Willa Cather's Quest for the "Thing Not Named"
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A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS TOWARD FAITH: WILLA CATHER'S QUEST FOR THE "THING NOT NAMED" By MARY RUTH (COX) BROWN II Bachelor of Arts Indiana Wesleyan University (Formerly Marion College) Marion, Indiana 1971 Master of Arts Fort Hays State University Hays, Kansas 1977 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PIDLOSOPHY May, 1988 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I -r nes:s I I I '"~~ ~ I I ~~'19p I I I c.op·..::L I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS TOWARD FAITII: WILLA CATHER'S QUEST FOR THE "THING NOT NAMED" Thesis Approved: Dean of Graduate College 11 COPYRIGHT© by Mary Ruth (Cox) Brown May, 1988 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I never before thought that writing a dissertation could be an act of love, or as Willa Cather would put it, a "gift of sympathy," but this one has been exactly that. The love not only has been for the subject matter, but it has also been evidenced in the kindness and assistance of the many persons who have supported me throughout. I am greatly indebted to the late Dr. Mary C. Dodd of Marion College, who quickened my affinity for literature; to Dr. Clifford Edwards for introducing me to Willa Cather's writings and sharing in my enthusiasm for them; to my professors at Oklahoma State University, whose high standards for scholarly inquiry challenged my own. My very special thanks to Dr. Ed Walkiewicz, my dissertation advisor, whose spirit of helpfulness, respectful criticism, and unerring ear for fine prose make him an indispensable mentor to a host of graduate students. I am deeply grateful to the examining committee of Dr. Jack Crane, Dr. Ed Lawry, and, particularly, Dr. Linda Leavell, whose meticulous reading and helpful corrections of the manuscript went far beyond the demands of duty. My doctoral program got its start because of the generosity of Bartlesville Wesleyan College and, particularly, the efforts of Dr. Paul Faulkenberry to procure faculty development funds. It was further advanced by the unfailing encouragement of Dr. Larry Hughes, who helped to smooth an otherwise impossibly rocky road. Other much appreciated support came from the outstanding students, faculty, and staff at Bartlesville Wesleyan College, especially my English majors, who suffered through endless reiterations of my work and have probably vowed never to read one more thing about Willa Cather. A special thank you goes to Mary Maness for her invaluable help in ill editing the fmal copy of the manuscript. My hardworking and unflappable secretary, Tammy Allison, deserves a medal of honor. I am most grateful for the research assistance given by Amelia Thompson, Bartlesville Wesleyan College Library; Ann E. Bellesbach, Curator for the Cather Historical Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska; and Elsie V. Thomas, Associate Professor and Archivist for the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I will always be indebted to the friendship and the numerous acts of kindness both great and small of Sandy Pearce, my comrade-in-arms, and Tom Pearce. Thanks also to Jo Allen for her hospitality. Without these generous people, the whole project simply could not have been completed with any semblance of ease or order. My deepest debt is to my family, who often sacrificed their personal comfort and plans to advance mine, and that I can never repay. To Ron, thanks for faithfully and uncomplainingly taking up the slack left by my preoccupation; to Jerolyn and Jim, thanks for your patient ears and your unfailing enthusiasm; to Ron, Jr., thanks for being proud of me. To my own "rod of measure," Leo and Esther Cox, my gratitude for your example and faith; to Marty Courtney and Rachel Herring, thanks for your love and confidence. And to the God of Love who empowers us all, praise. iv PREFACE From the first book of Willa Cather's that I read, her work arrested my attention like no other. I was enthralled with Cather's gift for evocative language--for creating character and scene with the power of a poet. But more than that, I was taken in by what appeared to me a singleminded search in her fiction for the life well lived. As I progressed from story to story, Cather seemed to be working out through her themes and characters a defmition of the meaning of ultimate human value. As I studied the particular characters who epitomize Cather• s estimate of a well lived life, a pattern emerged. Discovering this emerging pattern precipitated my own search for the source of her standard. I chose the biographical approach for this search because so much of Cather's fiction, by her own admission, is highly biographical. I soon discovered that, first, Cather• s locus of value was not in Nebraska as so many critics have supposed, but in her native Virginia; and, second, I found that Cather's locus of spiritual value was inherited from the older members of her Virginia family. a Christian heritage which was very early implanted deep in her consciousness. Cather was the beneficiary of a type of childhood which, acccording to Allen Bloom, is missing in modern American families. In The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom catalogs the religious traditions and practices which he fmds regretably absent in contemporary culture: [Parents] have nothing to give their children in the way of a vision of the world, of high models of actions or profound sense of connection with others. The family required the most delicate mixture of nature and v convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function .... In teaching a language and providing names for all things, it transmits an interpretation of the order of the whole of things. It feeds of books, in which the little polity--the family--believes, which tell about right and wrong, good and bad and explain why they are so. The family requires a certain authority and wisdom about the ways of heavens and of men. The parents must have knowledge of what has happened in the past, and prescriptions for what ought to be, in order to resist the philistinism or the wickedness of the present. Ritual and ceremony are now often said to be necessary for the family, and they are now lacking. The family, however, has to be a sacred unity believing in the permanence of what it teaches, if its ritual and ceremony are to express and transmit the wonder of the moral law, which it alone is capable of transmitting and which makes it special in a world devoted to the humanly, all too humanly, useful. (57) What Bloom finds missing in modern families was abundantly present in Cather's early years through the efforts of her pious elders. Cather's grandparents, William and Caroline Cather and Rachel Boak, and her great-aunt Sidney Gore, gave Cather her "vision of the world," a vision that would later become the basis for her theory of art. They gave her a "language," religious in nature, to interpret "the order of the whole of things." I have come to believe that the moral foundation of Cather's fiction, including her aesthetics, is based on her Christian elders' "certain authority and wisdom about the ways of heavens and of men." Even Jonathan Culler, a current leading iconoclast, admits that all writers write out of some center of authority: "Even if [a particular theory of culture is] 'emptied' by a radical theory, the center will inevitably fill itself in" (Structuralist Poetics 251). Jacques Derrida concurs that we cannot operate critically outside of a "center"; "[t]he center," he VI states, is "absolutely indispensable" (271). Cather's "center," inherited, learned, and received from her elders, was religious and it was Christian. However, as her fiction demonstrates, Cather's acceptance of her religious inheritance came after much resistance and anguish of soul. Cather's adult life as well as her fictional characters chronicle the tension between her rejection of that heritage and her irresistable pull toward it. The more that Cather tried to separate herself from her religious background and the Christianity it represented, the more she found herself drawn to it, first in the development of her theory of art, then simultaneously in her fiction and life itself. In the following chapters, I will trace Cather's journey through her life and writings, beginning with her fonnative years in Virginia and ending with her affirmation of Christian values. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. SECRET WEBS, DISTANT VOICES . .1 . Cather's Methodology . 1 Cather's Virginia Years .............................................. 23 2. THE "LIGHT BEHIND" . .47 . Cather's Christian Heritage .... ........ ............ ...... .... .... .... 47 Cather's Early Theory of the Artist ............................ ..... 69 Cather's Developing Skepticism of Her Theory . ... 86 Cather's Initial Return Home . 105. 3. THE LONG ROAD HOME .. .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 112 William and Caroline Cather and 0 Pioneers! . 112. The Song of the Lark ........................................... 143 My Antonia ...................................................... 151 The Professor's House .. .. .... .. .... .. .... .. .. .. .. .... .. .... .. 165 4. "THE PRIEST WHO MAKES GOD INTO BREAD" .... ... 177 Sidney Cather Gore .