Willa Cather's symbolic use of the land.

Abstract

Willa Cather is considered one of America's best known female novelists. I, first, became interested in Miss Cather because of her mid-Western portrayal of character. Each of her characters is an artist in conflict with his limitations. To portray these types of characters, Miss Cather uses the land as a basic symbol. I chose, therefore, to investigate Miss Cather's land symbolism, because I had discovered that her symbolism in this category had not been thoroughly investigated. I soon found that she had employed the land symbol differently in four major areas of her works. In her early period of short stories and a first novel, Miss Cather used the land as a charaoter. She was, at this time, working under the influence of Henry James, and a direct correlation .can be shown between the techniques of these two authors. In her post-James period, Miss Cather presented her pioneer novels of Nebraska with a feministic viewpoint designed to show the conquering of an untamed wilderness. In her third area, developed after World War I, she used the land as a symbol of man's creative ability in contrast with the maching age that had brought disillusionment to man. In her past period, she employed the land as a symbol in her search for an identity, one that oenters around the topic of religion.