JOURNAL LA SOCIALE
VOL. 01, ISSUE 02 (017-026), 2020
DOI: 10.37899/journal-la-sociale.v1i2.89

Dismantling the Patriarchal Hierarchy in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady
Ramesh Prasad Adhikary
Assistant Professor, Tribhuwan University, Kathmandu
M.M. Campus, Nepalgunj, Nepal
Corresponding Author: Ramesh Prasad Adhikary
Email: rameshadhikary29@gmail.com
Article Info

Abstract

Article history:
Received 20 April 2020
Received in revised form 25
April 2020
Accepted 28 April 2020

This research paper is focused on how Willa Cather portrays the inner
rebellion and the passion of a female character, Marian Forrester in her
novel A Lost Lady. She walks against the social norms and she is
presented as a rigid character who dismantles the male created
hierarchy woman as a subordinate being in the society. Though she is
married and living happily with her husband, somewhere deep down in
her heart she is not happy with her husband. Marian seems to transcend
her husband’s order. At that time female were not allowed to enjoy their
freedom like the males. Marian goes against male hegemony and to
create her separate identity. As a qualitative research, by using radical
feminism as a tool of interpretation, the researcher collected textual
evidenced from Cather’s novel and interpreted them to fulfill the
objective of this research. This research concludes that Cather’s Marian
has dismantled the social hierarchy created by the male superiority or
patriarchy in the novel.

Keywords:
Patriarchy
Feminism
Rebellion
Identity

Introduction
Willa Cather presents the defiance of patriarchal norms by her main character Marian Forster,
the protagonist of this novel A Lost Lady. Marian is presented as devoting her time as a
housewife helping and caring her husband in the beginning of the novel. As the novel moves
forward, Marian seems a rigid character. After her husband’s death, she starts her journey to
Argentina and settles there.
Marian was a woman of extreme caliber has the quality to walk step by step with her male
counterpart in her job. She defies the dos and don’ts and follow her own rules and abhors the
male norms in this process crossing the threshold created by the male society. The female
characters of this novel do not fall into the circumstances as designated by male characters for
their struggle in self-hood and contestation with male dominated social inhabitation. She is an
active lady to compete with her male counterpart by freely expressing her viewpoints. She even
takes the pattern of the male designed life and subverting the rigid regime of the society. She
is a haughty and strong character, who defies the female character of being emotional and rather
impulsive. She is unlike the weak sex; rather she shows prudence in any tough situation. After
her husband’s death, she breaks the cocoon of a docile housewife and rather than being
subjected as a poor widow, embarks on the journey of selfhood.
Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley in Virginia. She was the
eldest child of Charles Cather and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The family came to
Pennsylvania from Ireland in the 1750's. In 1883 the Cather family moved to join Willa's
grandparents William and Caroline and her uncle George in Webster County, Nebraska. She
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attended public schools in Red Cloud and completed her school education from Red Cloud in
1890. She soon moved to the state capitol in Lincoln in order to study for entrance at the
University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Edith Lewis writes, “She felt that they first taught her to
think, first helped her to find imaginative thought and that she owed to them the early ideas of
scholarship and art that gave direction to her own life and work”. Willa Cather’s fiction is
infused with many of her deeply-held beliefs and values.
Women are being dominated and ill-treated according to the deep rooted patriarchal rules and
regulations from the time immemorial. Society has been formed by the male-oriented ideology
which has kept women in the inferior position. Social norms and values, behaviors and all the
other aspects of the society are controlled and guided by the male authority. Men use their socalled superiority to dominate social, political, cultural, economic and religious aspects. These
aspects are made easy to fulfill male’s purpose. In such a type of society, power is passed from
male to male not to female, such as father to son. Daughters are not given any roles. So, women
are helpless and their condition is miserable. Willa Cather has raised voice against malesupremacy and endeavors to place women in the position of men. Cather has written many
novels and stories.
