Willa Cather's Marriage View

Willa Cather is one of the most distinguished American women writers in the first half part of the twentieth century. Cather's reputation largely rests on her novels about immigrants on Nebraska prairie in the American Southwest, and the women pioneers she created in her works leave an everlasting image in American literary history.Cather devoted all her time and energy to fighting against the male hegemony and struggling for women's equal rights in social, political and economic aspects with men. The rebellions and transvestism in her life and emotional world during childhood and her twenties reveal her confusion with her female identity, her challenge with the traditional female role and her fight against the male hegemony in the patriarchal society. After establishing her fame as a successful writer, Cather began to recognize and accept her female identity. However, Cather never married in her life, and she sublimated the heterosexual love to the universal love—spiritual friendship. Cather's sexual orientation and marriage view have a close relation with the women's characters'fates in love and marriage life.This thesis is based on a detailed textual analysis of Cather's four novels O, Pioneers!, My Antonia, A Lost Lady and My Mortal Enemy which were written in the prime time of her writing career with female characters as their protagonists. By applying the feminist perspective, the thesis aims to illustrate Cather's pessimistic marriage view and her search for women's self-identity in marriage as well as in society. The journey of women's searching for self-identity has three stages: the first stage is the resistance of being"the Other". It describes two kinds of women characters'love views in O Pioneers!: the androgynous woman, Alexandra Bergson and the traditional-trained"Victorian ladies"Marie Shabata and Angelique. To reject the"other"identity, Alexandra suppresses her emotional feeling and sexual desire and keeps aversion to love and marriage; while Marie and Angelique, being unaware of their"Other"identity in the patriarchal society, indulge themselves in the traditional love and marriage, and finally destruct themselves in it. By depicting the two antithetical love views Cather emphasizes on women's self-independence and self-identity in marriage and warns women of the danger of being"the Other"in the patriarchal society. The second stage is the transition from"the Other"to the"One". By describing Antonia Shimerda and Lena Lingard's emotional experiences in My Antonia, Cather successfully changes women's role from being birth machine or sexual love object to master of their emotional life and family life, becoming an independent the"One"in the patriarchal society. The third stage is the transcendence of the"One". It describes two common housewives Marian Forrester and Myra Henshawe's life experiences in A Lost Lady and in My Mortal Enemy and the change of their attitude toward marriage: both enter into marriage happily to achieve the"Self", disappointedly break away with the unhappy marriage life and actively search their own happiness and value in life and society. Marian finds herself another happy marriage while Myra leaves her husband and dies alone in a cliff where she could"come back"to her"childhood", and to"herself". By breaking off"the Other"identity and return to the"Self", Marian and Myra finally realize the integrity of the body and soul and transcendent from the"One".The three stages of women's searching for self-identity reveal that Cather's attempt of proposing a possible way for women to transit from identity of being"the Other"to the"One"in marriage and family life in the patriarchal society. By analyzing Cather's marriage view in the four novels, this thesis reveals Cather's female consciousness and the great contributions that she made to fight for women's equal social status and rights; her works shows the journey of women's searching for self-identity in the patriarchal society and marriage life.