|
|
Article: The prosaic Willa Cather. (writer)
- Article from:
- American Scholar
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Phi Beta Kappa Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
In Willa Cather's fiction, friendship nourishes and protects while romantic love leads to disillusion or death. Jim Burden of My Antonia cares for Antonia Shimerda all his life because when he was young he dreamed about Lena Lingard, not Antonia. Antonia's own marriage to Anton Cuzak is secure, because the two are not romantic lovers but live together on "terms of easy friendliness, touched with humour." When Niel Herbert in A Lost Lady discovers that Marian Forrester has slept with Frank Ellinger while her husband is far away in Denver, he loses "one of the most beautiful things in his life," a romantic vision that constituted "an aesthetic ideal." Myra Henshawe's ...