Not in sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Zona Gale, Willa Cather, and the American woman writer re-defined

The dissertation establishes that Edith Wharton and Willa Cather had similar definitions for the role of woman writer, which is to say they had no interest in being "lady authors." Instead they worked to be taken seriously as artists, regardless of gender. The dissertation draws this conclusion through feminist readings of several novels, and by re-situating both writers in context with their female contemporaries of the 1920s, particularly Zona Gale, a writer who shared an epistolary friendship with both Cather and Wharton.; The first chapter situates Wharton and Cather in the literary marketplace of the early twentieth century, looking at both popular magazine fiction, and Zona Gale's career, including her Pulitzer prize-winning play, Miss Lulu Bett. This chapter establishes the ways in which Cather and Wharton are both similar to, yet very different from, Gale's radicalism.; The second chapter offers a reading of Wharton's 1917 novel, Summer, arguing that this novel illustrates Wharton's attempt to redefine the language of female sexuality. This chapter also examines Wharton's difficulty in balancing her womanhood with her artistry, using as evidence her letters to her lover, Morton Fullerton, and her poem about their affair, "Terminus."; Chapter Three addresses the World War I novels of both writers, which were both lambasted by reviewers. These novels are turning points for Cather and Wharton because they break the (often unwritten) boundary between gender and genre.; Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop is the subject of Chapter Four. This novel embodies Cather's aesthetic principles, particularly her usually overlooked relationship to Walter Pater's ideas about art and artistry.; The final chapter of the dissertation looks at heretofore unexamined letters between Wharton and Gale, Gale and Cather. This letters illustrate the affinities between each writer--we see Cather as a social critic, and Wharton interested in aesthetic principles. These letters indicate the simultaneous desire for, and recoil from, literary sisterhood shared by both Wharton and Cather, caused in part by their shared feeling that the literary landscape could not hold more than one preeminent woman artist.