A Lost Lady To

A heap of dust is all remains of thee;

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.

(Pope, Unfortunate Lady)

Each of the main characters in Willa Cather's A Lost Lady reflects a different set of meanings, values and beliefs. Niel Herbert, a young man of "good family" but little money, expressesthe inconsistencies and hypocrisies of conventional morality. The values of honor and duty that inform the view of Captain Daniel Forrester, builder, adventurer and explorer, are characteristic of the pioneering cavaliers who made settlement of the West possible. Mrs. Forrester, embodying the obligations of a "lady," glories in maintaining a show of gracious nobility. In the end, she must balance the duties of the lady against the demands of surviving as a woman. Just as her husband manifests the character and fate of the men who opened the West, Marian Forrester represents the fate of the Western land itself and of the society it nurtures.

Worshipped and exploited, Marian interacts with Niel, Captain Forrester, and other characters in ways that demonstrate her attempts to fulfill the inconsistent constructions of her life. A chronicle of the various stages through which Marian passes in her effort to resolve the complexities of her position, A Lost Lady describes both the struggle to maintain an illusion and the reaction to its loss. In A Lost Lady, Cath

. . .
ich the house sat, one crossed a second creek by th stout wooden roadbridge. This stream traced artless loops and curves through the broad meadows that were half pasture land, half marsh. (11) Helmick (185) has rightly indentified the suggestion of primitive femininity in the existence of the swamp land. It is worth noting that Freud considered landscapes in dreams to stand for female genitalia. The description of the Forrester place, a swamp at the bottom of a hill lined with trees and shrubbery, would appear to make the reference quite explicit. The Forrester land points directly to source of Mrs. Forrester's charm and the cause of her downfall. Not unlike the Forrester swampland, Marian manifests the potency of the feminine so strongly that she cannot be preserved forever from those who would "drain" her. Marian contains to fullness both the structuring character of the "lady" and the decaying character of the whore. The imagery with which Cather surrounds Marian clearly pertains to the feminine archetype in both these guises. It is difficult to believe, for example, that Cather, with her "high church" sympathies, does not allude to the Virgin in Mrs. Forrester's name. Roses, a symbol of Mary, are associated
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Approximate Word count = 7452
Approximate Pages = 30 (250 words per page)