Apologetic Narrative for the American Imperialism - Willa Cathers A Lost Lady - Essay Example

Willa Cather: A Lost Lady While Cather’s ‘A Lost Lady’ describes the triumph of the new materialistic civilization over the heroism of the past in America, she also laments the waning power of the American imperialism. Throughout the narrative, Cather sounds very apologetic with regard to imperialism. Gorman ( undated) cites Guy Reynolds who said that Cather's novels fictionalize the transfer of European empires to America and the subsequent growth of American empire. This love and passion for the western prairies led to its expression in her writings, not least in this novel. And so, as Canby notes, she wrote about :- A theme unique to the nineteenth century, the overflow of vigorous men and women from the old world into a new country, after a thousand years of stability. ( Cited by Palleau-Papin and Thacker, 2014) The novel centers upon the Forresters, who could be described as part of the imperialistic America Cather so admired. Thanks in a great part to the coming of the railways, the country was filling up with new towns, new homes, and the days of the pioneers was drawing to an end. This waning of imperialistic power is expressed through the characters in this novel. Captain Forrester had helped to bring in the railways, so can be said to have played a part in his own destruction. He not only deteriorates physically, but, because of his financial losses, also loses his previous place as a first generation pioneer land owner. Cather depicts him as being a man of integrity, yet it is clear that he stole land from the native Americans. This seems to be a blind spot for Cather who does not seem to see that they too had rights. Ivy Peters steps in and takes over the land, at first leasing some and then taking over completely, but this is seen in negative terms, despite the fact that it was a financial arrangement , rather than stealing. The main narrator , the young Niel Herbert is a witness to the decline in fortunes of the Forresters, and so to the end of imperialism.. Herbert cares about Marian, and also about his country, the West, from its earliest pioneers to the present. Although she proved not to be the perfect lady he had at one time thought her to be, towards the end of the book (page 171) he is able to express his realization that she had taught him something useful and had ‘had a hand in breaking him into life.’ Cather seems to be saying that imperialism, which the Forresters represent, was less than perfect, but part of the process of maturation for the American west. Willa Cather wrote her major novels in the years from 1918 to 1931, a writer of, and about, the 1920s, a time of great change in society, and at the same time overlapped with Faulkner and Hardy. However she was female, a lesbian and feminist, so living through the same time period, but with a definitely different point of view. Byatt ( 2014) considered that ‘No one has written better about the pull of solitude.’ But she might as well said ‘No one has written so well about the loss of imperialism, and this can be said to be the theme of her novel, as can be seen in her description of how Forrester had been a pioneer, seeking out and taking new land, and had chosen this place , despite the fact that it was an Indian encampment when he first saw it. Cather’s ‘A Lost Lady’(1923), written when the author was in her 50s, is a relatively short novel describing the triumph of the newer materialistic civilization over the supposed heroism of the past , but Cather also laments the waning power of American imperialism. She was already a modernist, and an established writer, when Hemingway and Fitzgerald were still children. Yet they are still read and appreciated far more than she is. Despite this negativeness, Byatt, (2014) says she presents:- A vision of the youth and strength of the early European explorers and settlers of north America as a kind of primeval Eden, full of light and life, which has fallen away into vulgarity, real estate, ugly urban life. So the period of imperialism was painted as positive , but what followed it, the coming of towns and industrialization, is described in more.negative tones. In a note about a collection of her writing she is quoted as having said :- The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.’ ( Cited by Carroll, page 59, 1999). As she struggled with this Cather wrote about the land, the places she knew, and how her characters coped and reacted to change and the end of imperialism, both in their personal lives and in their interactions with wider society. The novel is an expression of very real changes taking place, geographically, politically and within society, in particular in small western towns. Carroll (page 59,1999), cites Susman as having said:- By 1922 an exceptional and ever-growing number of Americans came to believe in a series of change in the structure of their world, natural, technological, social, personal and moral. The theme running through the book is about Cather’s own reactions to these changes, to the los of imperialism, and of her longing nostalgically for the western prairies of her youth. According to Grade Saver (2014) Cather felt strongly that people who were able to live in harmony with their natural environments are, and should be, used as sources of inspiration for her writing, yet she also describes what happens when this harmonious living was often no longer possible. Also, the native Americans were very capable of living in that kind of harmony, but she writes of those who disrupted their harmony as being heroic. In the 21st century readers are far removed in time, but are very aware of the need to respect the environment, and the rights of native Americans are unfortunately still a matter of dispute, if not in law, in fact. These places, and the changes