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THE AGRARIAN ETHOS IN WILLA CATHER'S NEBRASKA STORIES AND NOVELS: FROM MEMORY TO VISION
Abstract
The dissertation examines those Nebraska works by Willa Cather in which agrarian characters strive to make their existence meaningful. Elements of meaning, inferred from human acts on the farm country define the agrarian ethos, the collective outlook and spirit of people who share the Nebraska Divide. The core of the ethos is the human impulse toward establishing communal relationships. Farm country, perceived by Willa Cather's farmer-pioneers, ranges from hostile to sanguine, from indifferent to supportive. A comprehensive ethos develops from a collective behavior which defines the spirit of Nebraska farm people. The central question is: What must farmer-pioneers do in order to create a meaningful, fulfilled life? The well-lived life implies a completion which, through strength and imagination, builds its memory to vision, making use of indigenous materials. This study treats early short stories set in Nebraska (1892-1912), which are furnished with incidents from Willa Cather's girl-hood. The ethos may be discovered in the experimental early stories and the early Nebraska novels, for they show day-to-day experiences lived close to farm country. Each work of fiction adds to the agrarian ethos. Chapter One defines Cather's land sense; Chapter Two analyzes seven early short stories--"Peter," "Lou, the Prophet," "The Clemency of the Court," "On the Divide," "Eric Hermannson's Soul," "A Wagner Matinee," and "A Bohemian Girl"; Chapters Three, Four, and Five examine three novels--O Pioneers! (1913), My (')Antonia (1918), and One of Ours (1922); and Chapter Six summarizes the elements of the ethos through the analysis of a final story, "Neighbour Rosicky" (1930). In each chapter, we experience a farm-life that is transformed by a growing sense of place and a collective spirit. The agrarian ethos, we discover, is essentially religious. On the whole, the agrarian ideology--to remember, to sympathize, to trust, to dream, to achieve--formulates the quintessence of an ethos, a religious composite of men's and women's thoughts on the Nebraska land. Willa Cather's enlarged sense of farm life illuminates a view well beyond the confines of history. Any son or daughter of Nebraska farm country knows that Willa Cather's dramatization catches the feeling of the thing.
Subject Area
American literature
Recommended Citation
ZWICK, RICHARD CHARLES, "THE AGRARIAN ETHOS IN WILLA CATHER'S NEBRASKA STORIES AND NOVELS: FROM MEMORY TO VISION" (1982). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8217569.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8217569