註釋 Published in 1912, Riders of the Purple Sage became the year ́s bestseller 1 and spurred the production of innumerable other Westerns in fiction and film. Owen Wister ́s great success with The Virginian had been one decade before and “Western one-reelers had titillated the public ever since 1903” (see Edwin S. Porter ́s The Great Train Robbery). 2 But what was it that made Grey ́s novel such a success? Lee Clark Mitchell tries to explain this aspect by considering larger transformations that happened during the Progressive era in order to realize how Riders of the Purple Sage “could have appealed to a middle class readership powerfully invested in regaining control of social institutions that appeared increasingly under threat.” 3 In his opinion shorter working hours were one main reason which contributed to the demand for a new entertainment industry and thus prompted changes in urban living arrangements through which especially young women were gradually released from parental surveillance, which brought about a clash between traditional standards of family life and a new ethos thought of as distinctly American. The problem of the New Woman emerged, including discussions about birth control, new divorce and property laws, prostitution as well as suffragism and the middle-class impulse to control sexuality (Mitchell 1995, xxvi f.). The Social Purity Movement developed in order to restore to women control over their own sexuality by redefining sexual activity as a cultural construction and not a biological imperative. Among the middle class grew a sense of anxiety that traditonal ideals of female behaviour were being challenged. Middleclass daughters suddenly started to resist against conventional family structures, developed more aggressive manners, furthermore a smart language, and daring fashions (Mitchell 1995, xxviii f.). Young working women ́s sexual behaviour was described as “clandestine prostitution”, which covered a broad range of activities that included simple adolescent experimentation as well as affairs between unmarried people. Eventually, in 1910 Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act to cut down the rising levels of prostitution. Women became unnecessary through the 1910s as a point in civilization was reached when slaves were extensively employed and the dominant class of American citizens became liberally supplied with material goods. [...] 