She has written the novels not for pleasure. Her writings attempt to place women in independent
and autonomous existence. Most of the novels written by Cather do have women “heroes”
either with autonomous power or with the struggle to keep themselves alive in the society. So,
these novels are written not only for the entertainment but also with a holy aim to reform the
society. Her novels stand the female heroes to attack the society for not allowing their
autonomous role in the society.
A Lost Lady depicts the defiance of the male imposed norms and values, by the sole female
character of the novel Marian Forrester, who avoids the male notion of women i.e. governing
her husband as a docile and submissive character and stooping to his every desire and rules,
rather she pretends to be a demure woman, in fact she is a free going woman interacting with
every male persona to give her presence marking her existence of a strong female.
In the society women are exploited and they are termed as a passive and docile. The
conservative thinking regarding their home bound nature and passive remains in male hearts.
The male psyche is that women are not capable of handling jobs and they are only good on
household works. They think women should not be allowed to do outdoors jobs. But it is
rejected by the female protagonist of this novel. She breaks the male code and abhors the
predicament of a poor widow and goes out to explore the world by herself.
In this paper, the researcher had the hypothesis that Willa Cather’s protagonist Marian Forrester
shows us that though females may be physically weak but their action speaks louder. If the
chain of domination continues, women became rebellious against patriarchy. They too have
same desires as males have; only the restriction had made them mute.
This research paper mainly tries to show how male made norms that female should be under
male surveillance are subverted. Radical Feminism came in front to show the pain of the
females and their experiences, enlisting them in the common sisterhood. It looks forward to
tear the veil imposed by the patriarchal society. This research encourages the females to raise
their voice against male patriarchy.
Review of Literature
Many critics have interpreted Cather’s novels from different perspectives. Cather’s novels are
written in her different circumstances, but the main theme of these novels is to pour out her
female experience and to show the true picture of women’s life. She wants to improve the
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condition of women in the society. The phallocentric norms are challenged in her novels. Social
realities are mirrored in Cather’s novels. To establish female selfhood and autonomy, Cather’s
characters, in different ways, fight against patriarchal norms and values.
From beginning of her career, Cather received not only with widespread popular success, but
also astonishing critical success. This pattern began to change in the 1930s with the advent of
Marxist Criticism. Marxist critics suggested that Cather did not understand or show concern
for modern social issues, and they made fun of the romanticism which are in her stories.
Whether or not Cather was affected by such criticism, these years were made more difficult by
the death of her mother, brothers and her good friend Isabelle McClung.
Cather kept her an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many years
until her death on April 24, 1947. A Lost Lady, from its publication in 1923, has garnered
widespread criticism and wide-ranging responses. One of the critics name Lionel Trilling says:
It is Willa Cather’s central work of her career. Far from being the delicate minor book it is
often called, it is probably her most muscular story. Though it might be short but it is “short
and Slight”; not a great novel, not that very “rare” thing in contemporary literature, a nearly
perfect one.
The novel presents the story of Marian, who in the novel dismantled the male norms and value,
the male construction of a female identity i.e. of a docile and submissive female persona, who
after her husband’s death should be bound to be at home, rather she is defies this rule time and
again by her bold and valiant conduct and interaction with other male characters in the novel,
thus resulting as defiance of the male dominated society.
Biblibio (2009) states, “Her motive is crystal clear that being a widow, does not ends a woman’s
life, she rejects being an orthodox submissive and denies to take the stereotypical image of a
poor widow, rather she stands up as a bold persona who open ups after her husband’s death.”
Thus she is portrayed as a bold woman who instead of getting intimidated by the circumstances
going in front of her takes her own decision and vilify the male created norms against a widow.
Morrow (1984) describes Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady as the Nineteenth Century Novel of
adultery. She also describes the novel as the radical voice of feminist and interpreted it as the
novel of feminist rebellion.
In this way she represents the perfect example of a radical feminist, who believes to take the
world by her own will rather than blindly following the crowd, she makes her own decision to
challenge the world and face the atrocities by her own will. Finding the gap in their criticisms,
the researcher has analyzed the novel from radical feminists’ point of views.
