Willa Cather

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is an eminent author who grew up in the state of Nebraska in the United States. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.


Willa Cather was born in 1873 on a small farm in the Back Creek valley near Winchester, Virginia. Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather (d. 1928), whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Her mother was born Mary Virginia Boak (d. 1931). Mary had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. In 1883, Cather moved with her family to Catherton in Webster County, Nebraska. The following year the family relocated to Red Cloud, the county seat. Cather spent the rest of her childhood in the town which she later made famous by her writing career. Willa Cather insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money for her to enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
While in college, Cather became a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal. Cather then moved to Pittsburgh, where she taught high school English and worked for Home Monthly. After receiving a job offer from McClure's Magazine, she moved to New York City for her career. McClure's Magazine serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, a work heavily influenced by her admiration for the style of Henry James.
Cather was born into a Baptist family, but in 1922 she was formally received into the Episcopal Church. After moving to New York, she had begun to attend Sunday services in the Episcopal Church as early as 1906.

Writing career
Cather moved to New York City in 1906 to join the editorial staff of McClure's and in 1908 was promoted to managing editor. As a journalist, she co-authored a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. It was serialized in McClure's in 1907-8 and published the next year as a book. Christian Scientists were outraged and tried to buy every copy.<citation needed> The work was reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1993.
In New York Cather met a variety of authors. Sarah Orne Jewett advised her to rely less on the influence of Henry James and more on her own experiences in Nebraska. For her novels Cather returned to the prairie for inspiration and also drew on her experiences in France. These works became both popular and critical successes.
In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, published in 1922. This work had been inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother. He was the first officer from Nebraska killed in World War I. Those letters are now held in the George Cather Ray Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Cather was celebrated by critics like H.L. Mencken for writing in plainspoken language about ordinary people. When novelist Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he paid homage to her by saying that Cather should have won the honor.
Later critics tended to favor more experimental authors. In times of political activism, some attacked Cather, a political conservative, for writing about rather than working to change conditions for ordinary people.

Honours
Cather received both national and state honours. In 1973, the United States Postal Service honoured Willa Cather by using her image on a postage stamp. In 1981 the US Mint created the Willa Cather medallion, a half-ounce gold coin.

Cather was elected to the Nebraska Hall of Fame. In 1986, Cather was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Her alma mater, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, named residence halls after both Cather and her college friend Louise Pound. Pound had a lifelong career as professor of English at the university and was the first woman president of the Modern Language Association.
As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname "William" and wore masculine clothes. A photograph in the University of Nebraska archives depicts Cather, "her hair shingled, at a time when long hair was fashionable, and dressed boyishly."
Throughout Cather's adult life, her most significant relationships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe; opera singer Olive Fremstad; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis.
Cather's romance with Lewis began in the early 1900s. The two women lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1912 until the writer's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis had lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. They had to move as the apartment was to be taken down during construction of the Seventh Avenue subway line. Lewis served as the literary trustee for the Cather estate
In her later life, Cather spent summers on Grand Manan Island, in New Brunswick, Canada, in the Bay of Fundy, where she owned a cottage in Whale Cove.

Cather is buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from those personal papers that remain. Since the 1980s, feminist and other academic writers have explored Cather's sexual orientation and the influence of her female friendships on her work.

The Professor's House is a novel by American author Willa Cather that was first published in 1925.

When Professor Godfrey St. Peter and wife move to a new house, he becomes uncomfortable with the route his life is taking. He keeps on his dusty study in the old house in an attempt to hang on to his old life. Also the marriages of his two daughters have removed them from the home and added two new sons-in-law. The novel is in three parts, the central one deals with an exploration of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico by a former student who died in World War I, whose life and death are pivotal to the narrative.
In the final section, the professor, left alone while his family takes an expensive European tour, narrowly escapes death due to a gas leak in his study; and finds himself strangely willing to die. He is rescued, by the old family seamstress, Augusta, who has been his staunch friend throughout his trials. He resolves to go on with his life and make the best of things.

