Willa Cather's a Lost Lady: Art Versus the Closing Frontier

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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Fall 1982

Willa Cather's A Lost Lady: Art Versus The Closing Frontier

Susan J. Rosowski University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Rosowski, Susan J., "Willa Cather's A Lost Lady: Art Versus The Closing Frontier" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1635. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1635

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY ART VERSUS THE CLOSING FRONTIER

SUSAN J. ROSOWSKI

When A Lost Lady appeared in 1923, readers lies in perfectly incorporating the two kinds of immediately recognized Willa Cather's achiever experience and, in the end, celebrating sym ment. T. K. Whipple wrote, "with A Lost Lady, bolic possibility in the face of historical loss. Miss Cather arrived at what can only be called A Lost Lady presents the age-old tension perfection in her art'} Joseph Wood Krutch between possibility and loss against a back termed it "nearly perfect.,,2 Later readers con ground of an American frontier that promised tinued the praise, calling it "perfectly modu a pioneer experience of boundless opportunity lated,,3 and "a flawless classic,,4 and generally at the same time it restricted that experience judging it the finest of Cather's novels. While to a strikingly brief period.6 It does so through acknowledging its art, however, critics have the story of Marian Forrester, brought as a stressed its themes in their interpretations, bride to the small town of Sweet Water by her reading it as telling of the frontier's downfall, road-making husband, one of the last of the of the noble pioneer's passing, of materialism's pioneer aristocrats. A generation younger than onslaught, of woman's plight in a patriarchal Captain Forrester, Mrs. Forrester is caught in society. These themes run through the novel, the increasingly narrow circumstances of a clos certainly; Cather begins her story with the ing frontier: her husband suffers a loss of historical decline of the West and she traces fortune and health, and then dies, leaving her the passing of the noble pioneer and the ex apparently at the mercy of grasping, material ploitation of the land. But she posits against istic elements in Sweet Water. Her story is told this decline a human need for primitive or primarily from the point of view of Niel Her sacred understanding, for spiritual attitudes bert. A generation younger than Mrs. Forrester and intuitive, symbolic art forms. 5 Cather's art and two generations younger than the pioneers who settled the West, Niel realizes he lives at An associate professor of English at the Uni "the very end of the road-making West .... It versity of Nebraska-Lincoln, Susan J. Rosowski was already gone, that age; nothing could ever serves on the executive council of the Western bring it back,,,7 and he seeks ennobling sym Literature Association. Her articles on Cather bolic value in the face of this loss. have appeared in Novel, Western American Tension between possibility and loss is fur Literature, and other journals. ther evident in the two quite different effects

239 240 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982 the book produces. A Lost Lady contains a partIcIpates in cause-and-effect relationships in bustle of activity that forms an overall pattern time: she flourishes as a result of her husband's of rising and falling motion, of expectation and prosperity and suffers by his loss of fortune; she disappointment. The pioneers live and die, enjoys youthful beauty, then gradually grows old. people come and go, the economy grows and But as the historical account progresses, declines, light dawns and fades, flowers open Cather presents a second level of significance in and close-even Mrs. Forrester's laugh rises and her characterization of Marian Forrester-a descends. The plot reflects this pattern: Marian symbolic one. While the events of her life exist Forrester comes to Sweet Water as the young within time and in terms of cause-and-effect bride of Captain Forrester and she leaves after relationships, her symbolic meaning exists out his death; at the beginning of the action, the of time and comes from the integration of ap boy Niel Herbert first enters the Forrester parently disparate elements: her suspicious past place, and at its ending an older Niel departs and her respectability as Captain Forrester's "for the last time." Scenes suggest this pattern wife; her aesthetic otherworldliness and her in miniature, characteristically beginning with sensuality; her fragility and her strength; her Niel's coming up the hill approaching the For exquisiteness and her coarseness; her artless rester house and ending with his going down ness and her artifice; her mocking, guarded the hill after leaving it. veneer and the living reality beneath it. Although movement