Duelling is something that is hard to believe is actually real. We often see it take place in black and white, old west films starring John Wayne, which our grandpa’s would watch. It seems like the act of walking away to then turn around and shoot someone would be less satisfactory than being able to punch your enemy right in the face. Why do the consequences have to be so grave in order to solve a quarrel between two men? Well it’s about honour. The honour of a man is more important than his life… or it was back in the early 1800s. Using John Wilson as an example, he embarked in a duel because he was humiliated over a letter he wrote describing honour. “The principles of honour of a man who could make such a statement relating to an unprotected female” (Brown).

Chivalry was very much prominent in Wilson’s eyes and the way Lyon treated women contrasted greatly with Wilson’s ideals. Lyon was embarrassed for being caught gossiping about things that may not have been true and had been proven to be dishonourable. To this very day we still see young men behaving this way, boasting about sexual affairs then after being caught and saying it was a “light-hearted joke” or “locker room talk”. Being a patriarchial society in the 19th century, if the scandal was about a woman, it then became about defending her honour and the honour of her patriarchal family and their masculinity. “The central, unifying tenet of this code was the right and responsibility of certain men to defend their reputations with a public display of physical courage, an option that was not open to women…” ( Morgan). Almost all men were aquitted from court after having being apart of an honourable duel. If they were always aquitted from murder charges it seems odd that the act of pistol duelling didn’t take place under the order of a judge. It then becomes a he said she said situation instead of having an officer there to over-see that the duel did in fact follow the afore-mentioned honour code.

Being the honourable guy he is, Wilson challenged Lyon to a duel, “a contest of honour according to the gentlemanly and time-tested tradition of a pistol duel…” (Brown). Then, like in a fairy tale, Wilson was victorious, was freed of any murder charges, got the girl and lived happily ever after. So I guess it can be said that it was something like an old western-film. Probably resembles a few to say the least.