Theoretical Framework
Radical Feminism, a theory flourished mainly in the 1960s, it is used as a methodological tool
in this research. It depicts the male domination imposed towards females. Radical Feminism
tries to give counter to the patriarchal norms and values. And it is the common set of rules of
do’s and don’ts to the feminine gender.
After feminism rose to existence, the talk of women rights and equality took pace. Women in
every sector, who were earlier dominated and kept into restrictions by male domain, asked for
their identity and equality. Radical feminism was first fully articulated in the late 1960s and it
argues that men’s patriarchal power over women is the primary power relationship in human
society. Radical feminists believe that the root cause of all other inequalities is the oppression
of women.
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Patriarchal theory is not always as single- handed as the belief that all men always benefit from
the oppression of all women. Patriarchal theory maintains that the primary element of
patriarchy is the relationship of dominance. Radical feminists have claimed that men use social
systems and other methods of control to keep non-dominant men and women suppressed.
Radical feminists believe that eliminating patriarchy, and other systems which perpetuate the
domination of one group over another, will liberate everyone from an unjust society.
Redstockings manifesto of 1984 posits that radical feminism “got sexual politics recognized as
a public issue”, “created the vocabulary [. . .] with which the second wave of feminism entered
popular culture”, “sparked the drive to legalize abortion”, “were the first to demand total
equality in the so-called private sphere”..
By the early 1970s these new ideas were reflected in a substantial body of literature that
included Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics, Firestone’s, The Dialectic of Sex, Germaine Greer’s
The Female Eunuch and Figes’s Patriarchal Attitudes (all first published in 1970).
Modern feminist based in United States took their impetus from civil rights, peace and other
protest. Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1977) signifies a significant stage in “political” feminist
writing on literature. Millet’s use of the term “patriarchy” described the cause of women’s
oppression. Men enjoy power through constraint women. The feminist analysis of politics,
therefore, rose from the fact that women have been excluded from the exercise of political
power.
Beauvoir (1949) raises this issue regarding woman who has been essentialzed in the society
with certain stereotypes like woman as a flesh, related to nature, vale of blood, open rose, siren,
the curve of hill, the fertile soil, the sap, the material beauty and the soul of the world.
Beauvoir’s central attack is on the attitude of the scholars and writers towards woman’s
position. According to them, woman is a “privileged other”. Patriarchy always imposes
curtailment or a boundary towards women’s freedom. Thus for example Rich (1977) accounts
of patriarchy explicitly abstracts the position of women from any social context:
Under patriarchy, I may live in purdah or drive a truck; I may raise my children in a kibbutz,
or be the sole breadwinner for a fatherless family… I may serve my husband his early-morning
coffee within the clay walls of barber village or march in an academic procession; whatever
my status or situation, my derived economic class or my sexual preference, I live under the
power of the fathers, and have a access only to so much of privilege or influence as the
patriarchy is willing to accede to me, and only for so long as I will pay the price for male
approval.
Here, Rich says that female living inside a boundary itself is a fact that it is natural instinct of
male hegemony. Though they may sound protective towards their female counterparts, but in
some sense it really looks like domination. Radical feminists believe that eliminating
patriarchy, and other systems which perpetuate the domination of one group over another, will
liberate everyone from an unjust society. As a form of practice, radical feminists introduced
the use of consciousness raising groups. These groups brought together intellectuals, workers
and middle class women in developed Western countries to discuss their experiences. During
these discussions, women noted a shared and repressive system regardless of their political
affiliation or social class.
Women from the ancient time have been termed as the other of man. We could find in Bible
that women were created from the ribs of man. A mark of otherness is one’s inability to shape
one’s psychological, social and cultural identity. Men believe that women cannot transcend
because transcendence is a spiritual sublimity which can only be attend by men. Radical
feminist label has been applied in recent years to a confusingly diverse range of theories; it is
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the site for far-ranging disagreements at all levels of theory and practice. It is essentially a
theory of, by and for women; such, it is based firmly in woman’s own experiences and
perceptions and sees no need to compromise with existing political perspectives and agendas.
