Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real World Writing, Writing the Real World by Janis P. Stout

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 495 culture?), the emerging of these questions from inside a narrative of such masterful particularity does insist that theorykeep an eye on thegrittyand perhaps disappoint ingoutcomes of the real.We can only respectVicinus's ability to insiston these ques tions because we can, I think,only look at her rendering of somany histories of loves between women with respect, admiration, and something at times approaching awe. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS DENIS FLANNERY Willa Cather andMaterial Culture: Real World Writing,Writing the Real World. Ed. by JANISP. STOUT. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press. 2005. ix+ 240 pp. $37.50. ISBN 978-o-8173-I436-I. A collection of essays on the role ofmaterial objects in Willa Cather's lifeand work may seem odd. After all, Cather is best known forher interest in nature and open spaces, and she isalso theauthor of 'The Novel Demeuble', which called forthe stage of thenovel tobe freeof clutter, for the fictionalworld tobe freeof the accumulation of objects that distract real, ordinary lives.Yet Janis P. Stout has brought together a collection of ten essays that for themost part rise to the challenge of scrutinizing the objects thatdo appear inCather's fiction,and drawing useful conclusions about the author's status in themodernist canon, and about her attitudes to the cultural significance of these highlighted objects, which the editor describes as 'ingredients and traces' of human identity,history, and culture. The firstfour essays in thevolume could perhaps be seen as theweaker part of the collection, but read in relation to the rest of the book, they do provide some useful ways of placing Cather's work in a larger cultural context. An illustrated essay on the significance of quilts inCather's lifeand writing, especially Sapphira, brings together notions of female creative expression and a female-centred tradition. Continuing on the theme ofCather's contribution to a female tradition, thenext two essays concen trateon herwritings for Home Monthly and Women's Home Companion, attempting to reconcile Cather's depictions of strong female characters with thosemagazines' pro motion of thewoman as docile homemaker. Here perhaps one detects the scholar's reluctance to condemn her object of study: though JenniferL. Bradley concedes that Cather had to 'adapt the style and content of her writing tomatch themagazine's editorial policy' (p. 63), the relationship between artistic integrity and commercial pressure remains underdeveloped. The theme ispicked up again in the chapter that deals with the I934 filmadaptation ofA Lost Lady, which also usefully suggests that li terary textswere themselves becoming 'more complex asmaterial objects, exploitable innumerous ways' (p. I 13) by the film industry and the consuming public. The second half of thevolume offersamore complex and rewarding consideration ofCather's fiction,drawing on anthropology and social history aswell as theories of material culture. Again, though, there is a tendency to iron out difficulties, coupled with a reluctance to consider Cather's fiction in awider literaryand critical context. Anne Raine reads The Professor's House as 'an ambivalent response to the recognition that [... .]nature is material culture' (p. 125), but her argument issomewhat weakened when she goes on to defend Cather's attitudes toNative Americans, while Deborah Lindsay Williams's essay similarly offers a too generous and forgiving account of Cather's racial portraits. The essay on the female consumer and commodity culture inA Lost Lady and The Professor's House best exemplifies both the strengths and the limitations of this collection: though the reading of the twonovels clearly shows that a consideration of 'material culture' does illuminate the texts under discussion, the essay also suffers from a blinkered approach. No literaryantecedents arementioned (one thinks of Emma Bovary, who shopped toomuch, and Isabel Archer, who did 496 Reviews not shop at all), and littleuse ismade of existing criticism on female consumerism in early twentieth-centuryAmerica. In fairness, itshould be noted that the essays in thisvolume are all rather short, so any narrowness of scope may be attributed to space limitations. Though the editorial decision to keep the essays brief allows for a variety of approaches that yield often exciting interpretations ofCather's work, one is left wanting more: more on Cather's place in literaryhistory, and more on the relationship between...