Cather quite clearly took care in selecting a few of the names for her characters:

Godfrey St. Peter
Godfrey comes from Godfrey of Boulogne, the conqueror who took Jerusalem (A. S. Byatt): St. Peter is the rock on which the Roman church was built: St. Peter is writing about pioneers, when he himself is an intellectual pioneer and every bit of his name comes from famous pioneers in history.

Louie Marsellus
Marsellus is named after the French monarch, and the Roman general who fought Hannibal. Also, the last part of his name, 'sellus' ties in with (mainly) Scott's idea that Louie is only interested in materialism..

Major themes
The novel explores many contrasting ideas: that of loneliness, idealism vs. materialism, the sadness and resiliency of old age - the old vs. the new in the old house and the new house, the Professor or old generation vs. the new generation. Also, Tom Outland's values vs. Louie Marsellus', the idea of the Professor as a scholar vs. his family relations, Indian tribes vs. the current world (of the 20s).

Background

Sociological
The Professor's House was written in 1925, in post-war America. In a similar fashion to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Cather narrates a story about the moral decline of a money-driven society.
Examples of this moral decline can be seen in Rosamond, especially, as she spends copious amounts of money on goods, at one point wearing her father out on a shopping trip. The result of Rosamond's good fortune leads to family bickering between the McGregors (Scott and Kathleen) and the Marsellus' (Louie and Rosamond), although Louie is the only one to not enter into the rivalry. There is even an example of this materialism in Rodney Blake's selling of the artifacts, which shocks Tom immensely.
Psychoanalytical
In this text there is an emphasis on the houses, as is evident from the title, which prompts the question - why is the 'house' so important? Also, why is there such emphasis on death and memories?
The similarities between Cather's real life experiences and her fictional character St. Peter are quite interesting.
Willa Cather, much like St. Peter, was a displaced child, their careers were quite similar. Cather shared a house with a woman named Isabelle McClung, who it is believed she had a lesbian relationship with. While there, Cather worked in an attic, as St. Peter did, which also had mannequins in it. Isabelle married a man named Jan Amborge, and Cather could not move on.
At this point, Cather experienced a mental and psychological paralysis, as St. Peter does. This explains why, when Isbelle and Jan offered room for Cather to move into their new house, she did not. Also, this mirrors exactly what occurs in the text.
The quote preceding the story is, "A turquoise set in silver, wasn't it? ... Yes, a turquoise set in dull silver." This was Louie talking about the gift Tom gave to Rosamond, which could quite possibly be directed at Isabelle as a reminder of the better days of their relationship.

Critical analysis

Part One
The first section of the novel is an introduction to St. Peter's life through the relationships within his family. It connects with the last part of the novel, providing background to the Professor's later issues with his own life.
There is an obvious rivalry between Kathleen and Rosamond, as Rosamond has inherited a large sum of money from Tom Outland - once her fiance, "who was killed in Flanders, fighting with the Foreign Legion" (Louie Marsellus, p. 40).
It is uncertain whether or not Kathleen envies Rosamond solely for the inheritance, or perhaps that Rosamond moved on from Tom so quickly to marry Louie ("Her father believed she couldn't forgive Rosie's forgetting Tom so quickly" p. 89), or even that Kathleen herself had a relationship with Tom - as it may be construed from Kathleen and Scott's conversation in which Scott says, "Awful nice of you to have told me all about it at the start, Kitty." p. 109.
Nowhere in the novel does Cather explain what 'it' is, exactly - one of the many aporias in this text.
Rivalry is not exclusive to the sisters, Scott clearly has trouble accepting Louie as a part of the family, and as a part of society. Perhaps to gain a sense of superiority, Scott blackballed Louie for the Arts and Letters society, thereby casting Louie as an outsider more so than he already is.