seen, were very real to her, even if depicted in novel form. Yet she had left the area in early adult life. She was nostalgic for an earlier, perhaps simpler, time, what Bloom describes ( page 236, 2005) as :- A lost radiance or harmony, a defeat of a peculiarly American dream of innocence, grace, hope. The word ‘innocence’ is a strange choice, when, despite many promises, the U.S. government supported settlers who took over by force land previously occupied by native Americans, yet it is how Cather seems to have seen matters. She obviously knew what was happening to the natives , yet she continues to praise the pioneers rather than, implicitly or explicitly, showing any sympathy for the dispossessed natives. Was this due to her great love of the land, a love so strong that she wanted nothing to disturb it? Cather spent her late-childhood and adolescent years not in the south, where she had been born, but in Nebraska, where her family moved to Catherton in 1883. The family moved on to Red Cloud, amid the mid-western prairie land. This land had been recently snatched from native people when she moved there (Willa Cathar, undated) . She was at first homesick and felt very lonely, but soon came to love her new home:- The country and I had it out together and by the end of the first autumn the shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion that I have never been able to shake. It has been the happiness and curse of my life (Quoted by Ahearn, 2014). So it bought her great happiness, yet she knew what had happened to the Native Americans with regard to their terrible treatment by the US government, yet Cather chose to focus her narrative upon praising the pioneers rather than, implicitly or explicitly, showing some sympathy for the natives, who are barely mentioned ( Chapter 4). . Cather begins the work by describing the grey town railway, getting greyer over time, and then, in complete contrast, the warm and hospitable home of the Forresters. Yet the novel isn’t so much about such strong contrasts, as about the changes taking place, with the grey houses and their inhabitants taking over the prairie land settled by the imperialistic pioneers. This opening paragraph shows how the writer is not speaking of the present time, but looking back, perhaps to some extent through rose-tinted glasses, to the imperialism Cather preferred. Cather has the ladies of the town wearing such glasses, in that they had a particular view of Marian Forrester, but later, when they visit after the collapse of the Captain, they find out that life in the Forrester home was no means perfect, with faded curtains and even cobwebs in the bedrooms (page 138, Cather, 1923) so in their eyes too imperialism had come to a sad end. They had had certain expectations, but she did not match up to their assumptions, and they reacted. Throughout the narrative, Cather sounds very apologetic towards imperialism while, at the same time, describing, as Susman (Cited by Carroll, page 59) states, how an American Dream of self-fulfilment can flourish. Gorman (undated) says she is:- A writer simultaneously celebrated for her depiction of pioneers and respected for her historical authenticity. Robinson (2001) describes the book as an American ‘coming of age novel’ and this could be said to be true whether it is Niel, as he grows from boyhood to maturity, or the American West itself changing from a wilderness. It was seen as the white man’s task to bring civilisation to others, and if that meant the negation of established cultures, so be it. However once tamed and overcome by the imperialists , it soon became a place with a much greater population in small towns, linked by a controlling network of rail and road, Part of Cather’s apologetics for Imperialism in that the seemingly perfect representative of Imperialism, Marian, is in fact very flawed, just as American Imperialism was, with the way it took no account of the native American peoples. Over time this lady ripens into a woman who makes her own decisions, and finally one who has to pay for those choices. That too is a type of maturation. The marriage was over sexually, in that the Forrester’s slept in different rooms, but that is also the point that Marian was 25 years younger than her ill husband, so it would be natural that they had different needs, sexual and in other ways. In the same way the American west of the 21st century was new, and had different needs, for railways, towns and homes, than that of the pioneers who were more concerned with land holding and gaining status and riches. This maturation of both the West and Marian seems dangerous to what the pioneers achieved through expansion. In the case of Marian the local society would have considered her to have lost status by this process, as is seen by the reaction of the local ladies. The book was published in 1923, and its author has been described as ‘one of the leading figures of American Literary modernism.’ (The Willa Cather Foundation, undated). This was only five years after the end of the Great War, was a time in American Western history of great transition, with greater industrialisation, the battles with native Americans for land was over, and it should have been a time of great consolidation with new transport links, and relatively cheap and increased amounts of communication. Now all the vast territory they had won was to be at the mercy of men like Ivy Peters, who had had never dared anything, never risked anything. (Part 2, chapter 1), depicted at first as a worse sort of character than the imperialistic Forrester in that he makes a profit from land won by another. Towards the end of the story Marian Forrester, through her shrewd connection with Ivy Peters, escape to California, because Peters buys her home. There she meets the next man who will “save her”, a wealthy Englishman who takes Marian to the frontier