lassiter takes Jane to the secret valley (Ventners and Bess are gone by then. Don\u2019t ask.) and rolls a balancing boulder down a mountain, causing an avalanche which imprisons the not-yet lovers and the girl in the paradise valley forever. Yes, when pressed, Jane consents. But it\u2019s notable that she is described as stunned and passive. \u201cLike an automaton she followed Lassiter down the steep trail of dust and weathered stone.\u201d This is the novel\u2019s most extreme form of female imprisonment yet. Lassiter has saved Jane from (purportedly) oppressive Mormon marriage so that he can have her to himself for the rest of their lives. Let\u2019s not even imagine Fay\u2019s life or the lives of the children Jane and Lassiter may produce! Riders of the Purple Sage<\/em>, after flirting with unconventional roles for women, ends by closing off such possibilities with the literal thud of an avalanche. Now that\u2019s melodrama!<\/p>\n

Given that the novel\u2019s ending promises (or threatens) a kind of romantic imprisonment, I wonder if the book\u2019s audience skewed male or female. Does anyone, of any gender, truly want this? My mother, though she had a job at a time when most women didn\u2019t, shared a small house with an abusive husband. I wonder if she read Grey\u2019s books as an escape from her circumstances. If so, I can\u2019t help but find it ironic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read our Art of Poetry interview<\/a> with Rae Armantrout, and her poems \u201cThe News<\/a>,\u201d \u201cArray<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cContrast<\/a>\u201d in our Winter 2019 issue.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Rae Armantrout is the author of over a dozen poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning <\/em>Versed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rae Armantrout recalls her childhood encounter with Zane Grey\u2019s \u201cRiders of the Purple Sage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1909,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22669],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revisited"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nZane Grey\u2019s Westerns by Rae Armantrout<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 10, 2020 \u2013 Rae Armantrout recalls her childhood encounter with Zane Grey\u2019s \u201cRiders of the Purple Sage.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/02\/10\/zane-greys-westerns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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