by Willa Cather
The quotation from Kingsley has to do with the progress of civilization; it suggests that although separation from others is an inevitable component of the creative process, art and creativity are intrinsically good; they contribute to the progress of mankind. However, it also indicates that the artist and her work will be the object of the others’ malignant envy. Such is the burden of genius. By contrast, one might very well read Rossetti’s work in sexual terms; it suggests that if a woman accepts a man’s “fruit” by engaging sexually with him, only disaster can follow; she will grow old and ill before her time (worn down from bearing children perhaps), and only the love of a sister can save her. In many ways, the story recounted by Rossetti recalls the myth of Persephone and Demeter, a tale that Cather used in many of her works.
Taken together, these two quotations seem to describe the precarious situation of an emergent female artist: she will become foreign to those who cannot understand her vocation and subject to the envy of others; moreover, she cannot rely on the conventional supports of husband and children, for the cares of a family will drain her vitality. Cather herself had at least one offer of marriage while she was in Pittsburgh; it was from a doctor, a man whom she considered appropriate in every way. She considered the proposal seriously, even consulted several trusted friends for their opinion, but ultimately she turned it down because she feared that marriage would hinder her career.
In one respect, however, these quotations make a unified statement: there is something “strange” and magical about art; and if it has beauty and the power to elevate our lives, it also has a potentially destructive component. One might tumble into art’s compelling illusions—and drown.
All four of the stories from The Troll Garden are among Cather’s best. “The Sculptor’s Funeral” is perhaps the most accessible narrative: it portrays the disparity between an acclaimed artist and the “barbarians” among whom he grew up, the townspeople who know that the casket contains a man who has become, in some incomprehensible way, “great” by the world’s standards. The style of the tale is brilliantly controlled, so restrained that the tale becomes a kind of anti-pastoral. Quiet, subdued realism becomes graphic indictment, for this country village is but a “desert of newness and ugliness and sordidness,” without sensitivity or soul.
“A Wagner Matinée” is somewhat complementary to the previous story; it presents a vivid contrast between the harsh, culturally barren world of Midwestern farm life and a world where great art and music are so readily available that one can find a concert in the afternoon, and even at the last minute. However, this is a city; and here, the situation is more emotionally complex. The narrator’s tone is severe and consistently condescending, despite the fact that he acknowledges a great emotional debt to his unwelcome Aunt Georgiana. Thus we are invited to compare the narrator’s judgment throughout with our own perhaps more balanced assessment; and in reaching an evaluation, we might recollect that like the sister who succumbed to the Goblin men’s “fruit,” Aunt Georgiana has married a farmer and left New England, voluntarily putting the narrator’s world behind her. The narrator is appalled at her decision. Might Cather’s thoughts be more complex? Perhaps entirely different?
If the first two stories present the emptiness of life without the luminous presence of art, “ ‘A Death in the Desert’ ” and “Paul’s Case” examine the potentially unwholesome side of art, its capacity to delude, engulf, and even destroy. “‘A Death in the Desert’ ” deals with many variations on the theme of delusion: the man who is consistently mistaken for his brother, the room in Wyoming that resembles a New York studio, the woman who sacrifices everything, even her own career, to worship the genius who has deserted her. Cather invites us to compare this story with “A Wagner Matinée.” Have both women made a tragic mistake? Only one? If so, which woman is more essentially unhappy?
“Paul’s Case” is the most famous of these four tales, and by far the most often reproduced. To some extent it was inspired by a young man whom Cather met while teaching high school in Pittsburgh; and to some extent (as Cather later confessed) it was based upon some of the author’s own yearnings in her earliest years. It has become a classic study of a morbid personality disorder; of the beckoning, seductive power of art; of the plight of a poor boy in a world where the seductive commodities of wealth and luxury are everywhere displayed. Above all, of course, it is an agonizing account of the power of illusion.
Cather so often portrays the harshness of farm life that it is rare to see her portraying poverty within the city. Yet during her early years in Pittsburgh, Willa Cather grew to know the city very well: for amusement, she would ride the streetcars out to the end of the line and back; and she had a bicycle that she rode everywhere up and down the steep hills of this vast river city, a metropolis whose air was so blackened by soot from the factories that prosperous businessmen would bring an extra shirt to work and change in the middle of the day. Pittsburgh was the repository of great wealth, the home of Fiske and Carnegie; and the “Carnegie Hall” in which Paul works is not New York’s, but Pittsburgh’s. Willa Cather eagerly attended concerts and plays there; however, she also found ample opportunity to observe the grimy zinc tubs, cracked mirrors, dripping spigots, and Sunday afternoons on the front stoop in Pittsburgh. And in a world that “always wore the guise of ugliness,” is it not, perhaps, a reasonable alternative to feel, as Paul does, that “a certain element of artificiality [is] necessary in beauty”? We might ask, then, to what extent Paul’s escape is a failure. What are the causes for his behavior? And if we do judge him to have failed, how might he have done things differently?
