My Mortal Enemy Character Analysis

Myra, in My Mortal Enemy, chooses to forsake a life of affluence so that she can marry Oswald Henshawe. As the ramifications of her decision set in, Myra increasingly displays her discontent for her reduced social standing and disposable income. She flaunts her wealth to a significantly poorer family by telling Oswald she got rid of his new dress shirts, because she didn’t like the way they looked on him. Oswald's expression shows “bitterness”(Cather, 8) towards his wife for acting superior to the people of Parthia, Illinois. Myra's actions expose her lust for wealth, and her regret in disobeying her uncle's wishes. By marrying Oswald, Myra broke the socioeconomic barrier and escaped the enclosed space of world that her uncle confined her

Myra, who is dying of illness, escapes the confinement of her stuffy, dark apartment. She refuses to succumb to death in an insubordinate manner. By leaving the apartment and embracing open space, Myra rejects the societal pressure to be a kept woman. Myra did not want to die “like this, alone with [her] mortal enemy” (Cather, 85). Myra wanted to recapture the independence she sacrificed when eloping with Oswald. In leaving the apartment, Myra simultaneously conveys her disapproval for the meager lifestyle that her husband provides for her and the impetus that a woman needs a man to provide for her at all. Myra chose to die alone in an open space – away from the confinement of the hotel walls that served as reminders of her poverty and the marriage that stripped her of wealth and status. She wished to be “cremated and her ashes buried ‘in some lonely unfrequented place in the mountains, or in the sea” (Cather, 83). She wished to be alone once she died, she wanted freedom from quarantining walls and the institution of marriage that had deprived her of affluence and happiness. Myra died “wrapped in her blankets, leaning against the cedar trunk, facing the sea…the ebony crucifix in her hands” (Cather, 82). She died on her own terms, unconstrained by a male, and unbounded by space that symbolized her socioeconomic standing. The setting she died in was the complete opposite of the space she had lived in with Oswald: It was free space amid open air. She reverted back to the religious views of her youth, symbolizing her desire to recant her ‘sin’ of leaving her uncle for Oswald, and thus abandoning her wealth. “In religion , desire was fulfillment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded”( Cather, 77), it was not the “object of the quest that brought satisfaction” (Cather, 77). Therefore, Myra ends back where she began; she dies holding onto