The Objectification Of Women In Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

1098 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Victorian era literature

Throughout A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, there are themes and notions that portray women as objects or that they are used to exemplify the man. In the novel, the main character is Niel Herbert, who develops a unique relationship with Captain Forrester and his wife Marian Forrester. Captain Forrester was a successful railroad man and retired in his lavish house with his beautiful wife. Right away in the novel, Mrs. Forrester is described by having a charm with men and for her physical beauty. This theme of objectifying Marian Forrester and the idea that she is used to exemplify her husband is prominent throughout the novel. This idea sheds a light on the cultural views of the time period. The way Willa Cather describes the Forrester’s …show more content…

Forrester. In the novel when Niel is young, he suffers from a fall and is taken into the Forrester’s home. Throughout the serious issue, the main idea that is presented to the reader is not so much the injury, but the fact that Niel was inside the Forrester’s home with Mrs. Forrester. When he awakens from unconsciousness, the first thing he notices is “what soft fingers Mrs. Forrester had, and what a lovely lady she was” (Cather, 25). The reader is also presented with sexual imagery associated with Mrs. Forrester when she is tending to Niel. “Inside the lace ruffle of her dress he saw her white throat rising and falling so quickly” (Cather, 25). The reader is given this idea of her as a sexual object and we notice Niel’s desire for her. Also, while Niel is still recovering from his fall, he is so infatuated by the fact that he is in the house of Mrs. Forrester; he does not seem to recognize his injury. The objectivity continues while Niel is still in their house. The quote “Mrs. Forrester ran her fingers through his black hair and lightly kissed him on the forehead. Oh, how sweet, how sweet she smelled!” (Cather, 26). The relationship of between the Forresters and Niel continues throughout the novel. After Niel’s injury, the author takes the readers into later years. As Niel spends more time with the Forresters, the reader discovers more about the relationship with Mr. Forrester and Mrs. Forrester. Niel noticed that Mr. Forrester was one of the few women that had earrings. The text explains that Mr. Forrester “liked to see her wear these” and it gratified him to have his wife wear jewels; it meant something to him” (Cather, 38). From this quote, it is apparent that Mr. Forrester likes his wife to be pretty and have valuable jewels that many other women cannot afford. To him this may be a way to

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather

    504 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lucy Gayheart is a young, spirited, intelligent music student from Havorford, on the South Platte River. In the winters, she attends a conservatory in Chicago, under the tutelage of Professor Auerbach. In Chicago, she lives in a room above a German bakery, where she takes her breakfasts and suppers. These small quarters do not distress her; indeed, she craves the solitude of her own will, her own piano, her own bed. She walks hungrily through Chicago, her appetite for life never disappointed by the thriving midwestern metropolis. She is beautiful, she is talented, and her young heart has never been broke. The year is 1901. At some point in everyone's life, you meet someone whom you think can lift you beyond where you are, to a place where you al...

    Read More

  • Location and Acquaintances in Willa Cather’s "Lucy Gayheart"

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    Different components of Willa Cather’s life influenced her novel Lucy Gayheart immensely. Living in the region and the time era that she did, her writing is considered to be local color literature. Many of the events took place in her home state, and Cather also spoke of many different places within the country. This influences the main character because when traveling between two diverse areas, Lucy’s lifestyle and mindset changes stereotypically. Also, there were people in Cather’s life that influenced characters in Lucy Gayheart and that shared many similarities with each other. Her location and her acquaintances have a very parallel structure to the theme and characters in Lucy Gayheart.

    Read More

  • The Women in Richard Wright's Uncle Tom’s Children

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some critics have argued that Richard Wright’s women are “flat, one dimensional stereotypes, portrayed primarily in terms of their relationship to the male character”. (Quote, p540) However, in Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright resents three very distinct types of female characters who did not fit this description. Wright portrays women as an Avenger, a Sufferer and a Mother figure whose actions propel the stories to their final conclusion. In the story “Bright and Morning Star” Wright places the protagonist, Aunt Sue, in a domestic environment. “Her hands followed a lifelong ritual of toil” (pg222) as she cleans and cooks. Interestingly, Aunt Sue is the only heroine in the stories, who shows a different type of bravery than perhaps shown by the male figures in other stories. She is brave in the face of the loss of her two sons; she is brave as she does not show weakness to the white men who attempt to control her and make her do their bidding. She does not allow herself to be bound by the conventions of society. She speaks her mind to the white men who invade her home and states “Ah don’t care who Ahm talking t!” (pg238). Aunt Sue is portrayed as a cunning woman, who hides behind men’s perception of her as weak and uses it to her advantage. Her final act of bravery in the story is to giver herself up to death, before the white men can take her life from her. Wright also portrays women as sufferers in his work. Sarah, in “Long Black Song” suffers from isolation and is stuck in a loveless marriage. The gap between men and women is very much evident in this story. Sarah is very much dependent on Silas for company, security and items of comfort. Silas is allowed to exceed from the isolation imposed on his wife. Even when Sarah flees from ...

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s House

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.

    Read More

  • Perceptions of Human Nature in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Revelation

    1617 Words  | 4 Pages

    In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” O’Connor introduces the reader to a family who represents the juxtaposition between old and new Southern culture. The grandmother, in particular, represents the old South because she focuses on her appearance, manners, and other attributes that are considered the stereotypical image of femininity. She is a self proclaimed lady whose “collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace” and “at her neckline, she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet” (405-406). In fact, she yearned to dress ideally so that “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead...

