The Same Story, Different Revelations

Although the well-known American female writer Willa Cather and the famous Australian female writer Henry Handel Richardson come from different countries, both of their works O, Pioneers! and The Getting of Wisdom describe the process of female growth. Adopting the method of comparative literature, this thesis analyzes and compares the two novels from the perspective of initiation story.One of Cather’s pioneering stories, O, Pioneers!, describes that the female pioneers pursue their identities for the whole life and find their spiritual homeland on the prairie after overcoming a series of ordeals given by nature and people around them. In the meantime, it also discusses the relationship between the inevitable responsibilities and happiness in the growing process of adolescence. The theme of initiation runs through the whole text and displays the transforming process which is from naive to mature in the protagonist’s mind and psychology. Similarly, Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom, in accordance with her own experiences, tells that the heroin undergoes a great deal of tortuous difficulties in the growing process and becomes a hypocritical and socialized adult from an innocent and optimistic girl step by step. She gains the so-called wisdom of society finally. Actually, it still reveals the contradiction and conflict between individual growth and social constraint.Although both Cather’s O, Pioneers! and Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom conform to the characteristics of initiation story, they lay different emphasis on the female growth. Cather praises female pioneers’ tenacious pioneering spirit in the growing process, while Richardson focuses on the development of female personalities influenced by various disadvantageous elements. As a result, the two heroines present completely different growth endings:one is gaining maturity and becomes a positive pioneering female, and the other is losing innocence and becomes a hypocritical social female. Therefore, this thesis makes a comparative study on O, Pioneers! and The Getting of Wisdom in the aspects of themes of initiation story, including growth, autobiography and epiphany as well as structures and revelations of initiation story, including the general pattern, initiation mentor and open-ending specifically to reveal that the similar growing stories can produce different endings and revelations.