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Themes in A Lost Lady lost lady, Interesting Secondary Readings:…

- - - - Marian's relationship with Ivy Peters- erotic imagery is repeated throughout their interactions, leaving the impression that their interactions are almost a 'trade'
        
        "naughtiest laugh"
        
        A lack of innocence, erotic undertones
        
        "His hands meeting over her breast"
        
        Here, the romantic aspect of their relationship has been starkly removed. Ivy appears from behind, and Marian simply accepts his actions, rather than responding to them in an affectionate manner. Therefore, Cather makes it clear this is not a relationship built upon love
        
        We get a sense that she simply 'puts up' with his behaviour in order to ensure her own security
        
        "she was bareheaded, her skirts blowing in the wind... Ivy stood with his hat on his head, but there was in his attitude... a man trying to make himself agreeable to a woman"
        
        This illuminates that despite Marian's breaking of social norm, her slightly rsique appearance is endearing to men, in a way making her even more desirable. Men want to meet her standards, they want to be worthy.
        
        The freeness of Marian's dress acts as a symbol for her unconstrained desire
        
        link to example.com
        
        link to example.com
        
        Phallic imagery of, "when the strokes of the hatchet rang out from the ravine, he could see her eyelids flutter... soft shivers went through her body"
        
        "The notion that women could enjoy sex and experience sexual intimacy in marriage, separate from procration" (Hobson, Barbara. "Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition". New York: Basic, 1987, pp 185)
      - The Forrester's House itself is described as "Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a charm of atmosphere"
        
        Hints that the Forrester property may actually function as a well-run brothel
        
        This is inkeeping when we contemplate how Marian is perceived through the veneer of the male gaze, see the APPEARANCE branch
      - Marian seems to provide sex in exchange for financial security
        
        Even proclaiming herself that, "Money is a very important thing"
    - - Her abilities to lure men are presented as a threat to the status quo
        
        Therefore, her later fall represents the fall of the Old West, and its control over race, class and gender based distinctions
        
        Critic Stephanie Bower stated that "Marianne's sexuality inscribed the degeneration of the novel's contemporary moment"
  - - - Her long flowing hair illuminates a refusal to obey an aesthetic ideal held by the other women in Sweet Water
        
        Her hair operates as symbol of Marian's unconstrained desire. An omen for what is to come
        
        "Female desire, then, is identified with the threat of working-class insurrection" (BOWER, STEPHANIE. “‘Something Coarse and Concealed’: Female Sexuality in Willa Cather's A Lost Lady.” Legacy, vol. 17, no. 1, 2000, pp. 59–72)
  - - - Instead of feeling ashamed because of her actions, she attempts to subvert the negative perceptions of outsiders
        
        By using her desire to strengthen her stance as a 'new woman' of the 1920s
        
        Thus, she is not defined by her own code, but rather the impact she has upon the views of others
        
        They recognise that she is starkly different, with even Neil regarding her as "belonging to a different world from any he had ever known"
        
        We see this even in her old age
        
        "she was not willing to immolate herself...and die with the pioneer period to which she belonged"
        
        A refusal to succumb to the role she is expected to occupy
        
        "Perhaps people think I've settled down to grow old gracefully, but I've not"
        
        Marian's sexuality inscribing, "the degeneration of the novel's contemporary moment". (BOWER, STEPHANIE. “‘Something Coarse and Concealed’: Female Sexuality in Willa Cather's A Lost Lady.” Legacy, vol. 17, no. 1, 2000, pp. 59–72)
  - - - He recognises her handwriting in a correspondence to Ivy Peters
        
        "curiously delicate and curiously bold"
        
        This anticipation of her behaviour is an impact of the male gaze
        
        = Patriachal control
    - - A symbol of her relationship with Frank Ellinger
        
        Effectively, Neil ends the correspondence, and therefore what was left of the affair
- - - - "It gratified him to have his wife wear jewels" (26)
      - "A man who would go driving with a prostitute in broad daylight" (32)
      - "With a wife like Mrs. Forrester to make it attractive to them" (34)
    - - "The woodpecker rose in the air with a whirling corkscrew motion" (16). "Like a bird caught in a net" (65)
        
        “Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch” Wollstonecraft, Mary A. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. 1772. Ed. Charles W. Hagelman Jr. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967.p.98
        
        “Just as the mutilated female woodpecker flounders while trying to make progress, Marian whirls as she attempts to re-establish herself after her husband experiences a financial crisis and dies.” Elz, Elizabeth. "’The Awakening’ and ‘A Lost Lady’: Flying with Broken Wings and Raked Feathers”, The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Spring, 2003), p.17.
      - "cut the insulated wire behind the desk" (80) Marian is physically silenced by Niel
      - The epigraph to this novel is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet. This is interesting as “A Lost Lady, as in Hamlet, women are victims of masculine heroics, self-interest, and ignorance”
        Smith, Annelise. “Finding Marian Forester: A Restorative Reading of Cather’s A Lost Lady”. Colby Library Quarterly 14. (1978) 224
    - - "her skin had always the fragrant, crystalline whiteness of white lilacs" (23). Colour imagery here suggests purity.
      - "Fragile, indeed" (25)
      - "It was gone, like the morning freshness of the flowers" (53)
  - - - Women seen as male resposibility "how much livlier he is without his ladies!" (39)
      - "An impulse of affection and guardianship drew Niel up the poplar boarded road" (52)
      - "If only he could rescue her and carry her off like this" (65)
      - "I'll give him a beating and teach him how to speak to you" (73)
      - "For once he had been quick enough; he had saved her" (80)
      - "Niel felt that he must help her, or at least try to" (96)
    - - "the look of a man who could bite an iron rod in two with a snap of his jaws" (29)
      - "My rings! You hurt me!" (41)
    - - "Had there been half a dozen women present, he would have asked that question of each" (35)
    - - "'My dear boy, your shoulders aren't broad enough'" (48)
- - - - "A wife like Mrs. Forrester to make it attractive to them" (34) Marian portrayed as simply a wife
      - She is very rarely referred to by her forename throughout and almost always "Mrs. Forrester"
        This denies her the right to individual identity apart from her husband.
        