Part Two
This section of the text changes from St. Peter as the focal point. As the title Tom Outland's Story suggests, it is about Tom Outland. Also, this section is written in the first person rather than third person. Interestingly enough, this middle section of the book was in fact written ten years before the rest of the novel.
Cather apparently has a liking for the Dutch-style square windows, which let in the healthy breeze from St. Peter's clotted study. This section of the text acts as a window, away from the crowded city life seen in the first and third sections of the text.


My Ántonia (first published 1918) is considered the greatest novel by American writer Willa Cather. My Ántonia — pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of "Ántonia" — is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.

My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that lens.
The book is divided into five volumes, some of which incorporate short stories Cather had previously written, based on her own life growing up on the Nebraska prairies. The volumes correspond roughly to the stages of Ántonia's life up through her marriage and motherhood, although the third volume, "Lena Lingard," focuses more on Jim's time in college and his affair with Lena, another childhood friend of his and Ántonia's.
The five books, in order, are: - The Shimerdas - the largest book of all. It covers all of the time that Jim spends on his grandparents' farm, out on the prairie.
- The Hired Girls - the second largest. It covers Jim's time in town, when he spends time with Antonia and the other country girls who work in town. Language, particularly descriptions, begin to become more sexualized, particularly concerning Antonia and Lena.
- Lena Lingard - this chronicles Jim's time at the university, and the period in which he becomes re-acquainted with the lovely Lena Lingard.
- The Pioneer Woman's Story - Jim visits the Harlings, and hears about Antonia's run-in and fateful romance with Larry Donovan.
- Cuzak's Boys - Jim goes to visit Antonia and meets her new family - her children and her husband. The shortest book.

While interpretations vary, My Ántonia is clearly an elegy to the proud, hard-working immigrants who built new lives west of the Mississippi River and highlights the role of women pioneers in particular.
Cather also makes a number of comments concerning her views on women's rights and there are many disguised sexual metaphors in the text.

Notes
A made-for-television movie, also entitled My Ántonia, was based on this novel.
My Ántonia is available in a number of editions ranging from free editions available on the Internet to inexpensive, mass-market paperbacks to expensive "scholarly editions" aimed at more serious students of Cather's work.
The French songwriter and singer, Dominique A, wrote a song inspired by the novel, called "Antonia" (from the LP "Auguri" -2001-).


O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather. It was written in part when Cather was living in Cherry Valley, New York with Isabelle McClung and was completed at the McClung's home in Pittsburgh


Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when other immigrant families give and leave the prairie. The novel is also concerned with two romantic relationships - one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum, and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata.

Plot summary
The book is divided into five parts, each of which has numerous (unnumbered) chapters.

Part I - The Wild Land
On a windy day in Hanover, Nebraska, seventeen-year-old Alexandra Bergson is visiting with her four-year-old brother Emil. Emil's kitten has climbed a telegraph pole and is afraid to come down. Alexandra finds her neighbor and friend Carl Lindstrum, who retrieves the kitten. In the general store, Alexandra finds Emil with Marie, the same age as Emil. Marie's father has brought her from Omaha. Alexandra's father is dying, and he wishes that she run the farm after he is gone. They later visit Crazy Ivar, who advises them to keep their hogs clean. When the Linstrums are leaving, Oscar and Lou want to leave too, but neither their mother nor Alexandra will. After visiting villages downwards to see how they are getting on, she talks her brothers Oscar and Lou into mortgaging the farm to buy more land, in hopes of ending up as rich landowners.

Part II - Neighboring Fields
Sixteen years later, the farms are now prosperous. Alexandra and her brothers have divided up their inheritance, and Emil has just returned from college. The Lindstrom farm has failed, and Marie, now married to one Frank Shabata, has bought it. During a Bergson family get-together, Carl Lindstrom shows up, having failed in a job in Chicago. He is on his way to Alaska, but decides to stay with Alexandra for a while. There is a growing flirtatious relationship between Emil and Marie, which Carl notices. Lou and Oscar suspect that Carl wants to marry Alexandra, and are resentful that they had to work hard for their farms, but he thinks he can marry into a farm. After this, Alexandra and her brothers are no longer speaking. Then Carl, recognizing a problem, decides to leave for Alaska. At the same time, Emil announces he is leaving for a job in Mexico City. Alexandra is left alone.