It sees the oppression of women as the most fundamental and universal form of domination
and its aim is to understand and end this. As Redstockings manifesto of 1969 reads:
Women are an oppressed class; our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We
are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered
inferior beings whose only purpose is to enhance man’s lives [. . .] we have been kept from
seeing our personal suffering as a political condition [. . .] the conflicts between individual men
and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively [. . .] we identify the
agents of our oppression as men. Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination.
All men receive economic, sexual and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men
have oppressed women.
Thus Redstockings statement posits that young women role was essentially that of secretary,
housewife or sex object, servicing the political, domestic and sexual needs of male activists;
any attempt at raising the subject of women’s exclusion from decision-making was met with
silence, ridicule or contempt.
Abrams (2004) in his Glossary of Literary Terms mentions: Western society is pervasively
patriarchal, male centered and controlled and conducted so as to subordinate women to men all
cultural domains: familial, religious, political, economic, social, legal and artistic. Patriarchal
ideology pervades those writings, which have been considered great literature. Most of them
are thus male characters; Oedipus, Ulysses, Hamlet, Tom- Jones, Huck Finn etc. Female
characters are given marginal and subordinate roles, represented as complementary in
opposition to masculine desires.
The patriarchal power of men over women is therefore basic to the functioning of all societies
it extends far beyond formal institutions of power.
Analysis of A Lost Girl
In the novel A Lost Lady, the central character Marian is presented as a radical feminist. Her
husband captain Daniel Forrester, is the secondary character of this novel who is presented
caring and loving her wife Marian Forrester. But later on the readers understand an insight that
in fact the captain has a dominating nature.
Her husband, who is twenty five years older than Marian, is a wealthy person. His decision is
an honorable one, but it is a form of betrayal of the marriage contract, particularly that implied
between a well-to-do older man and a beautiful young woman. He chooses to let her pay for
his nobility; and although she accepts his choice as a compliment. She is completely betrayed
or victimized by masculine self-interest. The betrayed, victimized, Marian Forrester wrests a
bittersweet triumph from her refusal to assume the role of victim. Her “musical laugh”
dominates the novel.
In the beginning of the novel, Marian Forrester seems a woman of substance, she dominates
the early and the end part of this novel, we could see from the beginning of this novel, her free
flowing attitude towards her husband’s friends. Though there are house maids in her house but
she feels it is her duty to welcome any male guest, she doesn’t mind to welcome them whenever
the approach their house.
In a male dominated society a female is strictly supposed to follow the male accustom but quite
contrarily Marian is shown as a woman who defies such rules and regulation. She welcomes
any male visitors in her house. We could see in the opening part of the story, when the boys
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are shy with her appearance to ask any question, Marian instead approach them first by saying:
“Good morning, boys. Off for a picnic? You have a lovely day. How long has school been out?
Don’t miss it? Run along, and be sure you don’t leave the gate into the pasture open. Mr.
Forrester hates to have the cattle get in on his blue grass”.
Here, Marian is presented as a demure character in the novel initially but her defiance for the
masculinity is hidden somewhere under. She though presents herself as a shy and docile
character in front of her husband, but like dormant volcano the substance of defiance and denial
for the dominating male hegemony is seen from her tone to the boys in the opening phase of
this novel. She loves to take challenges in her life and rather taking an easy path she will choose
difficult one. She is courageous enough to take the tough path, when in times peoples and
mainly female genders are scared of snakes and muddy water, her inclination towards such life
threatening things are proof of her brave and solid character.
She is shown as a character that might be concerned with things but not scared. When some
male visitors visits her house to see the ailing Captain, she hospitably made them sit in the
couch but rather than asking for any tea or coffee she seems directly ordering her maid Mary
to bring a brandy from the sideboard. She is shown defying the rules of a good family
throughout the novel and one of the traits of radical feminist is that of avant garde i.e to create
a new rule out of the old and existing ones.
