ian and that a more or less purely feminine consciousness deriving in significant part from that fact informed her work. Moreover, O'Brien suggests, only when Cather "reconciled the woman and the artist" were her artistic powers released and the flood of mature novels that began with O Pioneers! made possible (O'Brien 5). This idea is challenged by Pearl Bell, who asserts that "O'Brien fails to consider . . . the way (if any) that Cather's sexual identity shaped her work, and its effect on Cather's 'feminine voice'" (Bell 41). To be sure, homosexuality does not appear as a theme in the content of Cather's stories. According to Phyllis Robinson, Cather was at pains to comport her sexual self in a neutral way:
Edith [Lewis, Cather's companion for many years] had
accompanied her, Willa told her friends, because she
needed help with her brace. After all their years
together Willa still felt obliged to explain Edith's
presence, as if it could never simply be taken for
...