Part III - Winter Memories
Alexandra spends the winter alone, except for occasional visits from Marie, whom she visits with Mrs. Lee. She also begins to have mysterious dreams.
Part IV - The White Mulberry Tree
Emil returns from Mexico City. His best friend, Amedee, is now married, and wants to introduce Emil to a French girl, but Emil is uninterested. At a fair at the French church, Emil and Marie kiss for the first time. They later confess their illicit love, and Emil determines to leave for law school in Michigan. But he can't resist saying one last goodbye. Marie's husband, Frank, finds them, and shoots them. He goes off to Omaha and Ivar runs into him, then discovers the dead bodies and runs over to Alexandra's house to tell her.

Part V - Alexandra
Alexandra has gone off in a rainstorm; Ivar goes looking for her and brings her back home; she is despondent. She then decides to visit Frank; in town she walks by Emil's university campus, comes upon a polite young man, and feels better. The next day she talks to Frank in prison; he is bedraggled and can barely speak properly. She then receives a telegraph from Carl, saying he is back. They decide to marry, unconcerned with her brothers' approval.

Major themes
? Pioneers in Nebraska.
? Love and marriage.
? Feminism. Alexandra, despite having made money, is dismissed by her brothers as unfit for business because she is a woman.
Allusions to other works
? Marie is first described as being dressed as a Kate Greenaway character would be.
? In the first chapter, the children are said to be reading Hans Christian Andersen and "the swiss family Robinson" .
? In the fourth chapter, Alexandra is said to like to read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry.
? Many copies of the book are accompanied with the poem, "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" by Walt Whitman, which is said to be where the title comes from.

Allusions to actual history
? In the first chapter of Part II, Emil and Marie mention John Huss.
? In the second chapter of Part II, Lou mentions William Jennings Bryan.
? In the first chapter of Part II, Emil's letters are said to mention Porfirio Díaz.
<None of these are true references>
Literary significance and criticism
In a 1921 interview for Bookman, Willa Cather said, 'I decided not to 'write' at all, - simply to give myself up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I'd forgotten.'


The Song of the Lark is the third novel by American author Willa Cather, written in 1915. The title comes from a painting of the same name by Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton.

Set in the 1890s in Moonstone, a fictional place supposedly located in Colorado, The Song of the Lark is the self-portrait of an artist in the making. The story revolves around an ambitious young heroine, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her hometown to go to the big city to fulfill her dream of becoming a famous opera star.
The novel captures Thea's independent-mindedness, her strong work ethic, and her ascent to her highest achievement. At each step along the way, her realization of the mediocrity of her peers propels her to greater levels of accomplishment, but in the course of her ascent she must discard those relationships which no longer serve her.

