Willa Cather: the Letters and Novels of a Romantic Modernist
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 6-2005 Willa Cather: The Letters and Novels of a Romantic Modernist Lisa Bouma Garvelink Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Garvelink, Lisa Bouma, "Willa Cather: The Letters and Novels of a Romantic Modernist" (2005). Dissertations. 1031. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1031 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. \VILLA CATHER: THE LETTERS AND NOVELS OF A ROMANTIC MODERNIST by Lisa Bouma Garvelink A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree ofDoetor of Philosophy Department of English Daneen Wardrop, Adviser Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, 1-fichigan June 2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3183589 Copyright 2005 by Garvelink, Lisa Bouma All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3183589 Copyright 2005 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © 2005 Lisa Bouma Garvelink Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study of Cather has been made possible by more people than I can possibly acknowledge. First of all, I am grateful to the late Clinton Burhans at Michigan State University, both for introducing me to Cather over twenty years ago and even more for initially encouraging me to consider writing a dissertation on Cather. Years later, at Western Michigan University, Katherine Joslin encouraged my further exploration of Cather, especially pushing me to travel to read some of Cather's unpublishable letters. Through Joslin's contact with Emeritus Professor William Combs, who is a friend of Cather scholar Merrill Maguire Skaggs, I received an invitation to Drew University to examine Drew's newly acquired Cather collection. My thanks to Western Michigan Uni versity's Graduate College for research grants, which partially funded both my trip to Nebraska and my trip to New Jersey to study Cather's papers. These trips changed my dissertation and changed me as a scholar. While enjoying Skaggs' gracious hospitality and studying Drew's collection, I discovered in Cather's letters a much more complex Willa Cather than I had envisioned, and I accepted Skaggs' challenge to reformat my dissertation around further study of Cather's correspondence. Thanks to the generous funding of my husband, Steven Jay Garvelink, I have been able to visit many collections around the country and have been able to receive either microfilm or xeroxed copies from many other collections. This study of Cather's correspondence has confirmed for me the romantic modernist I had discov ered in her novels, and it has revealed the same dialectic in her letters as in her novels. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments-continued of Cather's correspondence has confirmed for me the romantic modernist I had discov ered in her novels, and it has revealed the same dialectic in her letters as in her novels. Many thanks to Daneen Wardrop for directing my dissertation and for her meticu lous examination of this manuscript, with more valuable questions and suggestions than I have been able to incorporate at this point. Katherine Joslin and Nicolas Witschi also gave much patient encouragement of me in my most halting early attempts at Cather scholarship, giving a host of valuable suggestions along the way. My thanks to my whole committee-Daneen Wardrop, Katherine Joslin, Nicolas Witschi, and Kristin Szylvian for believing in my project and for helping me always to envision it as a book. Helping to further that dream, Western Michigan University's Dissertation Completion Fellowship generously funded an entire year of additional scholarship in 2004-05, freeing me to travel and to spend time examining over 1400 letters I would have had little possibility of reading during a year of teaching responsibilities. Additionally, my thanks go to Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, for publishing an earlier form of chapter 3: "Willa Cather's Voyage Perilous: A Case for One of Ours." The article appeared in Volume 33, Number 7, October-November 2004, copy right notice© 2001 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N. V. My thanks also go to Bailey-Howe Library, University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont, for permission to publish Dorothy Canfield Fisher's letter to Cather. Most of all I thank my exquisitely supportive husband, for believing in my work even when I doubted, and for helping make this project possible in more ways than I could note. My daughters-Katherine, Julia, and Stephanie-! thank also for their loving iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments-continued encouragement, their continual sharing of my excitement, and their willingness to post pone many of their needs for the good of my ever present research project. My whole family has sustained me, tirelessly listening to my talk of Willa Cather, as have my friends and colleagues who have indefatigably questioned me about Willa Cather and my progress with her. To all of these a huge thank you. Lisa Bouma Garvelink iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. ii INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. CATHER'S MODERNIST-ROMANTIC PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST........ 15 2. CATHER'S CREATION OF JIM BURDEN AS A PARTIALLY RELIABLE NARRATOR................................................................................... 47 3. WILLA CATHER'S VOYAGE PERILOUS: A CASE FOR ONE OF OURS................................................................................................... 83 4. THE IMPACT OF GOSSIP AND COMMUNITY ON WILLA CATHER AND ON HER LOST LADY ............................................................ 115 5. THEPAINOFBETRAYALFOR WILLA CATHER AND HER PROFESSOR.............................................................................................. 146 6. THE MOTHER NARRATIVE IN WILLA CATHER AND IN SAPPHIRA AND THE SLAVE GIRL. ................................................... 181 NOTES ........................................................................................................................... 211 Introduction .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 211 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................. 212 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................. 217 Chapter 3 ·················································································'··························· 223 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................. 229 Chapter 5 . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 23 8 Chapter 6 . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 250 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................ 257 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION Willa Cather's reputation in the last century has included extremes, from bohemian nonconformist to nostalgic regionalist and from old-fashioned romantic to trendsetting modernist. Actually born in December 1873, Cather changed her official record multiple times before settling on the 1876 which her tombstone records today, leading biographers on a long chase to discover the true date. 1 In the late 1890's and the early 1900's Cather was an extremely well-known and talked-about newspaper columnist and magazine editor,