surrounds episodes of The novel's intensity builds on both levels. A Lost Lady, there is a profound stillness at First, there are the increasingly desperate its center. Episodes contain moments of recog circumstances of Mrs. Forrester's life-of her nition that seem frozen in time, and these struggle to avoid entrapment by the restricting moments make up the essential substance of effects of her husband's loss of fortune and the novel. Like Antonia, who could "leave death, of living in Sweet Water, of growing old. images in the mind that did not fade-that Second, and far more important, intensity builds grew stronger with time,,,8 so does A Lost as Mrs. Forrester expands as a symbol by incor Lady leave such images; Mrs. Forrester bring porating ever greater discrepancies. Initially, the ing cookies to the boys in the marsh; listening contrasts she presents are relatively easy to re to Captain Forrester tell their dinner guests of solve: she seems a lady far above and detached first coming to Sweet Water and, later, presid from other people, yet she enters the ordinary ing over her own dinner party, telling quite world of childhood play when she brings cook different guests of her meeting Captain For ies to young boys playing in the marsh. Gradu rester; Niel, stooping to place a bouquet of ally, she reveals wider contrasts-between the flowers outside her bedroom window, then spiritual and the physical, the common and the hearing from within the sound of her laughter uncommon, fidelity and betrayal-and resolu mingled with that of her lover. tion becomes correspondingly more difficult. These effects of movement and stillness Niel Herbert, the sensitive observer of Marian derive from two impulses that run through the Forrester, is the major vehicle for this expand novel-one historical, the other symbolic, and ing symbolic meaning. It is Niel who feels most both focusing on Marian Forrester, the lost lady intensely her "magic of contradictions" (p. of the title. In the historical narrative, Mrs. For 79), and it is he who attempts most arduously rester is a woman who lives in time: she comes to to deny those contradictions. The overall Sweet Water and presides over her husband's symbolic movement of the novel follows Niel's home as a brilliant hostess, takes a lover, cares responses and consists of two major imaginative for her husband during his prolonged illness, expansions and contractions, followed by a abandons principles of his generation after his resolution.9 In the first part, scenes expand the death, has an affair with a shyster lawyer, and symbolic significance of Mrs. Forrester through moves from Sweet Water to seek her fortune a dialectic between her otherworldly grace and elsewhere. Throughout this progression, she her physical reality. Early expansive movement WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY 241 occurs when the young Niel thinks of her as a tion reveals an analytic impulse and an under spiritual goddess, then perceives her playful, lying denial of paradoxes. He assumes that Mrs. teasing, human qualities. Expansion continues Forrester puts away her exquisiteness when she as the adolescent Niel becomes aware of other is with her lover and that, after having given incongruities in her: a scandalous past and a herself up to sexuality, she "recovers herself," present respectability, a mocking manner and putting aside sexuality and resuming her former a deep interest in people, fragility and vitality: nature. Intensifying the question is Niel's "from that disparity, he believed, came the almost violent impulse to force a response from subtlest thrill of her fascination. She ... in her, a yielding to him, as he "burned ... to get herited the magic of contradictions" (p. 79). the truth out of her" (my emphasis). As other readers have observed, Niel's imagina In the novel's second part, Niel's response tive, emotional response is far deeper than he is is again expansive as scenes further present conscious of: in terms of the aesthetic exper Mrs. Forrester's complexity, this time primarily ience of the novel, Mrs. Forrester's symbolic through disparities between her self-renuncia meaning greatly exceeds the adolescent Niel's tion and her independence. Seldom leaving capacity to comprehend her. Cather prepares Sweet Water during her husband's last years, for this disparity by a sequence of episodes: Mrs. Forrester reveals gentleness in her minis the dinner party, culminating Niel's initial trations to her dying husband and fierceness in response to Mrs. Forrester, is followed by the her own desire to live, exhaustion and strength, cedarbough-cutting episode, which occurs out generosity and greed. This expansion culmi side Niel's knowledge and in which the non nates when Mrs. Forrester presides at her own judgmental Adolph Blum provides the lens for dinner party after her husband's death and, presenting profoundly sexual qualities in Mrs. despite her