of South America, a fitting place for a pioneer who has run out of West, so the Imperialistic theme continues with a new place top conquer. . Cather isn’t always objective, mythologizing the pioneers, through the words of Herbert, as being “great-hearted,” “generous,” “unpractical,” and “courteous”. But what is “courteous” or “great-hearted” about the way Captain Forrester and Ivy Peters, modern characters, yet representative of those early pioneers, had both taken land previously belonging to the Native Americans, as Herbert related in Part 1 , chapter 4? In the case of Ivy this was done as a second step once removed from the actions of the pioneers. His usurping of land was done by first renting land from the Forresters, land from which he is able to get good crops and make a handsome profit. At the beginning of the book Forrester was rich, living a luxurious life, having made his money by providing track for the new railways, which by the 1920s were criss-crossing America. This is in contrast to his financial and physical position later. His gradual deterioration, together with the way he adopts a more materialistic and modernising position, is part of Cather’s way of saying that the old ways were best. Marian Forrester is idealised, by both her husband and by Herbert, at least in the earlier sections of the book, as against the fairly ordinary or negative descriptions of the more modern women, as when Miss Ogden is described , ‘In spite of her fresh, rose-like complexion, her face was not altogether agreeable.’ ( Chapter 4 ). But if Marian is idealized so is the land around her, in particular the unspoiled land, preserved as it was when the pioneers arrived, as when Herbert is described as walking to the marsh ( page 80) :- An impulse of affection and guardianship drew Niel up the poplar-bordered road in the early light . . . and on to the marsh. The sky was burning with the soft pink and silver of a cloudless summer dawn. The heavy, bowed grasses splashed him to the knees. All over the marsh, snow-on-the-mountain, globed with dew, made cool sheets of silver, and the swamp milk-weed spread its flat, raspberry-coloured clusters. Mrs Forrester had an erotic relationship with the land if that is possible, as when she imagines a minator, a mythic bull like creature, chasing her through the marsh, something she delights in ( Part 1 , Chapter 1) This description fits in with ideas about the Garden of Eden and the Fall which Fisher-Wirth ( undated) sees in this and the other novels in the sequence. Ahearn (2014, describes Cather as known for “giving breath to the landscape of her fiction’. All this is part of Cather’s view that the land of the pioneers was a perfect place, until urbanisation and industrialisation arrived. This seemingly ideal and unspoiled place is in contrast to other places and events, as when Herbert, on his way to take Mrs Forrester some roses, hears Frank Ellinger's laughter coming from Mrs. Forrester's bedroom, or when Captain Forrester returns home in financial ruin, because he had felt an obligation to the clients of his bank, which was failing, and had put this obligation, which could be described as ‘noblesse oblige’, a concept belonging to an idealised time when an elite had an obligation to care for the rest of society, although it did not extend to giving equal opportunities to all, as is clear from the way he had treated the native Americans. This sense of obligation is put above the future needs of himself and his wife. Although the Cather family had never been as rich as her depiction of Forrester, this can be linked to Cather’s view that her family’s lack of financial success was because her father preferred to place intellectual and spiritual matters over and above commercial factors ( Grade Saver, 2014). In a culture of character, citizenship, duty, and integrity inextricably bound up with morals. Forrester embodies these traits, as well as an air of idealism , as when he describes ( Chapter 4, ‘An ideal life.’ even when holding to such traits and ideals results in his own financial ruin, and left little or no future security for his seemingly much valued wife. Duty and respectable integrity came first, rather than a more pragmatic modern attitude which would have been more concerned with financial security. Herbert is an example from a wider ranging cross section of the small town’s population, apart from the richer, landowning elite, and Forrester represents fading and faulty imperialism, and the transition and linked anomalies that America was going through. He preserves the marsh and its natural beauty, despite the fact that it could be drained and produce profit, yet at the same time he is much involved in building the railway line which would slice up the land and bring in more people to build on and tame it. So Forrester, despite his desire to preserve what is good about the land, can be firmly linked to the changes in Western America, as the trains bought in more people, and also led to the removal of native Americans from the same areas. The railroad was one of the most powerful enabling forces in the process of immigration into the Midwest, and serves as a direct link between the presence of the immigrants Cather celebrated, and the absence, both from the plains and from her work, of native Americans. These natives must have longed for life before the coming of the white pioneers, and especially perhaps before the arrival of the railways. In her own life Cather longed for the unspoilt prairie. Today there is an area of mixed grass prairie dedicated to her name (Willa Cather Foundation, undated), yet she fails to link this to evidence that she cared about the plains peoples of earlier times. Despite being described as modernist literature, Cather also uses language which shows, though Herbert, her regret about earlier times and the end of the pioneers who