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Mari Sandoz: Novelist as historian
Abstract
Mari Sandoz believed that the Old West could be a significant guide to the improvement of society and blended the skills of novelist and historian to both preserve that West and to suggest by its failures new directions. By depicting the struggles of the less fortunate, condemning discrimination, and urging conservation of natural resources, Sandoz demonstrated the need for a just and equitable society in which care for the environment is a constant concern. She emphasized the West as place; land formations, water sources, animals, and weather are primary in her histories and stories. In her writing, Sandoz took advantage of her wide experience in the Trans-Missouri area. Sandoz's childhood in the Sandhills of western Nebraska and her years in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she attended the University, worked for the Historical Society, and struggled to publish, influenced and strengthened her ideas about the West. Like the patrician historians of earlier years, Sandoz chose her subject for its intrinsic interest, identified with her subject, and submerged herself in mood and feeling. However, like professional historians, she was committed to research. Sandoz was interested in history that recognized common people and economic and social trends. While Sandoz was criticized by historians of her time for her lack of objectivity, later historiographical concerns, particularly the theories of the relativists, including perspectivist, poststructuralist, and deconstructionist critics, cast a more favorable light on her subjective perspective. Her use of fiction in nonfiction classifies her work as popular history. Sandoz employed tropes such as irony, metaphor and simile, allegory, and symbolism, and her narrative voice included a reportorial and a gossip tone, tall tales, storytelling, and ethnic speech, all useful in judgment. Sandoz's sympathy for the Plains Indians, particularly the Cheyenne and Sioux is evident. She never forgot they were friends of her father, Jules, the subject of her first published book. Mari saw Jules as both hero and tyrant, and Old Jules is prototype for historical perspective and literary style in her subsequent work.
Subject Area
American literature|American studies|American history
Recommended Citation
Rippey, Barbara Lee Wright, "Mari Sandoz: Novelist as historian" (1989). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9004704.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9004704