great fatigue and her guests' insensi Forrester. Thus in the following chapter, when tivity, transforms those present with the story Niel attempts to explain his interest in Mrs. of her first meeting Captain Forrester. Forrester, there is an enormous ironic differ Throughout this expansion, tension builds ence between his explanation that "it was as as Ivy Peters assumes the role previously held Captain Forrester's wife that she most inter by Frank Ellinger-on a narrative level oflover, ested Niel, and it was in her relation to her on a symbolic level of eliciting contradictory husband that he most admired her" (p. 78) and features in Mrs. Forrester. Contraction occurs the reader's knowledge of qualities in her that when Niel, seeing Ivy Peters "unconcernedly lie far outside this explanation. put both arms around her, his hands meeting Through this expansion, tension builds with over her breast" (p. 169), turns from her in intrusions by Frank Ellinger, Mrs. Forrester's bitter disillusionment, resolving never to return lover, and culminates when Niel overhears to the Forrester place. Again Niel attempts to Mrs. Forrester with Ellinger in her bedroom. deny contradictions in her: she is either common Unable to accommodate sexuality in his imagi or uncommon, worthy or unworthy. Recalling native conception of her, Niel draws back in her, Niel wishes to "challenge [her 1, demand bitter disillusionment, breaking the imaginative the secret of that ardour," just as he had earlier expansion with logic: "he burned to ask her wished "to get the truth out of her." Yet the one question, to get the truth out of her and to futility of this last wish is apparent. Mrs. For set his mind at rest: What did she do with all rester "had drifted out of his ken" -she had her exquisiteness when she was with a man like moved to South America, remarried, and died Ellinger? Where did she put it away? And and the image of her drifting away combines having put it away, how could she recover her with Niel's wish "to call up the shade of the self, and give one-give even him-the sense of young Mrs. Forrester, as the witch of Endor tempered steel, a blade that could fence with called up Samuel's" (p. 171), to convey a anyone and never break" (p. 100). Niel's ques- dreamlike, imaginative quality in his response. 242 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982

Resolution comes when Niel, ceasing his does those of a symbolic poem-"to be dynam attempts to explain Mrs. Forrester or to force ically interrelated."ll And so they are. To her to explain herself, acknowledges her value develop the expanding symbolic significance on another level. Removed in time and place that radiates from Mrs. Forrester, Cather uses from the cause-and-effect relationships of the a form of incremental repetition, repeating narrative, Niel hears once again of his "long-lost descriptive phrases so that the significance of lady," an account relayed by a childhood the reference changes in the progress of the friend, Ed Elliott. In this final description, Mrs. novel. By repetition, the things to which Forrester remains enigmatic: she had aged, yet phrases refer become familiar: they appear, hadn't changed in essentials; she had married a then reappear, with each reappearance bring man reputed to be "quarrelsome and rather ing forward the accumulated associations of stingy," yet "she seemed to have everything"; their past. When the boy Niel is taken into most remarkably, she had "come up again" Mrs. Forrester's bedroom after breaking his after having "pretty well gone to pieces before arm, for example, he sees light coming through she left Sweet Water." But Niel responds, "'So closed green shutters; later, an older Niel, we may feel sure that she was well cared for to having gathered a bouquet for Mrs. Forrester the end ... Thank God for that!'" The resolu in the early morning, goes "softly round the tion here is in Niel's attitude to Mrs. Forrester, still house to the north side of Mrs. Forrester's an acknowledgment of the truth of his subjec own room, where the door-like green shutters tive experience of her. His "'Thank God! '" were closed" (p. 86). The familiar shutters reveals the strength of his feeling; his friend subtly evoke the earlier scene in which Niel interprets the reaction as feeling (" 'I knew was inside the room and secure in his youthful you'd feel that way"'); then the narrator af idealization of Mrs. Forrester, and thus they firms this interpretation in the novel's final contribute to the dramatic impact of the disil clause, "a warm wave of feeling passed over his lusionment scene. face" (pp. 172-74). As the effect of incremental repetition At the end, we too try to "get at" Mrs. expands, objects take on qualities of their per Forrester's secret-to explain and judge her as ceivers, further suggesting a world informed strong or weak, noble or fallen. But just as with symbolic significance. The poplars border there