Marian after taking Niel out from his house surprising asks him to have some quality time with
Constance Ogden, who is of Niel’s same age counterpart, she doesn’t feel shame or any iota of
hesitation when she says to Neil:
I’m counting on you to help me entertain Constance Ogden. Can you take her off my hands
day after tomorrow, come over in the afternoon? Your duties as a lawyer aren’t very arduous
yet? What can I do with a miss of nineteen? One who goes to college? I have no learned
conversation for her! You’re a boy! Perhaps you can interest her in lighter things. She’s
considered pretty.
From these above lines, it is clear that Marian is so bold in her words, that she along with
flirting with the boy Niel, asks him to have some time spend with a college going girl named
Constance Ogden. She is shown here as a woman, who at the times when there was a restriction
for female voice, seems hell bent to take the initiative for these two youth couples. She is shown
as a woman who has the potential to transcend such male created norms and values.
She knows that young couples have a lot of hidden desire underneath their heart so she doesn’t
believe in relinquishing such desire for the sake of the restricted society; rather such desires
should be kept alive and expressed in front of same age peers. Her move might be considered
as wrong in the then contemporary society, but she believes that whether wrong or right, a
person has to express ones desire completely without taking the societies restricted norms.
The male notion of women as a child bearer and strictly confined in the boundary of home,
whose primary work is cleaning, washing and nurturing a child into an adult is challenged by
Marian, in this novel. Shame which is termed as an ornament of women is disallowed by the
female protagonist of this novel instead of producing a negative consequence of this harmful
conduct; she is loved by many male characters in this novel. In the novel we see that not only
she demands for male recognition but she throws a caring and protecting glance for her
husband.
We had seen in most of the cases that male is protective over their female companion but here
we could see a different story as she discusses with Niel: “A winter in the country may do him
good, he loves this place so much. But you and Judge Pommeroy must keep an eye on him
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when he is in town, Niel. If he looks tired or uncertain, make some excuse and bring him home.
He can’t carry a drink or two as he used. He is unsteady in his conduct. He had trouble always
in his life”.
The way she narrates a previous incident to Niel she seems she is not the woman who should
be taken care of, rather she is the one who is solid enough to take care of her husband. She
wants her husband to take some vacation in some chilly place so she asks Niel, to take him
somewhere where there is cold, and that might be good for his health, we could see as the
passage ends her anger for him, these anger itself is evident enough to give the readers a hint
that though the captain used to show to the peoples that he is treating his wife well, but deep
inside he was a failure towards his wife, as she was nurturing a rebellious perspective for her
husband.
Marian is a lady with a determination which is not fluid rather it is as solid as a rock; she can
even make her husband shameful in some extent. When he tries to talk about his future plans
she mockingly tells him: “And now tell us your philosophy of life,-- this is where it comes in,
and if some of us have heard it, we can hear it again. Go on! We could just note the irony in
Marian used in the last part of the sentence, it seems that she was fed up off with her husband’s
way of defining an dream, she mockingly tells him to explain his dream by changing it as a
“philosophy”, such behavior results the captain into public humiliation, yet he cannot utter any
word against his wife. She seems in a commanding position when she delivers this line, keeping
even her husband in the back foot. Latter when he explains his plan to the spectators, she even
mocks and interrupts his line; we could see her attitude clearly to her husband’s dreams.
But Marian in the novel seems hell bent to defy all the male imposed rules to the female
persona, when her husband asks her to be in the home all day, she denies his words by saying
that she longs to see the river by herself, and she hates being shut up in the house. Instead she
forces Mr. Forrester to go out to see the town. Her fluctuating behavior projects that she instead
is masculine in her character and her husband is feminine in male standards, as the latter obeys
the former’s orders.
