Abstract
The important revisionist work of recent decades on women's experiences and visions of the American West has sometimes implied an essentialist theory of gender, as if women's writings emerged inevitably, without conscious purpose of challenging male versions of the West, from the fact of their sex and their traditionally defined roles. Yet conscious critical intention also defines women's writing of a different, reconceptualized, and anti-masculinist kind of Western. In the case of Willa Cather, we can readily infer a purpose of critique of prevailing modes of the Western from the novels themselves, but demonstrating such intent externally is more difficult, since Cather made relatively few public statements about her own writing. For this purpose, a recently re-available letter (Cather to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, August 17, 1912; The College of the Holy Cross) provides important documentation.
Published Version
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