Several of the later stories here continue to develop the notion of art as potentially destructive; however, in her more mature years, Cather was less preoccupied with the danger of losing oneself in an alluring illusion than with her disgust at watching prosaic parasites feeding upon the careers of successful artists.
“The Diamond Mine,” “A Gold Slipper,” and “Scandal” all recall Willa Cather’s experiences backstage—chatting with actresses about their money problems or the scourge of unfaithful husbands and lovers. Often Cather seems to equate the problems of an actress’s situation with those of women in general; and consistently, she proposes that all women can be secure only when they are in charge of their own lives. Her mother had given birth to seven live children and had miscarried several more; Virginia Cather’s life had been cannibalised by marriage and child-bearing, and her oldest daughter had been indelibly affected by the sight of a mother thus burdened. Early in her life, while writing theater reviews in college, Willa Cather could see that many married actresses were little more than bank accounts for indigent husbands, and that married actresses seldom succeeded. Cather herself made the decision not to marry lest it interfere with her career. And in The Song of the Lark, the diva heroine Thea Kronborg wrestles painfully with the conflict between romantic love and her operatic career—choosing to marry only when she has become powerful enough to control her own money and to refuse to bear children.
Of these stories, “The Diamond Mine” is the most bitterly bleak about the possibilities for unselfish actresses. Cressida “more than any other woman . . . appealed to the acquisitive instinct in men.” She has married one abusive, dishonest husband after another; she continues to be generous to a jealous and rapacious family; and yet after her death, even her will becomes the object of greedy contention. Like “A Diamond Mine,” “Scandal” also touches upon an actress’s vulnerability to rapacious men; however, principally it plays with the notion of various levels of illusion—on the stage, in the actual world, and in every person’s vision of the self. “A Gold Slipper” takes a more amused and sophisticated look at the notion of illusion and combines it with a playful refutation of men’s stereotyped notions about “weak,” “ignorant,” “selfish,” or “shallow” actresses.
Yet in all these studies of the relationship between artistic women and the men who engage their emotions, none is more g
raceful, complex, and compelling than the tale that Cather wrote just for herself. “Coming, Aphrodite!” was something of a personal exercise: Willa Cather lived in New York’s Greenwich Village for nearly two decades, and the studio apartments of Don Hedger and Eden Bower are modeled on Cather’s own accommodations during the first years there, her own season of vitality and art and innocence.
The story printed here is the version Cather herself wished to publish; however, virtually alone among Cather’s work, this tale was bowdlerized before initial publication so that it wouldn’t offend public taste. Although Anthony Comstock had died in 1915, The Society for the Suppression of Vice that he had founded was still active and powerful in 1920. Tons of printed material had been sacrificed to the prudish notions of propriety that were embodied in the laws The Society had supported, and publishers were not yet willing to test the prevailing legal system. Although any number of small changes were made in this narrative, only several are worth noting. First, the title of the story was changed to “Coming, Eden Bower!” lest the title character be confused with the singer Mary Garden, who had just performed as Aphrodite with the Chicago Opera Company. Second, Eden Bower does her exercises clad in chiffon (and not entirely and beautifully naked, as Cather would have had it). Finally, the Aztec slave who couples with the Princess is not “gelded,” but merely “maimed.” These changes may seem merely foolish today, but they do call attention to one feature of the story that will affect all readers: this story is deeply sensuous, perhaps the most sexually explicit story Cather ever wrote.
Although both the male and the female in this erotic tale are artists, their temperaments are vastly different: as his name suggests, Hedger lives a life that has been defined by denials. He has certain attributes, appurtenances, habits: his shabby clothes, his habit of exercise, his pipe, his dog, his aversion to linking art with commercial success. Yet there are many intimations that his masculine energy is stifled, tensed and waiting to be released: phallic imagery like the dog’s “bony tail stuck out hard as a hickory withe”; or Hedger’s instinctive, unconsciously masturbatory gesture as he watches the sensuous performance of Eden’s exercises (“his fingers curved as if he were holding a crayon [and then] the charcoal seemed to explode in his hand”). Yet when we first encounter Don Hedger, the liberation of these vital elements in his nature is merely potential.
By contrast, Eden Bower is the embodiment of grace and vigor, and she is fearless—boldly, insouciantly confident. “Eden got a summer all her own.... She had the easy freedom of obscurity and the consciousness of power.” She has beauty and talent; but she lacks sensual experience because for all her beauty, she has been utterly circumspect with her many beaux. Moreover, she has no sense of the potential dangers to which her beauty and talent and easy, open manner might expose her.
For both Hedger and Eden Bower, then, this will be a summer of erotic experimentation and aesthetic fulfillment: as man and artist, he needs the fire of her nature; as woman and artist, she requires the dark experiences intrinsic to his somber Aztec tale, an account of the tragic possibilities of erotic rapture. Most of all, as man and woman during this lovely, languid summer, they crave the fulfillment of desire itself: they need to couple with each other.