is a problem with the "real" meaning in ing the road to the Forrester place are initially "Ode on a Grecian Urn," so there is a problem simply objects in a rather flat nature: "the Cap with the "real" meaning of Marian Forrester tain's private land [was 1 bordered by Lom and, through her, of A Lost Lady. We finally bardy poplars" (p. 11). Gradually, however, return to the images of the w~man that live in the trees become sentinels of the coming and the book and, as we do so, recognize as Niel going of visitors to the Forrester place, familiar does the expanding significance that radiates landmarks in a world we come to recognize. from her, infusing every part of the novel: "she Eventually, they participate in the symbolic had always the power of suggesting things much meaning that radiates' from Mrs. Forrester, lovelier than herself, as the perfume of a single transformed by Niel following his experiences flower may call up the whole sweetness of with her. Leaving the Forrester place, "Niel spring" (p. 172). paused for a moment at the end of the lane to This infusing power of the symbol is its look up at the last skeleton poplar in the long essential quality. As Coleridge wrote, a symbol row; just above its pointed tip hung the hollow, "partakes of the reality which it renders intel silver winter moon" (p. 42). When Nielleaves ligible [and 1 ... abides itself as a living part in the Forrester place "'for the last time,'" the that unity, of which it is a representative.,,10 narrator affirms, "it was even so; he never went It follows then that we would expect the parts up the poplar-bordered road again" (p. 170) of a symbolic prose narrative-as Karl Kroeber and the reference to the poplars, with their WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY 243 many assoclatlOns from the past, suggests the imagery foreshadows this scene, succeeding symbolic resonances Niel is turning from. imagery echoes it. Roses, again reduced to Finally, by building to symbolic climaxes, objects but now containing symbolic reso the accumulative meaning of images enables nances, reappear after Captain Forrester's moments of recognition. Rose imagery, for death when the Blum brothers bring a box of example, underlies the novel's first major yellow roses to Mrs. Forrester and, later, when expansive movement. When Mrs. Forrester sees she resolves to plant some of her husband's Niel and the other boys on their way to the rose bushes over his grave (pp. 145-46). marsh, she is arranging roses; when she comes Incremental repetition illustrates, then, the to the door to talk with them, she is holding a way in which symbolic meaning works by single rose. The rose, apparently tamed and accumulation, expansion, and infusion, its domesticated inside Mrs. Forrester's parlor, movement quite different from the sequential reappears in the marsh in profusion as "wild movement characteristic of the cause-and-effect roses [that] were wide open and brilliant" patterns in the historical account. Through this (p. 17), the image subtly foreshadowing the contrast, the symbolic and historic elements sensual, even wild potential in Mrs. Forrester's work off one another. Scenes customarily begin own nature and suggesting Niel's response to in time, move to a core episode that contains that potential. On the one hand, the intimation a moment of recognition and an escape from of sensuality is a major element in his fascina time, then return abruptly to the historical, tion with her; on the other hand, it is this qual real world. The Forrester place resides at the ity in her that he is unable to face. Rose center of this movement, offering apparent imagery climaxes in the early morning scene in security and constancy and containing Mrs. which Niel gathers a bouquet for Mrs. For Forrester, with her magical power of trans rester. The extended image begins with a rela formation. But experiences there are sur tively objective description of "thickets of wild rounded by ominous images of incompletion, roses, with flaming buds, just beginning to change, and death that suggest inevitable open." Then, as if the objects by their own intrusions from the real world. When Niel is beauty and by their past association with Mrs. taken to Mrs. Forrester's room after breaking Forrester draw forth fuller perception, the his arm, he becomes aware of a "different description moves from the roses themselves world from any he had ever known" (p. 42). to Niel's mind as he perceives them: "Where His involvement intensifies until, when "Mrs. they had opened, their petals were stained with Forrester ran her fingers through his black hair that burning rose-colour which is always gone and lightly kissed him on the forehead," he by noon,-a dye made of sunlight and morning loses himself in the fullness of the experience: and moisture, so intense that it cannot possibly "Oh, how sweet, how sweet she smelled!" With last . . . must fade, like ecstasy." The