Landscape and Nature in Willa Cather's Pioneer and Artist Stories

Transformative Worlds: Landscape and Nature In Willa Cather’s Pioneer and Artist Stories A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Millersville University of Pennsylvania In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Art By Hannah Halter March 23, 2018 1 The Thesis for the Master of Art Degree by Hannah Halter has been approved on behalf of the Graduate School by (signatures on file) Dr. Carla Rineer Assistant Professor of English Dr. Timothy Miller Professor of English Dr. Melinda Rosenthal Associate Professor of English Date: __ March 23, 2018__ 2 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS TRANSFORMATIVE WORLDS: LANDSCAPE AND NATURE IN WILLA CATHER’S PIONEER AND ARTISTS STORIES By Hannah Halter Millersville University, 2018 Millersville, Pennsylvania Directed by Dr. Carla Rineer Many foundational authors of American literature build complex and subtle links between landscapes and the mentalities of their characters. Once perceived as an author of limited regionalism, Willa Cather has become an author of increasing scholarly interest, and the affective resonance of her landscapes--especially the Nebraska prairie and other regions of the American midwest and southwest--contributes greatly to her position as a unique and prolific figure of modern American literature. By tracing the relationship between the minds of Cather’s characters and the definitive landscapes of their lives, the theme of transformation can begin to come into focus. Two of Cather’s main character models, the pioneer and the artist, take central roles in the following sampling of her novels, and the transformative power of landscapes differs between the two. O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and A Lost Lady can be understood as pioneer stories, within which nature acts upon characters gradually and shapes their identities and their understanding of the world. In contrast, The Song of the Lark, The Professor’s House, and Lucy Gayheart are best understood as artist stories, with natural images, real or imagined, appearing suddenly to inspire moments of understanding or emotional change. In both story types, the 3 natural world continually transcends its basic role as a backdrop and impacts the courses of the main characters’ lives, reaching them on a deeply personal level and shifting both their individual perspectives and often the very courses of their lives. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I: Introduction … 5 Chapter II: Pioneer Stories…22 O Pioneers!...22 My Ántonia...36 A Lost Lady...48 Chapter III: Artist Stories...58 The Song of the Lark...58 The Professor’s House...67 Lucy Gayheart...77 Chapter IV: Conclusion...85 Works Cited...88 5 Chapter I: Introduction In the latter years of her life, author Sarah Orne Jewett, a writer of American regionalism, began corresponding regularly with Willa Cather. Jewett recognized Cather’s great talent for prose and urged the younger writer to shift her focus from journalism to creative writing, as she felt Cather’s youth would best serve her creative work (Rubinstein 328). Early during their correspondence, Jewett wrote that Cather needed to “find [her] own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world...write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up” (241). Jewett’s advice remained with Cather, and years after Jewett’s death, Cather placed the words of her friend that definitively guided her artistic course within the preface of her first book: “Of course, one day you will write about your own country. In the meantime, get all you can. One must know the world so well before one can know the parish” (Cather, Alexander’s vii). Jewett’s words privilege location and the knowledge connected to it above all else as a basis for writing regional literature, linking the local with the global in an effort to highlight the connection between the specific and the universal. Cather deeply respected Jewett and had a great love for her work. She enjoyed Jewett’s predilection toward “everyday people who grow out of the soil,” and, citing Jewett’s sketches of country life in The Country of the Pointed Firs, the way she allowed her stories to “melt into the land and the life of the land until they [were] not stories at all, but life itself” (Cather, Not Under Forty 87). In the words of Hermione Lee, Jewett’s life and work “pointed Cather the way she would go” (69). Cather’s first published creative works, the novel Alexander’s Bridge and the collection of short stories The Troll Garden, did not yet reflect Jewett’s prediction that Cather would write about her own country. These relatively short works are heavy with monologue and dialogue, 6 focusing on propriety and relationships between characters. They do not rely on setting nearly as much as Cather’s later novels do; the majority of events in these works could arguably take place in any number of locations. Cather herself was critical of American