Marital Relationships in the Fiction of Willa Cather with reference to ‘One of Ours’, ‘Song of the Lark’ and ‘My Antonia’

Dr. Madhuri Chikhalkar Assistant Professor Dept. of English Narsamma College, Kiran nagar, Amravati

Willa Cather was an American novelists, short story writer, essayist, journalist and poetess. She is one of the most significant writers of the nineteenth century. She was born on December 7th 1873 near Winchester, Virginia, in the village of Back Creek. Her writing is for all generation. Her writings help the people to think and understand about past era. It gives detail picture of past time. In 1923 she was awarded by Pulitzer Prize for her novel ‘One of Ours’.

Willa Cather has got unique position among American novelists. Her writing has been mentioned to be able to satisfy the Urge of every generation the work touches the generation before and after her. She used to write about the past but deals with everyone.

Willa Cather had written about various themes like woman protagonist, migration, frontier life, decline of values, importance of land etc. Even her prairie trilogies has women protagonist.

Willa Cather had written poems, short stories, and novels. Her experience in Nebraska frontier and nostalgia reflected in her writings. She was a writer who had a great influence on American culture. She published twelve novels and more than sixty short stories and several volumes of critical essays that focused on her Nebraska experience and early years in Virginia

There are some couples in her novels that have love and also breakups in their relationships. In „One of Ours‟ Willa Cather shows a change in love relationships between Nat and Evangeline Wheeler who were parents of Claude Wheeler. Nat Wheeler and Evangeline Wheeler both had no understanding between them. Their marriage was an absurd one. The same thing had happened with their son Claude who married his childhood friend. In this novel Willa Cather has picturised a very different kind of love relations of a couple.

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Nat Wheeler and Evangeline Wheeler both are totally different in nature. Nat Wheeler was a rude person while Evangeline was a gentle and sensitive woman. He believed that his wife is a thing rather than a human being. He did not discuss about his business or any other topic with his wife or any of his family members. She also has learned to adapt his behaviour.

But apart from all this rude nature, the World War I had changed his relationship with his wife. As soon as the war started, both Nat and his wife were together hearing the news item about war. He admired her for her knowledge. He was totally dependent on his wife and son for the description of war, situation in England and many other things. His son Claude joined the army. Nat Wheeler was pleased with his son‟s decision. When Claude Wheeler was in training, his father Nat Wheeler regularly writes letters about every news of war and asked his wife to write all these things to their son Claude Wheeler, “But since Claude went away he reported to her everything in which he thought the boy would be interested”.1 Due to this war Evangeline‟s life suddenly becomes more pleasant than before. Claude had been commissioned as a lieutenant, and when he came on his leave to his home, he found that his parents were happier and more contented than before.

In „The Song of the Lark’, Peter and Anna Kronborg was parents of Thea. They lived under the old dispensation that the husband is the head of the house while his wife is subordinate to him. Both had a strange type of love. At one time she had extreme love for her husband and other time she just neglected him.

Thea‟s mother Anna Kronborg had a lot of zeal and good humour. She brought with her the property of her father in Nebraska and kept this property in her name. The love relation between Thea‟s father and mother was little bit happiness. Peter Kronborg was proud of his wife. He always praises his wife.

Peter Kronborg did nothing to discipline the children. Anna Kronborg had taken all the responsibilities of children‟s development on her shoulder. They both had mutual understanding and love. There was no evidence of any argument or quarrels between them. Peter and Anna Kronborg always had thoughtful discussion on all matters. Kronborg family had financial problems but they faced it calmly. Their life became more relaxed when their

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land in Nebraska had increased in the value. But the deep love did not reflect in their relationship.

Willa Cather focuses that some migrants did not have strong love relationship between wife and husband. Doctor Howard Archie‟s wife Bellewhite is a Michigan girl. Belle was clever and pretty. She had so many suitors in the university. Among all her suitors she had chosen Doctor Archie who was for her most promising one. Doctor Archie was open hearted and of broad minded person. While his wife Bellewhite was a mean women. Even she was fear about having children. And very late Doctor Archie came to know this.

