Soon you will understand Willa Cather’s life influences that motivated her to write in the Regionalism and Realism Movements of American literature in the post-Civil War years. Many opinionated critics expressed their thoughts about her successes and failures that influenced others. Cather wrote about her opinions in short stories, such as “A Wagner Matinée”. Determining the subject of her works and making her a unique individual, Cather’s life greatly influenced her writings.
Living in America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Cather possessed many influences in life that impacted her motivation. When Cather was nine years old, her family left Virginia and went to Nebraska. In the beginning, the move was difficult, and Cather yearned for home, but soon she began to like her new home. Cather’s family move to the American frontier influenced her life and motivated her to write about the prairie region. Local women helped in Cather’s house on the farm and often told stories, which influenced Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl (Litz 2). Enriching her imagination, friendly immigrants in Red Cloud, Nebraska, sparked Cather’s interest in other cultures. Cather attended school, participated in theater, learned Greek and Latin, apprenticed to a doctor, and studied many European works. Although she loved her teachers, Cather felt that the town constricted her (3). Living in Pennsylvania, New York, and Europe, Cather also had interest in the Southwest (Willa Sibert Cather 1). She was fond of old literature and French Symbolism. Dressing like a man, Cather often called herself William, MD (Willa Cather 26). As a magazine editor, Cather helped other writers until Jewett, a writer, advised Cather to quit and write herself (Litz 6). Cathe...
... middle of paper ...
...of American literature. Cather has captured the essence of Nebraska and is a foremost woman in American literature.
Works Cited
Babusci, Roger. Literature: The American Experience. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1994.
Bloom, Harold. Willa Cather. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
Chin, Beverly Ann. Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Litz, A. Walton. American Writers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1998.
Miller, James E., Jr. The United States in Literature. Illinois: Scott, Foresman and
Company, 1976.
Skiba, Laurie. Literature and the Language Arts. Minnesota: EMC Paradigm Publishing,
2005.
“Willa Cather: A Writer Without a Trend”. Civilization, March 1996. Magazine. Vertical file. “Willa Sibert Cather”. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Biography in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2014. Discus.
Lucy Gayheart is a young, spirited, intelligent music student from Havorford, on the South Platte River. In the winters, she attends a conservatory in Chicago, under the tutelage of Professor Auerbach. In Chicago, she lives in a room above a German bakery, where she takes her breakfasts and suppers. These small quarters do not distress her; indeed, she craves the solitude of her own will, her own piano, her own bed. She walks hungrily through Chicago, her appetite for life never disappointed by the thriving midwestern metropolis. She is beautiful, she is talented, and her young heart has never been broke. The year is 1901. At some point in everyone's life, you meet someone whom you think can lift you beyond where you are, to a place where you al...
Willa Cather writes the story of The Joy of Nelly Deane, describing Nelly’s joy as “unquenchable,” especially, Nelly’s joy attracted all the Baptist ladies who admired the prettiest girl in Riverbend, Nebraska (Cather, p. 225). Nelly fluttered from one social event to another, parties, picnics and dances, and sings like a “prima-donna” in the Baptist Church choir, where she met Peggy, the narrator of the story.
There were many of artists and writers, who demonstrated symbolism and imagery within their work of art, set in nineteenth century New Mexico. Willa Cather and Georgia O’Keeffe were best known as an author and an artist in the nineteenth century. Willa Cather had a long memorable career writing novels, short stories, poems, and essay, and contributing to any newspapers, editor, and journals as writer. She travels at length to gather material for her narrative and characters, and was recognizable with and respect by many other popular writers in the nineteenth century. In one of her novel, “Death Comes for The Archbishop”, Willa Cather demonstrates her unique ability to show remarkably compound landscapes within delightfully expressive writing. She brilliantly includes symbolism and imagery to express lowest point of emotions that are generally applicable, while artfully portraying the victories or failures of her characters. Georgia O'Keeffe spending most of her summer in New Mexico, delighted by the desolate landscape and extensive atmosphere of the desert, would explore the subject of animal bones in her paintings while she in New Mexico. The flowers, she painted the bones puffed up and captured the stillness and isolation of them, while expressing a sense of beauty that lies within the desert. She explored the symbolize and imagery in her magnified paintings of flowers that attract people emotionally, although her purpose was to express that nature in all its beauty was as powerful as the extensive of the period. As an author, Willa Cather demonstrated a history of New Mexico through her writing. As an artist, Georgia O’Keeffe was using paint and canvas to verify the loveliness scene of New Mexico. Even though, Willa Cather and...
The authors’ literary works had a way of communicating and expressing their way of life by their own writing styles. The authors I will discuss shared their experience adapting into American culture. The authors I chosen to discuss is Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Thomas Paine who are distinctly different people who share a common background, but overcome different obstacles living in America. The criteria I have to share about their life experiences is their own writings and documented information from credible resources. The analyses and interpretations in the authors writings gives us idea about who they are because of their hardships in America, a new government, and their new culture.
Willa Cather is the author of the award winning novel Death Comes For The Archbishop written in 1927. She was born in 1873 near Winchester, Virginia and soon moved to Nebraska (Cather, 1927). During her childhood she was surrounded by foreign languages and customs. Even at her young age she felt a connection to the immigrants in Nebraska and was intrigued with their connection to the land. Willa also loved writing about the vanished past of the American Southwest where nature and Christianity is opposed to the modern urban life and society (http://fp.image.dk). She was raised Episcopalian and later in life she joined the Protestant Church in search for spirituality while still being captivated with the grandeur of ceremonies performed in the Catholic Church. These fascinations were projected directly into to her writings, as seen in her book Death Comes For The Archbishop. This book was awarded the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1930 (http://www.geocities.com).
To discover an erotics of place in Willa Cather's A Lost Lady, takes little preparation. One begins by simply allowing Sweet Water marsh to seep into one's consciousness through Cather's exquisite prose. Two paragraphs from the middle of the novel beckon us to follow Neil Herbert, now 20 years old, into the marsh that lies on the Forrester property. This passage, rich in pastoral beauty, embraces the heart of the novel-appearing not only at the novel's center point but enfolding ideas central to the novel's theme:
Crane?s handling of Maggie is one that is very American. It leaves the reader without closure of the character. After Maggie?s death her mother wants too forgive her, but it is all too late. Nathaniel Hawthorne?s treatment of Hester Prynne was too be expected because of the society she lived in and of course because her ?mistake? (Pearl) would be with her always reminding the community of what she did. Willa Cather is the only author of these three to give her main character, who just happens to be a woman, a positive role within her community despite the tension between the two.
Litz, A. Walton. American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement 2, Part 2. New York: Charles
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Dyck, Reginald. "The Feminist Critique of Willa Cather's Fiction: A Review Essay." Women's Studies 22 (1993): 263-279.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.
Brown M. & Crone R. Willa Cather the Woman and Her Works. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
History, current events, and social events have really influenced American Literature. Authors have been influenced by the world around them and that has reflected in their works. This can be seen throughout the many eras studied in this class. It can also be seen in all types of literature such as playwrights, fiction, non-fiction, and poems. It can also be seen in all of the different writing styles such as, realism, modernism, and post modernism. It is important that American Literature has been influenced this way because Authors have shown us their personal views and insight to situations one would not get out of a history textbook.