writers who worked within strict story boundaries drawn from other traditionally successful books instead of lived experience (Laird 242). In her view, these writers chose “unvarying, carefully dosed ingredients” to create familiar plots (Cather, Willa Cather 58). Looking back on Alexander’s Bridge and early short stories found in The Troll Garden, Cather recalls trying to imitate Henry James and Edith Wharton (two successful authors with very little regard for the specifics of landscapes in their works) and wandering into the same pitfalls of familiar narratives (Lee 83; Laird 242). However, Lee notes that the best stories in The Troll Garden take place in the West and in Pittsburgh, places where Cather lived, and they featured solitary artist figures (75). Cather would go on to pen her greatest works based on the criteria noted by Lee; the fiction Cather set in locations from her real-life experiences and featuring artist figures forms the heart of her most prolific and canonical works. A palpable shift came when Cather authored O Pioneers!, an undoubtedly canonical book to readers and scholars of her works. In reference to O Pioneers! Cather echoes her sentiments toward Jewett’s advice, as she states, “In this one I hit the home pasture and found that I was Yance Sorgeson [Sorgenson, Webster County farmer] and not Henry James” (Randall 62). This realization follows a turn Cather took toward her home country in this foundational book. Being her first “affirmative” work about Nebraska (62), O Pioneers! marks Cather’s premiere venture in accepting the raw material of the region as the foundation of her creative vision. Randall writes that Cather “became converted to organic form” for the first time in this book (62). This defining shift would persist in Cather’s major works, a shift that incorporates and presents the 7 author’s lived experiences. The divide between her works before and after/including O Pioneers! is clear, especially in light of today’s scholarly consensus on Cather’s canonical pieces. When Cather turned away from the established models created by writers she imitated and acted upon the value of her own past and personal interests--expressed most vividly in her connection to landscapes and her love of music, especially opera--her works became genuine, subtle pieces of literature. In a sense, Cather became a pioneer herself, both in her subject matter and her narrative strategies (Laird 243). While any number of explorations could be undertaken on Cather’s literary strategies, I suggest that from O Pioneers! onward, Cather’s use of landscape hinges on the complex relationship between humanity and nature and the transformative effects of this relationship. The beginning of Cather’s own transformation as a writer is rooted in her youth. Although she was born in Virginia and her family roots were southern, Willa Cather spent much of her childhood in Red Cloud, a small town in Webster County, Nebraska, after her family relocated. Ross points out that Cather utilizes Red Cloud to build the central fictional towns featured in six of her twelve novels, including Hanover in O Pioneers!, Moonstone in The Song of the Lark, Black Hawk in My Ántonia, Frankfort in One of Ours, Sweet Water in A Lost Lady, and Haverford in Lucy Gayheart (“A Walk”). All of these towns feature similar structures and landmarks, most of which were drawn from Cather’s experiences. Many of her characters, too, are adapted from impressions of those she encountered. For example, her extensive interaction with immigrant families living on the prairie frames her portrayal of the immigrant characters appearing in My Ántonia, especially (“A Walk”). In her best works, Cather populates a detailed, realistic world with characters true to her experiences. With her conversion to lived experience 8 and her new esteem for the defining landscapes of her life forming a basis for Cather’s career as a writer, the subtle functions of landscapes and nature in her literature can be better explored. As Cather’s novels demonstrate, human-nature relationships are not always simple. The facts of nature collide with both individual imagination and wider cultural understanding (Jenseth and Lotto v). This collision is often amplified in literature, where story elements can take on complex, interconnected roles. Cather’s works show that building a natural setting not only involves creating a believable site for events to take place but also involves the slow formation of a constant force that underlies the core of a story and interacts with the minds of characters. The Nebraska prairie is not just a place for pioneer characters to live; it is also a living stage of struggle and triumph for characters such as Alexandra Bergson and Ántonia Shimerda. The ruins of cliff dwellings in Blue Mesa and Panther Cañon are not just places to explore for Tom Outland and Thea Krongborg; they are also monumental centers of life-altering mental and spiritual renewal.

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