The Iconic Willa Cather

Willa Cather and Others. Jonathan Goldberg. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 228. $54.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

Not in Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship. Deborah Lindsay Williams. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xi + 224. $40.00.

Contemplating the iconic moves inquiry in two directions simultaneously. To the past it asks, what were the conditions? How did this icon come about? Who was this Author, Person, Woman, larger than us, sustaining us, accusing us? At the same time the inquiry looks to the future and asks, what will be the effect? Whose way can now be paid, who may be inspired by this Author, Person, Woman, larger than us, sustaining us, accusing us? Willa Cather's iconic status means that now we have to know everything, we need to incorporate her passions, her physical being, her spirit, her off-hand remarks, and her profound comments into a theory of the Catheresque. Iconic status opens inquiries into all of Cather. The future, not démeublé but filled with Cather furniture. The migratory author. The prairie girl. The big city editor. The woman who preferred the company of women, or, perhaps, given the two main sexes, could tolerate only one domestically. What is the Catheresque?

The Cather icon is not a simple one. As Cather moves into the canon of American literature, she brings a set of seemingly unresolvable mysteries with her. Complicating the problem are contingents of Catherians who will deny the existence of anything problematic about her life story. Her biography appears, for example, in a series designed for young adult readers called "Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians," as if her sexuality were not the subject of ongoing debate. ¹ Early biographical "evidence" of her homosexuality—cropped hair as a teenager, cross-dressing, assuming male personae—have been systematically contextualized as circumstantial; arguably, these moves were signs of "rebellion against the ideal of 'femininity' that threatened to engulf her as an adolescent" and thus threatened to silence her creative energies. ² Cather seems to have rebelled against heterosexual norms in order to survive professionally. Complicating the problem further is the fact that she based her aesthetic on a principle of immanent mystery. She is famous for her statement that it was "the inexplicable presence of the thing not named" that transformed narrative into art. ³ "Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created" (ibid.). Some critics have spent countless pages naming the unnamed thing, seemingly oblivious to the logic that would disqualify any nameable thing as being the unnamed. Icons may envelope mystery, but they cannot forestall the proffering of human incarnations.

If readers compelled to sort out religious beliefs want to prove that Cather was Catholic, they will encounter the public fact that she joined the Episcopal Church in 1922 and remained a parishioner until her death. Such evidence does not confirm the strength of her devotion but it is unmistakable proof of a public association. Her writing about the Catholic Church, in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Shadows on the Rock (1931), will continue to suggest to new and uninformed readers that she was Catholic, but there are facts to contend with. Furthermore, there is nothing illogical, perverse, or dishonest about an "Episcopalian woman" holding deep respect for the Catholic Church, strong affinities for its traditions, and great appreciation for its hold over believers, without actually being a Catholic herself, and without ever explaining why she was an Episcopalian. She can get away with such mysteriousness because in the world of contemporary U.S. literary criticism religious beliefs are rarely afforded much attention. Given a list of authors, it is doubtful that most critics could succeed in matching them to their religious affiliations.

While there are few, if any, critical debates on Cather's religious affiliations, her sexuality is considered to be of tremendous import. The...