Willa Cather and France: In Search of the Lost Language by Robert J. Nelson (review)

Reviews 89 Willa Gather and France: In Search of the Lost Language. By Robert J. Nelson. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 173 pages, $22.50.) The jacket of Nelson’s book promises that it “offers not only a ‘French’ reading of Willa Cather but also a reading of her lifelong involvement with French language and culture” and that it “utiliz[es] Lacanian psychoanalysis and deconstruction to interpret Cather’sfiction.” As a person with a far greater than average interest in Cather and a greater than average interest in psy­ chology, I plunged into Nelson’sbook with enthusiasm. Thus I might have been able to accept a world of phallocentrism and vaginocentrism, signifiers, Other and other, Mother and mother; what I could not accept was what seemed to me a whimsical and frequently unproven application of this perspective. I might be willing to see Thea Kronborg as a “lesbian . . . [whose] secret of autosexuality is constantly under the threat of castration,” or Sapphira Colbert as “erotically open,” or Claude Wheeler as having a “homoerotic” relationship with David Gerhardt, or Godfrey St. Peter as a man who “shows his homo­ sexuality,” or Marian Forrester and Niel Herbert’s relationship as showing “a secular expression of the theological debate about the Eucharist between the Catholic and Protestant opponents at the time of the Reformation” if these assertions were supported and were applied to all of Cather’sbooks with similar characters and contexts. This did not seem to be the case, however: I am unsure of Marian and Niel’s links to the Eucharist and was simply told Sapphira is “erotically open.” If Thea is in “stag-like erection” when she is standing on what could be seen as a phallus, or if some significance is found in St. Peter’s lying by “motionless pines,” why are not other references to similar promontories also seen phallically? If Claude and David, and St. Peter and Tom Outland are seen as homoerotic and homosexual, why isnot the extremely close relationship between Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant perceived in a similar way? I was unsettled by what seemed to be a selective approach to examining the books and by the extreme nature of the assertions made about them. Nelson illuminates Cather’s deep ties to France and the French. While most casual observers undoubtedly would notice major references to France in most of Cather’s works, Nelson catalogues minor references and roots as well as major ones so completely that readers will certainly be made much more aware of Cather’s permeating interest in French language and culture. Some­ times these references seem strained in making them French: for example, Godfrey St. Peter’s name is traced not to the Biblical St. Peter or to a god-free man but rather to roots that are “obviously French”: to “Godefroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine (1061-1100) and leader of the Crusades” and to St. Pierre; I am unaware of evidence in the text that would make such an assump­ tion definitive. Perhaps on the picky side, I would have liked a more complete index and was unhappy St. Peter’s daughter was more frequently addressed as “Katherine” than by her name, which is “Kathleen.” Altogether, I found 90 Western American Literature Nelson’swork interesting and now feel more aware of Cather’sdebt to France; however, extreme statements, unproven assertions, and apparent inconsisten­ cies in the application of his theories seem to me to be problems with the book. MARGARET DOANE California State University, San Bernardino The Illustrated Dictionary of Western Literature. By Michael Legatt. (New York: Continuum, 1987. 352 pages, $27.50.) One needs to pick up a book like this occasionally to be reminded of the role of western American literature in the larger framework of the literature of the western world. As scholars of western American literature, we tend to read so much of it, to associate with other scholars who realize its importance, to attend conferences which categorize and explicate it—in short, we tend to become so immersed in our subject that we forget how little attention it gets elsewhere in the literary world. The Illustrated Dictionary of Western Literature...