image the next line, however, the world of change unifies aesthetic and sensual responses into a intrudes-"'wheels on the bridge; it's Doctor single intense moment. Finally, Niel begins to Dennison. Go and show him in, Mary.''' Niel's cut stems of the flowers, resolving, in highly return is dramatized as Doctor Dennison "took metaphorical terms, that "he would make a him home," a home "set off on the edge of the bouquet for a lovely lady; a bouquet gathered prairie" and "usually full of washing in various off the cheeks of morning ... these roses, only stages of incompletion" (p. 29). The wholeness half awake, in the defenselessness of utter Niel felt with Mrs. Forrester intensifies his later beauty" (p. 85). Far more than the action, the sense of incompletion; his happiness sharpens imagery here conveys the transitoriness of such his dissatisfaction; his fleeting sense of belong a moment and the vulnerability of one who ex ing heightens the loneliness of his daily life. periences it, anticipating Niel's disillusionment Subsequent episodes follow a similar pat at the end of that scene. As preceding rose tern. Niel feels exultation over an evening talk 244 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982 with Mrs. Forrester; then, leaving the Forrester perience. The novel begins with a narrator who place, he stops "at the end of the lane" to look recalls, "thirty or forty years ago, in one of at the last skeletal poplar pointing to a hollow those grey towns along the Burlington railroad, winter moon (p. 42). At Captain Forrester's which are so much greyer today than they were dinner party, Niel again feels a deep sense of then, there was a house well known from security, this time through loss of self in Cap Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a tain Forrester's story of coming to Sweet certain charm of atmosphere," then modifIes Water; then ''just before midnight" he returns this observation-"well known, that is to say, to a world of separation and incompletion as to the railroad aristocracy of that time." The the guests sing "Auld Lang Syne" and "hadn't effect is of ongoing reminiscence, of the actual got to the end of it" when they hear "a hollow presence of a storyteller who offers an observa rumbling down on the bridge" and then "see tion as it occurs to her. Because she is casual the judge's funeral coach come lurching up the about time (referring to "thirty or forty years hill, with only one of the side lanterns lit" (p. ago" and to "long ago") as well as about place 57). Other scenes come to mind: Niel's gather (referring to "one of those grey towns along ing flowers for Mrs. Forrester and reveling in the Burlington railroad"), the storyteller her the "almost religious purity about the morning self emerges strongly in the opening passage, air," then abruptly returning to the real world seeming more immediate, real, and accessible at the sound of laughter from within (pp. 84- than her subject. 87); Niel's losing himself in Mrs. Forrester's Recounting comings and goings, sequences story of Hrst meeting Captain Forrester, and and changes, the storyteller provides a logical, then, in the next scene, planning to leave Sweet rational organization of these movements. She Water and feeling he was "making the Hnal establishes a chronology of events ("for the break with everything that had been dear to next few years Niel saw very little of Mrs. him in his boyhood" (p. 168). Forrester"; "during that winter ... Niel came What emerges is a buildup of tension be to know her very well"; "Captain Forrester's tween the encroaching real world of change and death ... occurred early in December"), and experiences of unity-of symbolic meaning she explains events through their sequence of that become increasingly difHcult to reach in cause and effect within that chronology ("For that world. The contrasting dinner parties illus the Forresters that winter was a sort of isthmus trate the heightening of tension. In the Hrst, a between two estates; soon afterward came a young Mrs. Forrester appears effortless as she change in their fortunes. And for Niel, it was a assists her husband in transforming the evening; natural turning point" (pp. 31, 69,103, 144). in the second, an older, widowed, impoverished The narrative conveys a sense of movement; its Mrs. Forrester appears haggard, and it is only meaning is objective, f;tctual, settled. by a supreme act of will that she again electri But the stillness at A Lost Lady's center Hes her guests. The strong sense of incomple derives from a quite different experience-one tion throughout the narrative contributes to that is subjective, imaginative, and expanding. this tension: Sweet Water does not fulHlI its For it Cather moves from the storyteller's early promise; Captain Forrester's career as a omniscience to the limited point~ of view of builder is cut short by an accident; the heirs individual characters, such as Niel. This