had been, she says, “strong in attack but weak in defence, who could conquer but could not hold.” (Part 2, chapter 1). So Cather uses the language of heroes to describe the pioneers, even though she knows they had snatched the land from others, with little regard for them, and that the time of the pioneers and expansion was drawing to an end, and others would come in and profit from the work done earlier with little effort on their own part. Now all the vast territory they had won was to be at the mercy of men like Ivy Peters, who had had never dared anything, never risked anything. They would drink up the mirage, dispel the morning freshness, root out the great brooding spirit of freedom, the generous, easy life of the great land-holders. ( Part 2 , chapter 1). In these words Cather is siding with the pioneers , the imperialists whereas Peters and his fellow towns people are seen as the enemy, yet without people like Peters stepping in the land would have soon deteriorated and no longer would crops be produced. The Forresters might well be described as American aristocrats, but it is Peters, not the members of their wealthy clique, who offers the help they need. The book describes how, when trouble comes Captain and Marian Forrester try to adjust to changed circumstances – or fail to adjust adequately. Fisher –Wirth (undated) would say that fits in with what she describes as a keen sense of loss found in all of Cather’s works. It certainly fits in with her pro-imperialistic stance. Perhaps the fact that she spent her adult years far from the prairies in places such as Pittsburgh, where she moved only a month after graduating from college, and later living in New York, which added to this feeling of longing for what had once been and was no more. Was it a longing for a perfect childhood or for the place where that childhood was lived out? Later Herbert finally realises that she isn’t the perfect lady he previously thought her to be, perhaps just as the West itself wasn’t always the perfect unspoiled place he, or she, had thought either. Cather’s story is one with a number of twists and turns, characters rise and fall in their relative places in society as modern urbanism takes over from the imperialistic past, as whne Marian gets new clothes after her husband’s death ( Chapter 8) The individual stories of the different characters intertwine, but Forrester, the absolute representative of imperialism, is shown as less than perfect. His somewhat younger wife though represents the transition as she makes use of others in order to fit into the new American dream. Cather herself made unconventional life choices. It isn’t clear whether she approved of Marian’s rejection of her previous conventional life style, but she did care about her , as when , in the penultimate line of the story she writes:- . We may feel sure that she was well cared for, to the very end," The events in the story didn’t actually take place of course. This is a novel after all. But Cathar’s mentor and guide was Henry James, and he took as his credo “Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” and this is reflected in her work as in his (Quoted by Bloom, page 236, 2005). Cather is relatively unread today, unlike some of her contemporaries. It has to be asked if this is due to the quality of her writing, or because her topic is just not of interest in the modern age. During her Western childhood and youth, America was still reaching out, exploring the west, stretching out while pushing back the native people. America’s influence has grown as a world power, as well as in the ways it feels free to send its people off into the world’s trouble spots, especially where the price of oil is likely to be affected. This is its imperialism in the 21st century, and Cather’s romantic visions of perfect places, have lost much of their power. Readers tend to gravitate towards those writers whose works attract, and with whom a connection can be established. This book when written, harked back, apologetically at times, to even earlier years and to old world ideas of imperialism . Perhaps this is why, together with what is seen as a lack of interest in real and generally relevant social issues, Cather’s work does not today have the appreciation it once had. References Ahearn, A. Willa Cather: longer biographical sketch, Willa Cather Archive, 2014, web, 24th November 2014, Bloom, H., Novels and Novelists, Bel Air, Chelsea House Publishers, 2005, print Byatt, A.S., American pastoral, The Guardian, 2014, web ,24th November 2014, Carroll, J., 1999, Red Grange and the rise and fall of American football, Illinois, Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, print Cather, W.,A lost lady, 1923, Project Gutenburg,2002, web, 26th November 2014, < http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200451.txt> Cather, W. A Lost Lady. Ed.S. Rosowski with K. Ronning, C. Mignon and F. Link. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska P, 1997. print Fisher-Wirth, A., Dispossession and Redemption in the Novels of Willa Cather, Cather Studies Volume 1, Willa Cather Archive, 2014, web, 23rd November 2014 Gorman, M. undated, Jim Burden and the White Man's Burden: My Ántonia and Empire, Cathar Studies, Volume 6, The Willa Cather Archive 2014, web, 23rd November 2014, http://cather.unl.edu/cs006_gorman.html Grade Saver, Biography of Willa Cathar, 2014, web 23rd November 2014, Pallau-Papin, F. and Thacker, R., Translating Cather's Worlds, Cather’s Studies, Volume 8, Willa Cather Archive,2014, web, 22nd November 2014, Robinson, M., Finding an Erotics of Place in Willa Cather's A Lost Lady, The Mower’s Tree,2001, web, 23rd November 2014, The Willa Cather Foundation, Willa Cather, undated, web, 22nd November 2014, Willa Cathar, undated, web, 24th November 2014, < http://americanliterature.com/author/willa-cather/bio-books-stories> Read More