Plot summary

Part I: Friends of Childhood
In the fictional small town of Moonstone, Colorado, Doctor Archie helps Mrs Kronborg give birth to her baby son Thor. He also takes care of their daughter Thea, down with pneumonia. Years later, she goes to the Kholers's for her piano lesson with Wunsch. Later, she walks into Dr Archie, who tells her to go to his garden and collect strawberries; once there, she is scared by his wife's meanness. The doctor goes to Spanish Johnny's, when he is also sick. Later, Ray Kennedy goes out to the countryside with Johnny, his wife, Thea and Alex and Gunner. Although she is only twelve and he is thirty, he dreams of getting rich and marrying her when she is old enough. They all tell stories of striking it rich in gold mines out west.
Before Christmas, Thea plays the piano at a concert; the town paper praises her rival Lily; Thea is angry. Tillie then turns down the local drama club's request to have Thea play a part in The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, Tille believes that Thea is too busy and would not accept the part. After Christmas, Thea goes to the Kholers's for another lesson, and Wunsch tells her about a Spanish opera singer who could sing an alto part of Christoph Willibald Gluck. He also says she needs to learn German. Once, Wunsch gets so drunk he passes out and gets hurt during the night. When he wakes up again he turns violent, fells down the Khollers's cote, and is eventually brought back to the house by other towndwellers. Ten days later, as all his students have discontinued their lessons with him, he decides to leave the town. Shortly after, Thea drops out of school and takes up his students; at age fifteen she works full time.
Later, Ray lets Thea and her mother go to Denver on his train. They stop at the fictional town of Wassiwappa, where they have lunch with the station agent. Later they go past Winslow, Arizona. Later, Mr Kronborg insists that Thea should go to mass more often; she doesn't prove as picture-perfect as Anna. However, she becomes sad when she sees how a local tramp is ridiculed and shoed away, wondering whether the Bible wouldn't tell people to help him instead; Dr Archie explains people have to look after themselves. On the way from Moonstone to Saxony, Ray's train has an accident; the next day he bids an emotional goodbye to Thea before he dies. After the funeral, Dr Archie informs Mr Kronborg that Ray has bequeathed six hundred dollars to Thea for her to go to Chicago and study there. Her father agrees to let her go despite her only being seventeen.
Part II: The Song of the Lark
In Chicago, Thea moves close to the parish of a Swedish Reformed Church with two German women; she will sing in the choir and also in funerals for a stipend, and take piano lessons with Mr. Harsanyi. Once at dinner with Mr. Harsanyi she mentions that she sings in a church choir, and he asks her to sing; he is much impressed by her voice. Later, he meets with the conductor of the Chicago orchestra and asks him who is the best singing teacher in the area; the answer is Madison Bowers. He then parts with Thea, explaining that her voice is her true artistic gift, not her playing. After several weeks of singing lessons, she takes a train back to Moonstone; she appears to have grown a lot. She goes to a Mexican ball with Spanish Johnny and sings for them. Back in her house, Anna reproaches her for singing for them and not their father's church. Her ambition leads her back to Chicago.

Part III: Stupid Faces
Back in Chicago, Thea keeps moving from one home to another. She grows tired of Bowers's shoddy students up until she meets Fred Ottenburg, a rich youth. He takes her to the Nathanmeyers, a rich family, and they seem to like her as well. Fred suggests she spends the Summer on a farm in Arizona - his family owns the whole canyon.
Part IV: The Ancient People
Thea gets off the train at Flagstaff, Arizona, close to the San Francisco Peaks. Back in the wilderness, she starts relaxing. Ottenburg then joins her; they kiss by a rockpile, then get stranded outside in a storm. They finally decide to get married, but Ottenburg says that should be in Mexico City - he doesn't tell her he is already married (though estranged from his wife for many years).

Part V: Doctor Archie's Venture
Doctor Archie goes to Denver to look over some silver investments. He receives a telegram from Thea summoning him to New York City. There, she tells Fred she will leave shortly; after he told her he couldn't marry her she felt she had to let go. Archie goes to dinner with Ottenburg and Thea. Later, Fred goes away to his unconscious mother, who fell from a carriage; when he comes back Thea ponders on the futility of her ambition, but comes to the conclusion that the future is still hers to see.

Part VI: Kronborg Ten Years Later
Ten years later, Doctor Archie has moved to Denver after his mining investments went up; his wife is paralysed. He has helped get Governor Alden elected, though Fred and he admit the politician's doubletalk has proved disappointing. Archie attends Thea's operatic performance in Jersey City, and later he talks to her at her hotel; they meet again at four the next day. Later they meet again with Fred; she performs the end of an opera at the last minute and pulls it off well. Thea then takes the time to talk both to Archie and to Fred about her life. Finally, she gives another performance, and Harsanyi is in the audience, much enthused. The novel ends with Tillie, the only remaining Kronborg to live in Moonstone.