Before her marriage to Captain Forrester, she had a previous relationship with a man who was
her boyfriend named Mr. Frank Ellinger, in one scene in the novel he tries to dominate Marian,
for not replying his letter, he is shown as a robust man, who tries to take some physical
advantage with this lady, due to her negligence on replying his letters, he feels offended and
ignored so he tries to take revenge on her by physically abusing her, but she refuses instantly
and orders him instead and changes his hostile attitude towards her as a caring one: I don’t
remember! You don’t write so many. Be careful, Frank. My rings! You hurt me! Drive slowly,
it doesn’t matter if we are late for dinner. Nothing matters.
In the beginning, she clearly says that she doesn’t remember about the letters, and
counterattacks Frank by saying that he writes so less letters. But she is not obliged to answer
any one of them. She seems clever enough to deviate Franks lust into a wandering, he was
attempting to harm her physically but in another instance she changes his mind by asking him
instead to take for a ride, and also instructs him to drive slowly and the last line suggest that
she is not scared with her husband presence and it won’t matter if she arrives home very late.
Marian’s conducts itself shows us that she is transcending the orthodox position of a female
persona, that of docile and servile, rather she seems quite confident to broke away with such
norms and values, whenever her husband takes a nap, she make sure that she leave the house
with her effervescent behavior. As one day when her husband slept she asks Niel:
Come, Mr. Forrester is asleep. Let’s run down the hill, there’s no one to stop us. I’ll slip on my
rubber boots. No objections! Not a word! I can’t stand this house a moment longer. You see
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there is nothing for me to do. I get no exercise. I don’t skate; we didn’t in California. I shall
dance till I’m eighty. It’s good for me I need it.
It means, her husband is taking a nap she escapes from the boredom in the house. Though wives
in the old society were to be home bounded, they were to perform the daily chores and
wandering around was not cup of their tea, but things are all different with the Marian, she
believes in roaming around her house, though she takes time for her husband’s nap, but what
if once he is already awake when she is out? Yet she is a risk taker and don’t have any
afterthoughts for such kind of consequences. She doesn’t care about any mishap as the second
line of this statement shows “no objections”, her not tolerating the house itself shows that she
is fed up off living with her husband.
Marian is shown as a woman, who doesn’t believes to be simply a cog to her male companion,
rather she is a woman of substance and things to equally participate in the decisions which her
husband makes. She in her actions and words moves a step ahead then her husband when
suggesting Niel about life and its complexities. Though due to some reasons Marian and her
husband had turned bankrupt yet she assures Niel to assist him financially in his endeavours as
she says:
Don’t forget us, but don’t mope. Make lots of new friends. You’ll never be twenty again. Take
a chorus girl out to supper—a pretty one, mind! Don’t bother about your allowance. If you got
into a scrape, we could manage a little cheque to help you out, couldn’t we, Mr. Forrester?
It means her husband into the back foot, as they had recently gone through financial crisis, it
might work as an irony to her husband, in the sense it gives the negative connotation that a man
who is earning for a family has turned into an impotent subject. Though she knows the negative
aspect of her line, she is least hesitant to put her mind in front of her husband and Niel. She
evens jokes with Niel to make new friends and also a girlfriend. And pretty mind in the above
statements suggest that her husband might be dull, as he lost all his property and turned
bankrupt.
Her intention is to plummet her husband identity and making him realize that he was not in the
right track and he doesn’t have the rights to dominate a woman, as from the male observing
nature he was male no more, as he was unable to support his family. Thus Marian announcing
towards providing Niel financial assistance and asking her husband in a mocking way indicates
that she is making fun of her husband.
She is a woman who has the guts to show the male persona their own traits, which are unknown
to them, as she points indirectly towards her husband’s flaws, but she is outright to present
Niel’s specialty too when she visits his house:
And how handsome he’s grown! Isn’t the old judge proud of you! He called up last night and
began sputtering, “It’s only fair to warn you Ma’m that I’ve very handsome boy over here.” As
if I hadn’t known you would be! And now you’re a man, and have seen the world!
Here she seems crossing her lines of male domination with the above statements she has made.
