Willa Cather's Woman Centered Fiction The significance of the womancenterednes

To be sure, the tradition of literature written by a man suggests that women can be intimately involved in the narrative action and may be the cause or the concern of emotions and feeling, but the form that such involvement takes tends to explore far more the potentialities and feelings of the men in the case, rather than those of the women they encounter. What men discover about the way of the world, in part but by no means wholly because of their relationships with women, becomes the focus of action. Even when the object in view is the fulfillment of romantic love, it is the male feeling and point of view that is ascendant. Thus for example, Tom Jones may be consumed with love for Sophia Western and may move heaven and earth to reclaim her, but by and large Sophia is significant as object and not subject of Fielding's narrative. Fielding is, naturally enough, interested in the behavior, adventures, and development of Tom Jones as something like a romantic hero within his society; Sophia is the precious prize he may claim.

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l, meanwhile, angry with her limited legal and social position in what she sees as an unjust world, tests the limits by defying that position altogether, and in the process risking the comforts (especially motherly love) that those limits seemed to offer. The consequences and costs to women of challenging the prescriptions and proscriptions of their position in the real world are Cather's focus in the novel. In other words, Cather shows not only that the interests women merit the reader's interest as well, but something about how their interests operate in the real world. Cather's interest in women extends beyond watching their behavior in the world, however, and progresses toward seeing them as something akin to the very fabric of the universe. It is at this juncture that the story of woman and the story of humanity converge, for in Cather's major fiction the struggle of humanity to find its identity in the paradoxes, joys, and perils of life is bound up with the roles that women of various types play in the struggle. When we see where women fit into the story of humanity as a whole, Cather seems to suggest, we can also discover something about the human condition itself. With a woman's perspective, appreciating that wome
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Approximate Word count = 2032
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)