Allusions to other works
? Literature is mentioned with Nikolaus Lenau's Don Juan, Lord Byron ('My native land, good night', 'Maid of Athens', 'There was a sound of revelry', Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), Virgil, Honore de Balzac's A Distinguished Provincial At Paris, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Hugh Reginald Haweis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Walter Scott's Waverley Novels, Washington Irving, Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, Robert Burns, William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis, William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Jules Verne.
? Music and the performing arts are mentioned with Fay Templeton, Carl Czerny, Jenny Lind, Muzio Clementi, Carl Reinecke, Maggie Mitchell, Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonin Dvorak, Henrietta Sontag, Clara Morris, Helena Modjeska, Charles Gounod's Ave Maria, John Philip Sousa, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner's Tannhauser and Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
? The Bible is mentioned with Tower of Babel, Noah's Ark, Jephthah, Rizpah, 'David's lament for Absalom', and Mary Magdalen.
? The visual arts are mentioned with Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Barbizon school, Dying Gaul, Venus de Milo, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Henri Rousseau, Édouard Manet, and Anders Zorn.

Allusions to actual history
? Historical figures such as Napoleon III, George Washington, William H. Prescott, Robert G. Ingersoll, Julius Caesar, and Cato the Younger are mentioned.
? Lars Larsen's parents are said to have moved from Sweden to Kansas thanks to the Homestead Act.

Literary significance and criticism
? The novel was inspired by soprano Olive Fremstad<1>.
References
17. ^ Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire, Gay Men's Press, 1994, page 87

Lucy Gayheart is Willa Cather's eleventh novel. It was published in 1935.

The novel revolves round the eponymous character, Lucy Gayheart, a young girl from Haverford, by the Platte River.

Plot summary

Book I: Lucy Gayheart
On Christmas holiday away from her music studies in Chicago, Lucy Gayheart is ice skating in her hometown of Haverford. Harry joins her. Later she takes the train back to Chicago - he is with her until the Omaha stop. In a prolepsis, she recalls going to a performance by Clement Sebastian and later to an audition with him - she has one scheduled for her return. Back in Chicago then, she goes to a concert by the same artist. The next day she goes to his for a singing practice, and meets his valet Giuseppe. She will replace James Mockford whilst the latter is convalescent. Clement Sebastian seems distant. Once he gets a call asking for money, which must be from his wife. On another occasion, he goes to Madame Renee de Vignon's funeral; later he goes into that same Catholic church again. Later Mockford comes back and he greets Lucy; he says Mrs Sebastian likes all about her husband; the two men are off to Minesotta and Wisconsin. Lucy feels dejected. However, she gets a telegraph from Sebastian telling her to come to her studio the following day - this cheers her up. She ends up owing up to him that she might love him, and runs off. He manages to meet her again at Auerbach's and tells her nothing is the matter. Giuseppe admits to wishing he had had an education. Later, both Lucy and Sebastian are depressed; the latter takes her to dinner and tells her about Larry MacGowan. The next day he tells her he really appreciates her but she is too young and only growing up to love him. Mockford is sulky with him because of a tiff over a concert programme. Later, as Sebastian is off on an Eastern tour, Harry visits her and they go to operas and museums together. Although at first he seems appreciative, he criticises the French Impressionists at the museum, which gives her a headache. In a restaurant the next day, she rejects his proposal for marriage.
Sebastian finally comes back briefly; Lucy is to go to New York City to be his accompanist in the winter, after he tours Europe. Meanwhile she has to rehearse, and she will take up Sebastian's apartment as her studio. On his departure she cries. Later she receives a letter from her sister Pauline which says Harry has gotten married to Miss Arkwright. She falls out with Mr Auerbach. He then reads about Sebastian and Giuseppe's drowning in Lake Como, near Cadenabbia.


