English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

5-2-1973

Abstract

This dissertation is an application of the principles of feminist criticism to the fiction of Willa Cather. It questions the male critical estimate of Cather and examines elements in her work which have either not been acknowledged or have been distorted in male criticism. The study views Cather primarily as a woman writer, emphasizing the feminine consciousness in her work and focusing on the Cather heroine as an expression of that consciousness. It centers on a feminist reading of five novels: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, A Lost Lady, and My Mortal Enemy. Alexandra Bergson, Thea Kronborg, and Antonia Shimerda, of the earlier novels, are genuinely heroic women who live out their heroic natures. In O Pioneers! the integration of the pioneer with the feeling woman is achieved through the mythic figure of the Genius of the Divide, which reflects the passionate nature of Alexandra's relation to the land. Similarly, in The Song of the Lark the integration of the artist and the woman takes place in part through Thea's relation to the land; it is accomplished particularly through Thea's own body, her own sensuous nature. The resolution and integration of the personal and creative self is most complete in Antonia, whose body is "a rich mine of life" paralleling the growth and fecundity of the earth itself. In these earlier novels the emphasis is on the heroines' triumph, most complete in Antonia. In A Lost Lady and My Mortal Enemy, by contrast, the central characters are women who have the potential for heroism but lack the proper outlet for it. Although they are characterized by the same desire and passion that marks the earlier heroines, the emphasis is on their failure and loss. Their characters are marked most notably by the disparity between potential and achievement, between what they might have been and what they are. As a woman writer Cather is at her best creating women characters who stand outside the line of descent from Pamela, who are defined as the hero is defined. Cather broke through the male convention of the heroine in the English and American novel, to give us portraits of the heroine as pioneer and artist. The qualities which she admired, however, she discovered in women the world does not recognize, as well as in those it does. Woman is defined in Cather not only by what she achieves but by what she feels and believes. Pioneer, artist, mother, or even lost lady, the Cather heroine is unconventional in her desire to live her life fully, to be fully human.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Patricia Clark Smith

Second Committee Member

Gene Frumkin

Third Committee Member

James Francis Barbour

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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