        "he did not know if Daniel Forrester's widow were living or dead, Daniel Forrester's wife returned to him" (101)
        
        “for women ‘identity’ is so bound up with relationships, as they are defined as a self-in-relation” Munt, Sally. R. Murder by the Book?: Feminism and the Crime Novel. London: Routeledge, 1994. p.49.
      - "Curiously enough, it was as Captain Forrester's wife that she most interested Niel, and it was in relation to her husband that he most admired her" (49)
      - "That's what I'm struggling for, to get out of this hole" (75)
      - "'Yes. Nothing will happen here. Nothing ever DOES happen!' she answered wildly, wringing her hands" (78)
      - "But without him, she was like a ship without ballast, driven hither and thither by every wind" (90)
  - - - "he was an ugly fellow, Ivy Peters" (15), "The daughter was a rather pretty girl" (28),
      - “Marian Forrester is at the center of Cather's novel, but she stands there in the shadow of her noble husband and she stands condemned by Niel Herbert's judgment” Smith, Annelise. “Finding Marian Forester: A Restorative Reading of Cather’s A Lost Lady”. Colby Library Quarterly 14. (1978) 221.
- - - - Clear that Marian Forrester represents the emergence of the New Woman as she defies gender norms and attempts to gain autonomy
        
        “she is strong enough to sustain herself, like the New Woman, but she selects the career of the True Woman in order to do so.” Elz, Elizabeth. "’The Awakening’ and ‘A Lost Lady’: Flying with Broken Wings and Raked Feathers”, The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Spring, 2003), p.21.
  - - - "Her beautiful earrings swung beside her pale cheeks" (47). However this changes to "the long earrings swung beside the thin cheeks that were none the better" (155)
        Niel's description of her changes throughout the novel as he changes his opinion of her
      - "he had lost one of the most beautiful things in his life" (53)
      - "her skin had always the fragrant, crystalline whiteness of white lilacs" (23) however this changes to "her skin was no longer like white lilacs, - it had the ivory tint of gardenias that have just begun to fade" (67)
        Colour imagery highlights her degeneration
  - - - "But I should feel like an old woman, drinking tea!" (25)
      - "'What will become of me, Niel?' There was fear, unmistakable fright in her voice" (48)
- - - - However, this also suggests that Marian is on this pedestal simply because her husband puts her there
        
        Thus, as a consequence, he can remove this from her at any time. Implying that despite her attempts at autonomy, she will always be reliant upon her husband
  - - - Suggests that where Marian lives is effectively 'different' from the world around her. A larger metaphor for her own difference in character to the other women.
        
        Therefore, the later collapsing of the bridge later functions as a mirror for Marian's demise
        
        This collapse also functions to remove all remnants of societal control upon Marian, by ending all contact
        
        "Cather gives to the individual the task of transforming commonplace existence" (Rosowski, Susan J. “Willa Cather's ‘A Lost Lady’: The Paradoxes of Change.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 11, no. 1, 1977, pp. 51–62. JSTOR)
        
        "Mrs Forrester's decline parallels the West's decline" (Rosowski, Susan J. “Willa Cather's ‘A Lost Lady’: The Paradoxes of Change.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 11, no. 1, 1977, pp. 51–62. JSTOR)
    - - "I wouldn't mind having some of her linen. There's a chest full of double damask upstairs, evry tablecloth long enough to make two"
        
        Explicitly telling of the Forrester's status, however this status is destablised by the failing of the bank, and therefore the failing of the Forrester's income
        
        Captain Forrester as breadwinner,
        
        This is particularly telling when contemplating Marian's alcoholism
        
        "I never go there now that I don't smell it on her"
        
        "Her eyes were glassy."
        
        "She kept washing the place around the ice-box over and over, till it made me nervous"
  - - - Cares for Captain Forrester after his two strokes
        
        Holds dinner parties after his death and seems to crave male attention, even basking in it
- - - - "Could you stay at the hotel for a few weeks, and let me have black Tom?"
        
        NB: The fact that he is black is always clearly stated by other characters. However, none of them are described as white -.
    - - A sense that he 'belongs' to Pommeroy
        
        Again shows how all themes are anchored to one another. Tom should be perceived as 'higher' because he is a man. However, in reality this is undercut by the fact he isn't white. Therefore, he is actually perceived as 'lower'
        
        "put in the kitchen"