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Since Willa Cather's semi-autobiographical novel The Song of the Lark
is a story of the emergence of the artist, most of its major themes are related to issues of identity. Several of Cather's critics have discussed the birth imagery of the novel; Cather believed that every artist had to "make himself born."
The Song of the Lark may be seen as the struggle to give birth to the artistic self. Below are discussions of four identity-related themes and assignment
questions that may be used to stimulate thought and debate about the novel:
The Power of the Dream A major theme of
The Song of the Lark
is the power of the dream as something that must be carefully guarded and protected if it is to be realized. From the opening pages of the novel, Cather presents her heroine, Thea Kronborg, as having a destiny to fulfill. Thea's childhood friend, Doctor Archie, himself destined to become a tycoon by the novel's end, recognizes her potential, her "cryptic promise" (9). Thea, discovering her passionate desire to pursue a dream to make something of herself, quickly begins to associate this dream with art. After her music teacher guesses her ambition to sing, Thea senses a secret between them: "Together they had lifted a lid, pulled out a drawer and looked at something. They hid it away and never spoke of what they had seen; but neither of them forgot it" (70).
Protecting this dream requires fierce self-confidence as well as a determination to renounce the compromises demanded by one's family or community. Indeed, the community may not recognize the power of the
dream. Thea is compared with the conventionally pretty and insipid "Lily Fisher," whom the community of Moonstone adores and who looks like pictures of children advertising boxes of soap. Thea's gift, in
contrast, goes unrecognized, but neither will it be compromised or commercialized for mass consumption. The power of the dream is intensely connected to the body. Cather describes it in terms that suggest erotic
sublimation: "There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardour and anticipation"
(123). After her first trip to the symphony -- Dvorak's New World Symphony
-- Thea fiercely determines to fight for her dream: "As long as she lived, that ecstasy was going to be hers" (176). And though the secret must be guarded from a conservative and even philistine community unable to recognize its value, by the end of the novel Thea realizes that the power of the dream "is every artist's secret -- passion; It is an open secret, and perfectly safe" (409).
Emerging Identity: Self and Others The others
against whom Thea defines herself as a young girl and ambitious artist are the failed artists of her hometown. For example, her German music teacher, Herr Wunsch, is a passionate, but dissolute, washed up musician
who drowns his awareness of his own failure in alcohol. Wunsch is both excited and ashamed when he recognizes Thea's potential, since it drives home to him an awareness of his own bad faith and his inability to
realize his artistic dream. Similarly, there is Spanish Johnny, who is carried away by the intoxication of performance and loses himself in drunken escapades. Cather writes that his "talents were his
undoing" (38). The text is never judgmental toward these failed artists. Rather, the capacity for a powerful emotional response to art is valued regardless of the cost of this ecstasy. These failed
dreamers are Thea's early heroes who form an alternative set of values to Moonstone's dull conformity. But Thea is different. What they have lost, and what Thea stands to gain, is the emergence of an
artistic identity that offers her the expectation of wholeness. Fittingly, Wunsch teaches Thea Orpheus' lament for the lost Eurydice. Gluck's opera is a perfect choice for a novel about a character searching
for her as yet unrealized artistic self. This is made more explicit when Thea expresses the feeling "that she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere" (189). Indeed, there are
hints of this psychically split self in need of reintegration throughout the novel. Thea associates art with a mysterious something that is "more like a friendly spirit than anything that was part of
herself. She brought everything to it, and it answered her; happiness consisted in that backward and forward movement of herself" (70). If Thea is to keep her destined appointment with herself, however, she
needs to avoid the fate of these others against whom she defines herself. Students might consider the ways in which others have influenced their dreams, both as negative and as positive role models, as well as
their obligation to pay tribute to such influences.
Conflicted Feelings about Class, Gender and Race Before she turned toward the rich cultural heritage of her Midwest background for
inspiration, Willa Cather was intensely ambivalent about her roots in the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather felt the prairie landscape to be both awe inspiring and yet desolate, a theme she developed
through Jim's terror of Midwestern emptiness in My Ántonia. The provincialism and conformity of the Midwest also bothered Cather. She felt constrained by the limiting codes of behavior in Red Cloud,
and represented this in Thea's rejection of Moonstone's strict demarcations between the proper and the improper. For example, Thea ignores such boundaries when she crosses over into the wrong part of town for an
evening of singing with the Mexicans of Moonstone. Transgressing such boundaries is crucial to Thea's discovery of herself as an artist. Cather was very ambivalent about her gender, as
well. Many critics have discussed Cather's adoption of the male persona as a narrating voice in her novels. But, this borrowing of the masculine authority began long before she emerged as a writer.
From a young age to late adolescence, Cather felt the need to dissociate herself from a traditionally feminine role in order to identify with the physical strength, objectivity, and emotional detachment of the empowered
male. Choosing to go by the name of William Cather, Jr., she donned male garb, cut her hair in a short boy's haircut, and dreamed of becoming a great surgeon. Some of this same ambivalence toward femininity
and its association with weakness and constraint can be seen in The Song of the Lark. Indeed, Thea's famous healing transformation which takes place in Panther Canyon is most often described as a
reintegration of the feminine self she so fiercely rejected in an attempt to realize her dream of becoming an artist. The entire novel is structured around conflicts between the masculine and the feminine, the
self and the other, the child and the adult, the artist and the philistine, passionate self-assertion and the obligations to community. Since these are the same negotiations being worked out by all adolescents and
young adults, they are especially rewarding topics for the classroom. Cather's experimental gender border crossings, both in her work and in her life, allowed her to create new subject positions from which to
create herself and her stories. The Power of the Landscape A crucial theme of the novel is the portrayal of the natural landscape as a powerful and potentially transformative psychic space. Students
can refer to several books of criticism for discussions of Cather's treatment of the land, a theme that is absolutely central to all of her major novels. Cather's description of Panther Canyon in
The Song of the Lark
has been called "the most thoroughly elaborated female landscape in literature" (Moers 259). The physical and psychic space evoked by the description is elemental, archaic and primitive. Cather's landscapes allow the artist-heroine an escape from an over-determined world in which the feminine is devalued or meaningless, allowing a passageway into the "Kingdom of Art."