    Read More

  • 19th Century Women Depicted in The Story of an Hour

    613 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mrs. Mallard, from The Story of an Hour, is an excellent example of the oppressed women of the 19th century. Her reaction to the death of her husband highlights all the issues in the dominantly male society. There were stereotypes and specifically narrow duties of a woman during that time. Reacting with grief at first, the story shows the many fast paced reactions that bring to light just how binding life as a woman during the 19th century was, and how women eventually took control and made a change.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in The Things They Carried

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many of the short stories within the collection The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, can be compared and contrasted in regards to elements including theme, characters, and technique. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the character Mary Anne Bell appears to be apparently similar to the character Martha from “The Things They Carried,” in that both are young women who have relations with a soldier in the war. Though upon further analysis of Mary Anne, it appears she is far from alike to Martha. Rather, an unexpected parallel can be drawn between the characters Mary Anne and Elroy Berdahl, from “On the Rainy River,” in that both appear to be epitomes of masculinity. The peculiar connection between these characters developed by Tim O’Brien shines a light on the ambiguity of conventional gender roles of men and women.

    Read More

  • Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People

    2670 Words  | 6 Pages

    In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, O’Connor introduces the reader to a family representative of the old and new Southern culture. The grandmother represents the old South by the way in which she focuses on her appearnace, manners, and gentile ladylike behavior. O’Connor writes “her collars and cuffs were organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”(O’Connor 118). In this short story, “the wild diproportion of the terms, the vapid composure that summons up the ultimate violence only to treat it as a rare social opportuinty, and the cool irony with which O’Connor presents the sentence makes it both fearful and ludicrous”(Asals 132). The irony that O’Connor uses points out the appalling characteristics of the grandmother’s self-deception that her clothes make her a lady and turns it into a comic matter. Flannery O’Connor goes to great length to give the reader insight into the characters by describing their clothes and attitudes. The fact that the grandmother took so much time in preparing herself for the trip exemplifies the old Southern tradition of self-presentation and self-pride. The grandmother takes pride in the way she presents herself because she wants everyone to know that she is a “lady”.

    Read More

  • Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady - Captain Daniel Forrester

    1663 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady, Captain Daniel Forrester is a gardener at heart. His lifetime is spent encouraging growth, whether of railroads, personal lives or flowers. His philosophy is to dream “because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean is already an accomplished fact” (44). Close friends described the Captain as clearly looking like “… pictures of Grover Cleveland. His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and a conscience that had never been juggled with” (39). Because of his clear conscience Captain Forrester became a rich soil for many around him to take root in. As this soil, he could always be in the background and many never noticed how important he was until he was missed. Once the Captain’s career outside his home ended he truly opens up to the peacefulness of nature, including his flowers, which eventually illustrate the phases of his life.

    Read More

  • The Feminist Struggle in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

    2631 Words  | 6 Pages

    Katherine Mansfield belongs to a group of female authors that have used their financial resources and social standing to critique the patriarchal status quo. Like Virginia Woolf, Mansfield was socioeconomically privileged enough to write influential texts that have been deemed as ‘proto-feminist’ before the initial feminist movements. The progressive era in which Mansfield writes proves to be especially problematic because, “[w]hile the Modernist tradition typically undermined middle-class values, women … did not have the recognized rights necessary to fully embrace the liberation from the[se] values” (Martin 69). Her short stories emphasized particular facets of female oppression, ranging from gendered social inequality to economic classism, and it is apparent that “[p]oor or rich, single or married, Mansfield’s women characters are all victims of their society” (Aihong 101). Mansfield’s short stories, “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, represent the feminist struggle to identify traditional patriarchy as an inherent caste system in modernity. This notion is exemplified through the social bonds women create, the naïve innocence associated with the upper classes, and the purposeful dehumanization of women through oppressive patriarchal methods. By examining the female characters in “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, it is evident that their relationships with other characters and themselves notify the reader of their encultured classist preconceptions, which is beneficial to analyze before discussing the sources of oppression.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Margaret In Much Ado About Nothing

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...

    Read More

  • Feminist Lens In John Steinbeck's Novel 'Of Mice And Men'

    824 Words  | 2 Pages

    Curley’s wife is a complex, main character in John Steinbeck’s novella, “Of Mice and Men”. She is introduced as an insignificant secondary character, but evidently posses the importance of causing the end of the novella. Despite the weight of her role, her value is hindered because of the culture towards women in the 1930s. Steinbeck uses imagery, foreshadowing, and metaphors to show loneliness analyzed through a Feminist Lens.

    Read More

  • Women Roles In The 19th Century

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.

    Read More

  • A Feminist Perspective of The Lady of Shalott

    2170 Words  | 5 Pages

    In an essay on feminist criticism, Linda Peterson of Yale University explains how literature can "reflect and shape the attitudes that have held women back" (330). From the viewpoint of a feminist critic, "The Lady of Shalott" provides its reader with an analysis of the Victorian woman's conflict between her place in the interior, domestic role of society and her desire to break into the exterior, public sphere which generally had been the domain of men. Read as a commentary on women's roles in Victorian society, "The Lady of Shalott" may be interpreted in different ways. Thus, the speaker's commentary is ambiguous: Does he seek to reinforce the institution of patriarchal society as he "punishes" the Lady with her death for her venture into the public world of men, or does he sympathize with her yearnings for a more colorful, active life? Close reading reveals more than one possible answer to this question, but the overriding theme seems sympathetic to the Lady. By applying "the feminist critique" (Peterson 333-334) to Tennyson's famous poem, one may begin to understand how "The Lady of Shalott" not only analyzes, but actually critiques the attitudes that held women back and, in the end, makes a hopeful, less patriarchal statement about the place of women in Victorian society.

    Read More

  • The Portrayal of Women in American Literature

    2124 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.

    Read More

More about The Objectification Of Women In Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

Open Document