Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady": The Paradoxes of Change

Abstract

Critics have long recognized pioneer theme that runs through major works by Willa Cather.' The standard interpretation of this theme is that early novels -0 Pioneers! and My Antonia-present nobility of pioneer spirit; later novels trace decline that results from loss of that spirit. Novels not immediately part of pioneer series are interpreted by this theme; for example, The Song of Lark has been said to closely resemble O Pioneers! and is like My Antonia in that depend upon a mystical conception of frontier, and both look back longingly to heroism of better days. 2 Such approach carries inherent risk of bias-of fitting individual work into preconceived framework. A Lost Lady has suffered especially from this critical predisposition. Shortly after A Lost Lady was published, Regis Michaud called its female protagonist, Marian Forrester, an American Emma Bovary.3 In doing so, he announced interpretation that has persisted to present. According to standard reading, subject of A Lost Lady is Marian Forrester, and theme concerns her betrayal of noble pioneer values of West. Mrs. Forrester's decline parallels West's decline; novel becomes elegy for pioneer past, narrowly linked to a specific time and place. Yet both external and internal evidence contradicts this reading. Cather is never simply a period or a regional writer. Her novels are rooted in place as surely as Joyce's are rooted in Dublin; however, just as surely, she uses a specific situation as a vantage point from which to consider universal themes. In her novels, Cather gives to individual task of transforming commonplace existence so that he or she may live according to the great truths. The major pioneer novels preceding A Lost Lady present two aspects of this theme of transformation. In 0 Pioneers! Cather focuses upon transformation itself through relationship between Alexandra and land. Early in novel Alexandra progresses toward formation of her dream in scene on Divide; rest of novel depicts her actualization of this dream. The transformation is a literal one; land is actually shaped to reflect Alexandra's vision of it, with order and fine arrangement manifest all over great farm. 4 In My Antonia Cather