“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” was published in 1898. That date should give readers an indication of the significance of the western genre in American literature. In fact, it should go far to suggesting that the western is the genre which defines American literature. The western is the national genre of the United States which has almost exclusive ownership to its basic conventions and themes. The only other country that comes even close is the “bush genre” of Australia which lacks the specificities, but certain is inclusive of its themes of the hardness of frontier life, the slow process of domestication and the spirit of adventure and rebellion. But when it comes to defining the American character—the mythology of historical fact presented in the western trumps every other genre.
The first movie identified as a western did not appear until five years after Stephen Crane wrote this short story. The first real western films that did much to shape and mold the mythical presentation of frontier life would not become a staple of cinemas for another three decades. And yet in 1898, Crane was already moved to write a story that began the long, slow process of demythologizing the genre. While literary critics identify The Virginian and Riders of the Purple Sage as the first serious western novels and the two which did the most to broaden the genre’s popularity and establish recognizable conventions, the truth is that audiences had been gobbling up western fiction for decades.
The “dime novels” did not enjoy the literary cache that two books mentioned above shared and even they were not considered serious literature until decades after publication. But these cheap (hence their name), hugely entertaining and easily digested books did as much to shape the views of the 19th century Americans about the west as the films of John Wayne did for 20th century Americans. Stephen Crane was at the vanguard of a movement which had been sweeping the world, but was slow in taking root in American literature: Realism. This school roundly rejected exactly the kind of romanticized idealism which made the dime novels and the western genre in so popular. Which is why you are not today westerns written by Stephen Crane.
Crane worked his magic in what might be termed the anti-western. The two most famous not coincidentally being two of his most famous short stories: “The Blue Hotel” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” While the former touches upon a realistic approach to the western through the process of deconstructing the genre, the latter is all about tearing apart myth. Many familiar tropes associated with western stories are found in this story, but always in way ironically distanced from familiarity. It is essentially the story of a western lawman inexorably moving toward a showdown with the bad guy. But while the lawman is seen enjoying—if somewhat awkwardly—the modern conveniences and luxury of a train, he is never heroically astride a galloping steed. When the inevitable showdown occurs, the lawman is walking with his new bride—compromising the unwritten but implied rule that such men never marry. The bad guy is actually loading his pistol at the exact moment of this meeting…and the surprise causes him to drop that gun and quick reach for the one in his other holster. Which is beside the point because the marshal isn’t armed in the first place. Ultimately, the showdown does occur, but no duel takes place. The weapon which the lawman uses to defeat the bad guy and dispatch him on his way is the shocking news that he gotten married.
So what Crane accomplishes with this story is to write a classic western narrative which follows the trajectory required by generic conventions, but winds up in a weird place that is absolutely unfamiliar to fans of the genre. The implicit message is not just that the west has changed and is never going to be what it was, but that it never really was what it seemed to be in the first place. If readers of westerns followed the trajectory of the historical record, they would also wind up in a place equally unfamiliar because the destination that leads from point A to point B in the plot of the typical western only ever existed with regularity inside those mythologized tales in the first place.