move apparent to the pioneer generation-Marian ment involves a gradual narrowing from the Forrester and Niel Herbert-leave without storyteller's long view to a speciHc episode, bringing renewal. to one character within the episode, and, Finally, changes in point of view reinforce Hnally, to the episode as it is being processed this tension. The overall progression of point in that character's mind. Beginning with the of view is from the public meaning of a story long view, for example, the storyteller ex teller to the private meaning of subjective explains, "It was two years before Niel Herbert WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY 245 came home again," then presents Niel having is "Judge Pommeroy's nephew"; the others come to the Forrester place, summarizes his include the "son of a gentleman rancher," meeting with Captain Forrester, and follows "the leading grocer's ... twins," and "the two Niel "round the house to the gate that gave into sons of the German tailor." Recognition is the grove," where he saw first a hammock be personal and intimate, based on gossip about as tween two cottonwoods, then a still, slender, well as the professional standing of their white figure in it. The account gains in imme fathers. Ed Elliot, for example, is the boy diacy as Niel, approaching, discerns more "whose flirtatious old father kept a shoe store details: "as he hurried across the grass he saw and was the Don Juan of the lower world of that a white garden hat layover her face" Sweet Water" (p. 14). Similarly, the boy Niel and was "just wondering if she were asleep, approaches the Forrester place in terms of when he heard a soft delighted laugh," stepped alignment and congruity: it represents the forward, and caught her suspended figure. values he upholds and the life to which he Suddenly, the point of view presents Niel's aspires. mind encountering the object: "How light and By the end of Part II, however, Niel returns alive she was! like a bird caught in a net. If to a community from which he is alienated. only he could rescue her and carry her off like Cather has replaced Marian Forrester with Ivy this" (pp. 103-10). Peters to describe Niel's return, and Peters Within specific scenes, Cather interweaves identifies Niel not by community relationships omniscience with individual perceptions, keep but by his clothes. A shift in power and in com ing the point of view in motion and maintain munal values is suggested by the shift from Mrs. ing dialectical tension through which symbolic Forrester, who greets guests as a representative meaning emerges. The storyteller contrasts of her husband and the best of Sweet Water, to descriptions from the "long ago" past (of the Ivy Peters, who greets guests as the leader of young Mrs. Forrester, "bareheaded, a basket materialistic, unscrupulous elements that have on her arm, her blue-black hair shining in the gained power in the same community. Tension sun") to later time ("it was not until years heightens as Niel believes Mrs. Forrester is afterward that she began to wear veils and sun aligning herself with the new "generation of hats," pp. 17-18). Similar movement occurs as shrewd young men, trained to petty economies" a result of changes in Niel. Niel's youthful (p. 107), represented by Ivy Peters. idealization of Mrs. Forrester contrasts with his As Niel's alienation deepens, his subjective, later disillusionment and his still later gratitude imaginative response is increasingly at odds to her. And the storyteller contrasts individual with his rational appraisal of the "lost lady." points of view: Adolph Blum, seeing Mrs. For Logically and objectively, Niel comes to believe rester come from an assignation with her lover, that Mrs. Forrester's generosity and her greed, contrasts with Niel's seeing her only as Captain her exquisiteness and her coarseness, her Forrester's wife; Captain Forrester, watching fidelity and her betrayal, are irreconcilable her with Niel and thinking of her "as very, very contradictions. He judges her harshly and keeps young" (p. 75) contrasts with Niel's general his distance from her. When Mrs. Forrester in view of her as an older woman. vites him to her dinner party, for example, he Within the novel as a whole, changes in point resists, arguing, "'What do you want me for?'" of view suggest the effects of a disintegration of and later feeling "angry with himself for traditional, communal values and a correspond having been persuaded" to accept; on the night ing stress on personal symbolic meaning. Ini of the dinner, he is "the last guest to arrive" tially, the storyteller identifies individuals in (p. 158). Yet against all rational preconcep terms of her community: Marian Forrester, tions, at this dinner party Niel is still moved seeing a group of boys approach, "knew most by Mrs. Forrester's "indomitable self," and his of them" as members of the community. Niel apprehension of her telling of first meeting 246 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982