Up to her visit to Panther Canyon, Thea has vehemently resolved to fight for her dream, even to the point of repressing or denying aspects of herself, especially her feminine self. Her heroes, up to this point,
represent masculine strength and power. For example, she decorates her boarding room in Chicago with a "photograph of the Naples bust of Julius Caesar," although the narrator admits an inability to "explain her
wanting that grim bald head to share her daily existence" (149). Similarly, her favorite work of art in the museum she visits in Chicago is "a great equestrian statue of an evil, cruel-looking general with an
unpronounceable name" (172). But Thea's fierce determination makes her sick. She finally leaves Chicago for her trip back out to the Midwest, sickened by the sterile environment of the city and the
pretentious music world. In the ancient, mystical place of Panther Canyon, Thea enters a timeless realm of pure being associated with the maternal. As she imagines "a continuity of life that reached back
into the old time" Thea's relationship to her art is transformed. The broken pottery of these ancient grandmothers elicits a revelation about art itself, subordinating it to a principle of life: "what was any art
but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself...too strong to stop, too sweet to lose" (263). Students might use this major theme in
the work to discuss their own connectedness to place, as well as the ways in which re-imagining or re-envisioning spaces might allow for transformative artistic possibilities. At the same time, Cather's
problematic romanticizing of the ancient people (and of the Mexicans presented earlier in the text) might also be discussed. As Susan Edmunds notes, the modernist tradition of primitivist mythmaking is troubling
because it romanticizes lost figures of "otherness," as redemptive figures who "answer to needs for healing and regeneration arising in part from the very violence of colonialism" (Edmunds 16). This might lead
students to a consideration of the ways in which representation can be dangerous, as well as liberating. Note: All Quotations from the The Song of the Lark
are taken from the 1991 Signet Classic edition of the text. Assignment Questions
By Denise Marovich-SampsonComprehension Questions 1. What is the major theme of The Song of the Lark? What must Thea do if the theme is to be realized? 2. The
heroine, Thea Kronborg, is constantly compared to which resident of Moonstone? Describe that resident. In contrast, what happens to "Thea's gift"? 3. Who are the "failed artists" in
The Song of the Lark? What are their weaknesses? How is Thea influenced by these "artists"? 4. In what way does Thea reject "Moonstone's strict demarcations between the proper and the
improper"? 5. Describe Thea's favorite work of art in the Chicago museum that she visits. 6. Why does Thea finally leave Chicago? Essay/Journal Questions 1. Thea's life takes
her through journey-upon-journey of self-discovery. Write about a time when you discovered something new about yourself. What was it? Was it a positive or negative discovery? How did you use this
new area of self-discovery? 2. After Thea's first trip to the symphony -- Dvorak's New World Symphony
-- she is determined to fight for her dream of pursuing the arts. What piece of music, what novel or work of art has affected you that much? Name and describe the work. What feelings come out of you when you listen to, read or view that work?
3. The "failed artists" in The Song of the Lark
are "Thea's early heroes, forming an alternative set of values to Moonstone's dull conformity." Write an essay about a famous nonconformist; someone who took a beaten, often unacceptable path to achieve greatness.
4. "A crucial theme of the novel is the portrayal of the landscape as a powerful, and potentially transformative psychic space." Whether it is the primitive beauty of Panther Canyon or the constant
movement of big city Chicago, Thea is readily transformed by her surroundings. How have you been "transformed" by a particular surrounding? It can be the peacefulness of a beach sunset, the rugged beauty of
a mountain trail, the big city excitement of a busy shopping district, or even the subtle privacy of your own room. Write about a surrounding that most represents the growth and change in you. Describe the
surrounding and your feeling when you are there. Works Cited and Additional Resources Bennet, Mildred. The World of Willa Cather. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.Edmunds, Susan.
Out of Line: History, Psychoanalysis, & Montage in H.D.'s Long Poems. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Fryer, Judith.
Felicitous Space: The Imaginative Structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Heyeck, Robin and James Woodress. "Willa Cather's Cuts and Revisions in The Song of the Lark." Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 79-80): pp.651-658. Kaye, Frances W.
Isolation and Masquerade: Willa Cather's Women. American University Studies. Peter Lang, ed., 1993. Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: Double Lives
. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. New York: Doubleday, 1976. O'Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice
. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1987. Robinson, Phyllis. Willa: The Life of Willa Cather. New York: Holt, Rinhart, and Winston, 1983. Seargeant, Elizabeth.
Willa Cather: A Memoir. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963 .
Michelle Toby is teaching at University of California, Irvine, in California.
Denise Marovich-Sampson teaches at San Pedro High School in California
Page references taken from the Signet Classic version of The Song of the Lark. |
