The first film version of the novel was the silent film Riders of the Purple Sage (1918) starring William Farnum as Lassiter and Mary Mersch as Jane. Riders of the Purple Sage has been adapted to film five times. The plots of both books revolve around the victimization of women in the Mormon culture: events in Riders of the Purple Sage are centered on the struggle of a Mormon woman who sacrifices her wealth and social status to avoid becoming a junior wife of the head of the local church, while Rainbow Trail contrasts the fanatical older Mormons with the rising generation of Mormon women who will not tolerate polygamy and Mormon men who will not seek it. Both novels are notable for their protagonists' strong opposition to Mormon polygamy, but in Rainbow Trail this theme is treated more explicitly. The Rainbow Trail, a sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage that reveals the fate of Jane and Lassiter and their adopted daughter, was published in 1915. He also wants to drive Bern Venters and Lassiter out of town and out of the region. Tull practices " plural marriage" and desires to marry Jane Withersteen. He is a non-Mormon and furthermore has no creed except his own way.īess has been raised by Oldring and his band of rustlers she has very little memory of her mother. Lassiter is a gunfighter on a mysterious mission which brings him to Cottonwoods and Miss Withersteen. However, Venters is very able with firearms and horses, and he is determined not to be beat. As the story opens he is in a very poor state, being persecuted by the local Mormons. Venters is a non-Mormon in the employ of Miss Withersteen. Miss Withersteen sympathizes with both Mormons (her own people) and Gentiles, which gets her into trouble with the local bishop and elder. Wealthy owner and operator of the considerable Withersteen ranch, her father having founded and established the estate. For example: "On this night the same old loneliness beset Venters." Characters Jane Withersteen The narrator reports what the characters say and how they feel, even when they are alone. The story is told from an anonymous third-person, omniscient point-of-view. The Mormons had been living in Kirtland, Ohio in the 1830s, but ventured west to escape persecution, Mormons being unpopular. The influx of Mormon settlers from 1847 to 1857 serves as a backdrop for the plot. The setting is Southern Utah canyon country, 1871. The story involves cattle-rustling, horse-theft, kidnapping and gunfights. Elder Tull, a polygamist with two wives already, wishes to have Jane for a third wife, along with her estate. Jane Withersteen, a born-and-raised Mormon, provokes Elder Tull because she is attractive, wealthy, and befriends " Gentiles" (non-Mormons), namely, a little girl named Fay Larkin, a man she has hired named Bern Venters, and another hired man named Jim Lassiter. Riders of the Purple Sage is a story about three main characters, Bern Venters, Jane Withersteen, and Jim Lassiter, who in various ways struggle with persecution from the local Mormon community led by Bishop Dyer and Elder Tull in the fictional town of Cottonwoods, Utah. Considered by scholars to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called "the most popular western novel of all time." Plot Riders of the Purple Sage is a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912.
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