Captain Forrester is one of the timeless mo nence, forever frustrated in a world of change, ments of recognition at the heart of the novel ends with the secure distance and detachment (pp. 164-67). of an experience "recollected in tranquillity.,,12 Niel's conflict may be illustrated by the For the reader, however, Marian Forrester motif "always" that runs through the novel. continues to live in the novel, for in reading we, Initially, "always" refers to apparent perma like Niel with his uncle's books, meet "living nence within time-to rituals, for example, creatures, caught in the very behaviour of that by repetition seem constant. Captain living" (p. 81). As a result, it is impossible to Forrester's toast, "Happy Days," is such a settle Marian Forrester into a fixed meaning, ritual, "the toast he always drank at dinner." to put her into the past tense and set one's As a hostess, Mrs. Forrester carries out other mind to rest about her. Although she recedes such rituals: "she was always there" (p. 12) in the reader's memory, she comes forward to greet visitors; to the young Niel, she seemed again with each rereading and, by continuing "always the same" (p. 39). Such rituals serve to exert her intense individuality, evokes fresh their function: they provide a sense of security responses and forces the reader to expand his and stability. But eventually the world of or her perception of her. In so doing, the read change exerts itself and, in retrospect, the er takes up where Niel left off. Each reading apparent stability offered by rituals seems contains moments of recognition and resolu illusory. Captain Forrester falls from power; tion in which Mrs. Forrester is seen as a whole, Mrs. Forrester is neither always there nor combining contrary qualities that are logically always the same. But even as Niel must accept irreconcilable. Once read, the novel evokes the loss of Mrs. Forrester within the historical questions which, in turn, lead back into the narrative (indeed, he must accept that he never work. And each time we return to the novel, possessed her, and never could have), he comes expansion continues. By offering "an expand to realize her permanence on a symbolic level. ing potentiality for formulating values, an Always runs through the symbolic elements of expanding area of sympathy and insight out of the novel also, referring to a permanence that which values of lasting refinement can emerge exists outside of time. In the end, Niel is cer and to which they can return," A Lost Lady is tain that Mrs. Forrester "had always the power a novel of experience in Robert Langbaum's of suggesting things much lovelier than herself, sense. The reader is "always in the process of as the perfume of a single flower may call up formulating values, although he never arrives ~t the whole sweetness of spring" (p. 172). a final formulation.,,13 As Karl Kroeber ob Significantly, Niel casts his reflection in the serves, experiences of symbolic meaning "are past tense-for him, Mrs. Forrester "had always subjective and creative; they cannot be told the power of suggesting things"-and with this about; we must ... participate.,,14 Unlimited past tense, the reader departs from Niel. Niel's opportunity for the individual to engage in resolution comes with his subjective sense that personal experience, to formulate values, and Mrs. Forrester had the power to evoke a sym to create anew-the description could be of the bolic mode of perception; he has reached the American frontier-or of A Lost Lady. For in A point that he is no longer analyzing and judging Lost Lady, Cather celebrates the constantly no longer holding it against her that "she was expanding possibilities of symbolic art even as not willing to immolate herself, like the widow she laments the closed frontier of history. of all these great men, and die with the pioneer period to which she belonged, that she preferred NOTES life on any terms." Ironically, however, his resolution comes only after she, whom Niel be 1. New York Evening Post, December 8, lieved "preferred life on any terms," has died, 1923; 1928 revised version reprinted in Spokes and we suspect that Niel's longing for perma- men (Berkeley: University of California Press, WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY 247

