Willa Cather's Southern Connections

by Romines, Ann; Willa Cather International Seminar 1997 Frederick County (Va.))

• ISBN13: 9780813919607
• ISBN10: 0813919606
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

Willa Cather spent her first nine years in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where her family had lived for five generations. Even after the Cathers' move to Nebraska, she came of age in an emphatically southern extended family, surrounded by Virginia stories, customs, and controversies. As Eudora Welty has declared, "She did not come out of Virginia for nothing." Throughout her career, Cather's fiction drew strength from the people, places, and issues of the Reconstruction South of her birth, culminating in her final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl.This collection of essays is the first to look at this important southern connection in Cather's writing life. Ann Romines has brought together eminent Cather critics and fresh new voices. Judith Fetterley and Lisa Marcus restore Cather's southern origins to a central place in her career. Robert K. Miller reads My Mortal Enemy as a Reconstruction narrative, and Patricia Yaeger theorizes the racial language of Cather's landscapes. Among several essays on Sapphira, Mako Yoshikawa's and Tomas Pollard's contributions explore the novel's racial and sexual dynamics and abolitionist concerns. Cynthia Griffin Wolff views Cather's youthful experiments with clothes and gender as responses to contemporary theater and her mother's southern feminine style. Other critics compare Cather to other Southern writers: Allen Tate, Ellen Glasgow, Flannery O'Connor, and Toni Morrison.Grounded both in traditional literary criticisms and in cultural studies, these sixteen essays make a compelling claim for the importance of Cather's southern connections.Contributors:Roseanne V. Camacho, University of LouisvilleJudith Fetterley, University at Albany, State University of New YorkLisa Marcus, Pacific Lutheran UniversityMarilyn Mobley McKenzie, George Mason UniversityRobert K. Miller, University of St. ThomasElsa Nettels, College of William and MaryShelley Newman, University of British ColumbiaTomas Pollard, Texas A&M UniversityAnn Romines, The George Washington UniversityMary R. Ryder, South Dakota State UniversityMerrill Maguire Skaggs, Drew UniversityJanis P. Stout, Texas A&M UniversityJoseph R. Urgo, Bryant CollegeGayle Wald, The George Washington UniversityCynthia Griffin Wolff, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPatricia Yaeger, University of MichiganMako Yoshikawa, Harvard University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(9)
Ann Romines
PART 1 Prologue
Willa Cather and the Question of Sympathy: An Unofficial Story	10	(14)
Judith Fetterley
PART 2 Cather's Problematic Southern Novel: New Views of Sapphira and the Slave Girl
``Dock Burs in Yo' Pants'': Reading Cather through Sapphira and the Slave Girl	24	(14)
Joseph R. Urgo
Political Silence and Hist'ry in Sapphira and the Slave Girl	38	(16)
Tomas Pollard
No Place like Home: Reading Sapphira and the Slave Girl against the Great Depression	54	(11)
Shelley Newman
Whites Playing in the Dark: Southern Conversation in Willa Cather's Sapphira and the Slave Girl	65	(10)
Roseanne V. Camacho
``A Kind of Family Feeling about Nancy'': Race and the Hidden Threat of Incest in Sapphira and the Slave Girl	75	(8)
Mako Yoshikawa
``The Dangerous Journey'': Toni Morrison's Reading of Sapphira and the Slave Girl	83	(7)
Marilyn Mobley McKenzie
Race, Labor, and Domesticity in Cather's Sapphira and the Slave Girl	90	(8)
Gayle Wald
PART 3 Cather Texts in Southern Contexts
``The Pull of Race and Blood and Kindred'': Willa Cather's Southern Inheritance	98	(22)
Lisa Marcus
``A Race without Consonants'': My Mortal Enemy as Reconstruction Narrative	120	(10)
Robert K. Miller
Henry Colbert, Gentleman: Bound by the Code	130	(8)
Mary R. Ryder
White Dirt: The Surreal Racial Landscapes of Willa Cather's South	138	(20)
Patricia Yaeger
PART 4 Cather and (Other) Southern Writers
The Interlocking Works of Willa Cather and Ellen Glasgow	158	(12)
Merrill Maguire Skaggs
``Aeneas at Washington'' and The Professor's House: Cather and the Southern Agrarians	170	(10)
Elsa Nettels
O'Connor's Vision and Cather's Fiction	180	(9)
John J. Murphy
Playing in the Mother Country: Cather, Morrison, and the Return to Virginia	189	(9)
Janis P. Stout
PART 5 Epilogue: Leaving the South?
Dressing for the Part: [What's] The Matter with Clothes	198	(23)
Cynthia Griffin Wolff
Works Cited	221	(10)
Notes on Contributors	231	(4)
Index	235