Willa Cather & Gender Role
When Willa Cather left home and went
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When Willa Cather left home and went to college in 1899, she adopted the name, manner, and dress of a man. At a moment of American history that saw few women enter higher education, fewer still seek postgraduate employment in the business or professional world, Willa Cather, product of a conventional middleclass upbringing, boldly established an unconventional, experimental social image. Calling herself William Cather, she established a campuswide reputation as a critic of the theatre, and planned a career as a writer. If she felt that she could succeed as a writer only as a man, this would have been consistent with the then generally accepted notion that only men in the culture were either talented enough for or temperamentally suited to the rigorous, disciplined, or indeed experimental life of the serious artist. After graduating from the University of Nebraska with honors (by this time she was wearing dresses again), she set out for cosmopolitan America, in the manner of many a collegeeducated young man, to seek artistic and financial success. For more than ten years she worked as managing editor for the Pittsburghbased McClure's Magazine, producing literary and theatrical criticism as well as short fiction for the magazine, accumulating a number of friends and acquaintances in the world of publishing and art, all the while perfecting her craft, accumulating material for future stories, and planning for the day she could quit her job and work as a
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Approximate Word count = 1173
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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