Willa Cather & Material Culture Real-World Writing, Writing the Real World EDITED BY JANIS T.STOUT Willa Cather and Material Culture You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. studies in american literary realism and naturalism series editor Gary Scharnhorst editorial board Louis J. Budd Donna Campbell John Crowley Robert E. Fleming Eric Haralson Katherine Kearns Joseph McElrath George Monteiro Brenda Murphy James Nagel Alice Hall Petry Donald Pizer Tom Quirk Jeanne Campbell Reesman Ken Roemer Susan Rosowski You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Willa Cather and Material Culture Real-World Writing, Writing the Real World Edited by Janis P. Stout The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Copyright © 2005 The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Minion ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Willa Cather and material culture : real–world writing, writing the real world / edited by Janis P. Stout. p. cm. — (Studies in American literary realism and naturalism) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8173-1436-9 (alk. paper) 1. Cather, Willa, 1873–1947—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Cather, Willa, 1873–1947—Knowledge—Material culture. 3. Literature publishing—United States. 4. Material culture in literature. 5. Reality in literature. 6. Realism in literature. I. Stout, Janis P. II. Series. PS3505.A87Z93525 2004 813′.52—dc22 2004008808 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Many of the invisible attributes of creating are themselves objecti¤ed and made visible in the materialized structure of the object world. —Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Contents List of Abbreviations ix Introduction: For Use, for Pleasure, for Status: The Object World of Willa Cather Janis P. Stout 1 1. Willa Cather: A Life with Quilts Ann Romines 15 2. To Entertain, To Educate, To Elevate: Cather and the Commodi¤cation of Manners at the Home Monthly Jennifer L. Bradley 37 3. “That Kitchen with the Shining Windows”: Willa Cather’s “Neighbour Rosicky” and the Woman’s Home Companion Park Bucker 66 Appendix: Selected Thematic Concordance to “Neighbour Rosicky” 77 4. Taking Liberties: Willa Cather and the 1934 Film Adaptation of A Lost Lady Michael Schueth 113 5. Object Lessons: Nature Education, Museum Science, and Ethnographic Tourism in The Professor’s House Anne Raine 125 6. “An Orgy of Acquisition”: The Female Consumer, In¤delity, and Commodity Culture in A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House Honor McKitrick Wallace 144 7. “Fragments of Their Desire”: Willa Cather and the Alternative Aesthetic Tradition of Native American Women Deborah Lindsay Williams 156 8. Material Objects as Sites of Cultural Mediation in Death Comes for the Archbishop Sarah Wilson 171 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. viii Contents 9. Gloves Full of Gold: Violations of the Gift Cycle in My Mortal Enemy Robert K. Miller 188 1 0. Words To Do with Things: Reading about Willa Cather and Material Culture Mary Ann O’Farrell 207 Bibliography 21 9 Contributors 231 Index 235 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Abbreviations Calendar—Stout, ed., A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather DCA—Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop DCF—Dorothy Can¤eld Fisher FG—Ferris Greenslet LG—Cather, Lucy Gayheart LL—Cather, A Lost Lady MA—Cather, My Ántonia MME—Cather, My Mortal Enemy NRa—Cather, “Neighbour Rosicky” (¤rst book publication) NRb—Cather, “Neighbor Rosicky” (magazine version) OD—Cather, Obscure Destinies (Scholarly Edition) ODa—Cather, Obscure Destinies (original Knopf version) OP—Cather, O Pioneers! OW—Cather, On Writing PH—Cather, The Professor’s House SL—Cather, The Song of the Lark SR—Cather, Shadows on the Rock WC—Willa Cather WCIP—L. Brent Bohlke, ed., Willa Cather in Person WCPM—Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, Red Cloud, Nebraska You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Willa Cather and Material Culture You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Introduction For Use, for Pleasure, for Status The Object World of Willa Cather Janis P. Stout William Carlos Williams’s dictum “no ideas but in things,” usually taken as a position statement relating to the expression of ideas in po- etry, might equally well be read as an observation about their source— that is, where ideas come from. For if human beings can express them- selves only in real, sensuous objects (as Karl Marx once wrote),1 it is perhaps equally true that we can gain personhood, develop selves to ex- press, only within the context of objects—a process Fredric Jameson de- scribes when he states that external objects “‘remind’ us of ourselves more profoundly than anything that takes place in the impoverished life of our conscious will” (99). Patricia Yaeger, quoting Jameson, terms this process “introjection,” or the use of objects “to ¤nd a path into the hieroglyphic tangle of our own drives and desires” (142). We live amid objects from the time we are wrapped, still smeared with our mother’s blood, in our ¤rst blanket. Hence the importance of the study of mate- rial culture: Concrete objects are both ingredients and traces of human identity, human history, and human culture. And it is as both—as ingre- dients or shaping contexts and as expressive traces—that we will here ponder the importance of material objects to the mind and art of Willa Cather. Objects are not, of course, the ingredients or the traces of culture; words, both spoken and written on documents (which can also then be studied as objects), are also powerful ingredients and traces of con- You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. 2 Stout sciousness, of culture, and of the interaction of individual conscious- ness with culture. But words have been attended to and studied for so long, and have been so privileged above material objects in the hierar- chy of what is worthy of attention, that the more recent interest in ob- jects, not merely as illustrations of meaning but as coequal conveyers of meaning, is a signi¤cant corrective.