Book II
Mrs Ramsay is gossiping about Lucy with her daughter. Harry is very glib with Lucy whenever he meets her. She feels depressed, and her only solace is the orchard. When Pauline wants to fell it down to make more money growing onions and potatoes, she throws a tantrum and it is not felled. Later she visits Mrs Ramsay, who has been asking after her and plays the piano there. At night she has nightmares. She then goes into the bank in another attempt to talk to Harry, but again he sends her away glibly. On Thanksgiving Fairy Blair is back, and tells Lucy she knows what happened from a friend of hers; she then proceeds to tell Pauline. Mr Gayheart has bought tickets for the opera; the performance seems humdrum to Lucy. On Christmas Day however, owing to the shopping and flurry, she cheers up a little and decides to write to Mr Auerbach and inquire about a job in Chicago again. He replies to say she can come in March, when the current teacher leaves abroad. Lucy has an argument with her sister when she turns down a job as a teacher in Haverford. Later, she goes for a walk. Harry sledges by and pretends he is too busy to take her back to her house. That night she falls into the icy lake. Her body is found by her father and other locals the next day.

Book III
Twenty-five years later, in 1927, Mr Gayheart's corpse is brought back from Chicago, where he died in hospital. Pauline having died five years earlier, he was the remaining member of the family. Many people turn up at the funeral. Harry, who became chummy with Mr Gayheart after Pauline's death and with whom he would often play chess, was bequeathed their house. He ponders on the footprints made by Lucy on the road when it was newly built by his father as they moved into Haverford. He proceeds to give the house to his bank assistant Milton Chase, provided that the latter looks after the footprints.

Alllusions to actual history
? Jacob Gayheart's parents were German immigrants who moved to Belleville, Illinois, probably after the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
? The First World War is mentioned through Harry, who left Haverford to help.
Allusions to other works
? In Book I, Chapter 3, Harry Gordon mentions the waltz Hearts and Flowers.
? Lucy first hears Clement Sebastian sing a Franz Schubert song about Castor and Pollux. He then proceeds to sing a rendition of Lord Byron's When We Two Parted. Other operas mentioned by him are The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini, Hérodiade by Jules Massenet, Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn, Claude Debussy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
? Clement Sebastian also mentions writers Michel de Montaigne, and William Shakespeare with Macbeth.
? Harry takes Lucy to see Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, Otello and La traviata, and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin.
? At the Art Museum, Harry doesn't like French Impressionism.
? During Harry's Chicago visit, 'O Sole Mio is also mentioned.
? Lucy and her father mention H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan, Die Fledermaus, La belle Hélène, and The Bohemian Girl.

References
O'Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford, 1987
Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record, p. 38. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1953. 
Bunyan, Patrick. All Around the Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities, p. 66. Fordham University Press, New York, 1999. 
"Cather's Life: Chronology." The Willa Cather Archive, University of Nebraska. 21 March 2007 (http://cather.unl.edu) 
Ahern, Amy, "Willa Cather: Longer Biographical Sketch." The Willa Cather Archive, University of Nebraska. 21 March 2007 (http://cather.unl.edu). 
Cather's Life: Chronology. The Willa Cather Archive. Retrieved on 2007-08-13. 
Cather's Writings: Short Fiction. The Willa Cather Archive. Retrieved on 2007-08-13. 
Woodress, James Leslie. Willa Cather: A Literary Life, University of Nebraska Press, Omaha, 1987, p. 516. Cather's birth date is confirmed by a birth certificate and a 22 January 1874 letter of her father's referring to her. While working at McClure's Magazine, Cather claimed to be born in 1875. After 1920 she claimed 1876 as her birth year. That is the date carved into her gravestone at Jaffrey, New Hampshire. 
Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record, pp. 5-7. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1953. 
Acocella, Joan. Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism, p. 84. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2000.

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