1963), p. 143; reprinted in Willa Cather and This initial sense of value is followed by the Her Critics, ed. by James Schroeter (Ithaca: pain of separation from the object and an Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 38. attempt to bridge that separation-to make the 2. Nation, November 28, 1923; reprinted in object give itself up to the observer. Tension Schroeter, Willa Cather and Her Critics, p. 52. builds between reason and imagination: the 3. David Daiches, Willa Cather: A Critical reason, an analyzing faculty, seeks to separate, Introduction (1951; reprint ed., Westport, divide, and categorize, while the imagination, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971), p. 86. a synthesizing faculty, seeks to perceive simi 4. John Davenport, Observer, May 7, 1966. larities, to unite, and to enter into. Increasingly 5. See John Milton's description of the intense questions addressed to the urn are fourth phase "in the relationship between frustrated by the object's self-sufficiency, and plainsman (or his artistic representatives) and resolution comes only when the observer, the landscape." Milton describes the four ceasing his attempt to force the object to reveal phases as an initial "romantic, idealized, Edenic its secrets, allows himself to experience it in all vision," which gives way to a realistic shat its paradoxical fullness. It is at this point that tering of vision, then "an industrialized and the observer moves beyond the object as object technological revision of the land," and, finally, and experiences it as a symbol; the experience "a reaction to the exploitation of the land; forms the lyric climax of the ode. This exper a partial return to a primitive or sacred un ience is transitory, however, and so the observer derstanding of the land, spiritual in attitude drops back into separation-but a separation and intuitive and symbolic in art forms"; different from that at the poem's beginning, "plains Landscapes and Changing Visions," for he retains a sense of the symbolic richness Great Plains Q,tarterly 2 (Winter 1982): 61. he participated in. In my view, Cather affirms symbolic art in 10. Samuel T. Coleridge, The Statesman's response to her perception of the exploitation Manual (London: Gale and Fenner, 1816), p. of the land and the decline of American life and 37. Coleridge includes here his famous descrip letters. tion of a symbol as "characterized by a trans 6. David Lowenthal, in "The Pioneer Land lucence of the Special in the Individual or of scape: An American Dream," writes, "the sense the General in the Especial or of the Universal of a pioneer environment rarely endured in in the General. Above all the translucence of toto more than a few years before giving way the Eternal through and in the Temporal." In to a settled order"; Great Plains Quarterly 2 Willa Cather's Gift of Sympathy, Edward A. (Winter 1982): 10. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom write, "the funda 7. A Lost Lady (1923; reprint ed., New mental understanding of Cather's work is, in York: Knopf, 1963), pp. 168-69. All references deed, dependent upon an understanding of her are to this text. meaningful employment of a set of symbols, all 8. My Antonia (1918; reprint ed., Boston: of which are segments of the total theme"; Houghton Mifflin, 1961), p. 352. they use Coleridge's definition to clarify 9. Niel's response, coming from his deep Cather's symbolism (Carbondale: Southern Illi longing for permanence in a world of change, is nois Press, 1962), p. 26. remarkably similar in motive and form to 11. Karl Kroeber, Romantic Narrative Art Keats's response to the objects of his odes. The (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), odes characteristically begin with the observer p.53. feeling the impact of the object's fullness-for 12. In response to a draft of this essay, example, the Grecian urn's paradoxical combi Patricia Yongue (University of Houston) com nation of activity and immobility, of silence mented on the paradox implicit in Niel's and expression: aestheticism: "there is aesthetic value ... in Marian Forrester's expanding symbolic signifi Thou still unravished bride of quietness cance for Niel and for the reader .... Yet the Thou foster child of silence and slow time, same aesthetic process which gives Mrs. For Sylvan historian, who canst thus express rester a dignity and makes her interesting as A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme. a symbol also limits her humanity and freedom. 248 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982

Insofar as Niel and the Captain ... ask Marian fiction," see her essay, "willa Cather's Aristo to remain unchanged, they are asking her to be crats," in two parts, Southern Humanities an object, an urn which depicts motion but Review 14 and 15 (1980). For my own general does not move in terms of human growth and treatment of the relationship between Cather's expansion. It is a request, of course, which she narrators and the objects they describe, see denies, and so she moves on to California and "Willa Cather's Women," Studies in American finally to South America" (personal corres Fiction 9 (Autumn 1981): 261-75. pondence, October 16, 1981). For Yongue's 13. Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Exper general treatment of this "allegiance to an ience (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), aristocratic ideal which often serves as a funda p.26. mental component in the dynamics of [Cather's] 14. Kroeber, Romantic Narrative Art, p. 58.