Mrs. Archie had made Doctor Archie‟s life miserable. The people who know Doctor Archie and his wife were surprised that why Doctor Archie was living with this kind of women. But according to Doctor Archie, a divorced man was a disgraced man.

In „My Antonia‟ Mr. And Mrs. Harling were from Norway. They were next door neighbours of Burden. Jim became a good friend of Harling‟s children. Mr. Harling was many time out of town for his business tour. Mrs. Harling did everything which her husband liked and desired. According to Jim‟s observation,

“Mrs. Harling paid no heed to anyone else if he was there. Before he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmon or anchovies and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and a French coffee-pot, and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of the night he happened to want it”. 2

There were two heads of this family. When Mr. Harling was in his home he was the head of the family and when he was away from town, Mrs. Harling becomes the head of the family. The love between these wife and husband was very good and admirable. And so the people respect them. This family is well liked family in Black Hawk.

The exact opposite love relation is found in Wick Cutter and his wife. There were animosity, cruelty and diabolical behaviour exists between this pair of husband and wife. Wick Cutter was always in a state of warfare with his wife. But he never thought of separating from his wife. Wick Cutter was a moneylender and had got a bad fame in Black Hawk. Jim observers about Wick Cutter as,

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“They quarrelled from the moment Cutter came into the house until they went to bed at night, and their hired girls reported these scenes to the town at large. Mrs. Cutter had several times cut paragraphs about unfaithful husbands out of the newspapers and mailed them to Cutter in a disguised handwriting. Cutter would come home at noon, find the mutilated journal in the paper-rack, and triumphantly fit the clipping into the space from which it had been cut. Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not.”3

Wick Cutter and her wife always used to quarrel. They did not have any child. So, both of them blamed each other for being childless. There was not a single dialogue of love between them. But they argued on unfaithfulness of Wick, household expenses and their inheritance. Wick Cutter was afraid that his wife might live longer than he. He always had thoughts of killing his wife and finally killed her. After that he had also committed suicide by shooting himself. Thus the breakup of their husband wife‟s love relation came in a miserable ways.

One of the happiest couple who had a lot of love was Cuzak and Antonia. Cuzak was a city man. But for the love of Antonia he settled in country. Whenever Cuzak got discouraged due to the hard struggle on land Antonia encouraged him. She always called him as a good man. Jim sees that Antonia and Anton both always take care of each other. Cuzak adopted her even though he knew that Antonia had a child from Larry. Even when he was away for a night from her, she felt that he had been away for months. They both enjoyed each other‟s company. About the love and care taken by Antonia, he says, “Sometimes I git awful sore on this place and want to quit, but my wife she always say we better stick it out. The babies come along pretty fast, so it look like it be hard to move, anyhow. I guess she was right, all right. We got this place clear now. We pay only twenty dollars an acre then, and I been offered a hundred. We bought another quarter ten years ago, and we got it most paid for. We got plenty boys; we can work a lot of land. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor man. She ain't always so strict with me, neither. Sometimes maybe I drink a little too much beer in

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town, and when I come home she don't say nothing. She don't ask me no questions. We always get along fine, her and me, like at first. The children don't make trouble between us, like sometimes happens.'”.4 In Cather‟s novels the marital relationships that the protagonists seek are not the relationships based on passions and physical attractions on the contrary it is based on mutual interest and sympathetic understandings of each other.

References 1. Cather Willa, „One of Ours‟, first published in 1923. Available by Feedbooks on http://www.feedbooks.com, page no. 194. 2. Cather Willa „My Antonia‟ Global Grey, 2017, available on globalgreyebooks.com, page no. 99. 3. Ibid. Page no. 133. 4. Ibid. Page no. 222. Bibliography 1. Cather Willa, „One of Ours‟, Published in 1923. Available by Feedbooks on http://www.feedbooks.com. Source http://gutenberg.net.au 2. Cather Willa, „My Antonia‟ published by Global Grey ©Global Grey 2017 available on globalgreyebooks.com 3. Cather Willa, ‘The Song of The Lark’(1915), e Books @ Adelaide, University of Adelaide South Australia.

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