Interestingly, Cather makes it clear that while it is necessary for both the man and the woman here to gain intimate knowledge of “the other,” neither of them needs or wants a permanent commitment. By the time fall is drawing near, each has procured what he or she required: a glorious sexual affair that has contributed to the artistic advancement of each—different as their aesthetic visions may be. At the end of the story, we learn that Eden Bower has gained wealth and the fame she had craved, and that Hedger has become a highly respected experimental painter who has somehow continued to elude monetary success.
“Old Mrs. Harris” was written long after the other stories in this volume, at a time when Cather’s father had recently died and her mother was near death; and to some extent it is a tribute to them —to the life that young Willa Cather had led in the home of the transplanted, overburdened Southern belle and her genial, unsuccessful husband. In fact, superficially many of the characters in the tale resemble the people who lived in Willa Cather’s girlhood home. Grandmother Boak, Virginia Cather’s mother, had come west to Nebraska with her daughter’s family; and when Virginia and Charles Cather moved to Red Cloud, Grandma Boak had moved with them. She helped with the children, took her place in the kitchen, tried to relieve her still-beautiful daughter of cares—in short, played a role very similar to that of old Mrs. Harris. Vickie, with her impatient, self-centered ambition, is a rough, rather harsh characterization of the young Willa Cather, selfish as only the young can be selfish. And Mr. Templeton’s affable absences echo the business patterns of Charles Cather. In short, the sheer number of apparently personal elements from the author’s life is so strong that readers may be tempted to read this story as autobiography. And that would be a considerable mistake.
What Cather offers here is a generational array of feminine consciousness, the woman as she moves through the life cycle; and if her own persona is anywhere in the story, it is not with Vickie (who seems to resemble her younger self so much), but with old Mrs. Harris. Nor are value judgments easy to make. Even the wellintentioned Mrs. Rosen misapprehends the situation. There is no doubt that old Mrs. Harris’s comforts are overlooked amidst the confusion of work and commitments that burden the other women. However, Mrs. Rosen’s inclination to disapprove (which may reflect the reader’s initial reaction) is very much a result of her failing to understand the culture from which the Templetons have come. In some sense, each of the women is locked not merely in her “time of life,” but in her set of “expectations” as well. Vickie, in the heedless impatience of adolescence, is moving forward into a different way of life, into a future that no other woman in the story can foresee or understand; the post-Civil War belle, Mrs. Templeton, in the ripe, cluttered, overburdened years of motherhood, is drowning in her own fecundity; and Mrs. Harris, a remnant of the Old South, is living in her final years with dignity, attempting to preserve the values of her own time. Moreover, the behavior of each is oddly appropriate.
The story celebrates life itself, with all its glorious diversity and all the intractable ignorance and pain. There is something vital in the moment—of being Vickie, of being Mrs. Templeton, even of being old Mrs. Harris—something potent in the very miracle of existence. Most of all, the story urges compassion for all that we did not understand in time: for the mother who seemed not to pay us enough attention, for the grandmother we had casually neglected, and even for the young selfish person that we used to be.
At the end of the narrative, Cather introduces the voice of an omniscient narrator, an extremely rare occurrence in her fictions. This voice—perhaps the consciousness of old Mrs. Harris herself or perhaps the voice of a novelist who managed to grow wise with years—offers a perspective that transcends time. “When they are old. ...” The reader’s last task is to fathom that voice. Is it a poignant, melancholy insight that asserts, in effect, that no one can ever know enough in time to do things “right”? Or does it celebrate the reassuring belief that even if we don’t understand now and even if we do make mistakes, someday we finally will understand?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
BOOKS BY WILLA CATHER
April Twilights (poetry). Boston: Badger, 1903.
The Troll Garden (stories). New York: McClure, 1905.
Alexander’s Bridge (novel). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.
O Pioneers! (novel). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913; Edited with an Introduction by Blanche H. Gelfant. New York: Penguin Classics, 1989.
My Autobiography [S. S. McClure]. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1914.
The Song of the Lark (novel). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915.
My Ántonia (novel). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918; Edited with an Introduction by John J. Murphy. New York: Penguin Classics, 1994.
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Youth and the Bright Medusa (stories). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.
One of Ours (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922.
A Lost Lady (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
The Professor’s House (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.
My Mortal Enemy (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
Death Comes for the Archbishop (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.
Shadows on the Rock (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.
Obscure Destinies (stories). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932.
Lucy Gayheart (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935.
Not Under Forty (essays). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (novel). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.
The Old Beauty and Others (stories). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.
RESOURCES ON WILLA CATHER AND HER WORK
Arnold, Marilyn. Willa Cather’s Short Fiction. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984.