As male feelings is to attribute female with certain things such as rose and moon. As DeBeauvoir (1949) wrote in her Second Sex that from time immemorial women were attributed
with different terms by the male domain sometimes love, fragile and delicate beings, and even
sometimes they were compared with orgies and demons, but in the above lines we could see
Marian praising and defining a male persona, which itself shows the rebellious nature of this
lady protagonist of the novel.
Some radical feminists, the whole idea of the competitive pursuit of power is rejected as an
embodiment of male values, and conventional politics is abandoned: organizational hierarchies
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are avoided; political struggle is relocated from the ballot-box to the bedroom, and separatism
is favored over participation in existing organizations or institutions, which are seen as a mere
playground for male egoists. For others, however, the identification of patriarchal power within
the state is an insight that can further the feminist cause by providing a more realistic
assessment of political possibilities than that provided by the liberal approach.
Marian is a woman who has a rebellious attitude towards the male dominated society. She
believes equality with the masculine world, she would rather demand for equal position with
her male counterparts. As we could assume from her conversation with Niel regarding female
uprising and equality: “And tell me Niel, do women really smoke after dinner now with the
men, nice women? It’s all very well for actresses, but women can be attractive if they do
everything that men do. I think just now it’s the fashion for women to make themselves
comfortable, before anything else”.
Here, she believes that women should be comfortable doing things rather than strictly following
the male parameters of doing this things and boycotting another things. Main thing is women
should feel comfortable in whatever they do and must not have concern over the male idea of
social etiquette for women.
She believes in taking her own decision as Niel argues and tells her that she shouldn’t care
about Ivy Peters, the judge who is impudent with her. But she instantly argues back and says:
He has a lease for five years, and he could make it very disagreeable for us, don’t you see?
Besides, there’s more than that. He’s invested a little money for me in Wyoming, in land. He
gets splendid land from the Indians some way, for next to nothing. Don’t tell your uncle; I’ve
no doubt its crooked.
The lines gives us a vivid idea that Marian is a shrewd character, who knows how a business
is conducted. She is shown a woman with grit, though Ivy Peter had once treated her very
badly, yet she is firm with her negotiation with him, as she knows well that, she can dominate
later part of the preceding when things works well with them. She is a woman who denies the
old image of a woman and assimilates with new one. As we could see from the lines below
which she converses with Niel: “I could dance all night and not feel tired. I could ride horseback
all day and be ready for a dinner party in the evening. I had no clothes, of course; old evening
dresses with yards and yards of satin and velvet in them, but I looked well enough! I always
look better after the first glass, it gives me a little color, its only thing that does. When I’m
alone here for months, I plan and plot”.
It gives us her confidence defined in words, though she is female, the male society has always
attributed this female world as a weak and docile being, but her statements shows that she is
not demure rather she has the potential and zeal to fight with male parameters. She bluntly
expresses her desire for alcohol, in male world woman’s affiliation with binge drinking is
considered as an inappropriate act, which is abhorred by the male dominated society, but
Marian is shown breaching such rules and expressing her own desire of drinking without caring
for the male dominated society. She is not a housewife material woman rather, in her leisure
time she plans and plot for her future endeavours. She is shown as a woman with masculine
traits and strength in her character is vividly presented in the above lines.
Her relations with her male counterparts are very slippery, she believes that if male has the
audacity to dupe their female companion than she too could perform such things. For that
reason, she hears that her previous boyfriend was married with another woman she calls him
to give some advice and a bitter lesson to him, we could see from her telephone conversation
with her earlier boyfriend Frank Ellinger: “Is that you Frank? This is Marian. I won’t keep you
a moment. You were asleep? So early? That’s not like you. You’ve reformed already, haven’t
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ISSN 2721-0960 (Print), ISSN 2721-0847 (online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Sociale, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0

you? That’s what marriage does, they say. No, I wasn’t altogether surprised. You might have
taken me into your confidence, though. Haven’t I deserved it?”
Initially she seems courteous talking with Frank in the above lines but as the line moves forward
she is shown taking irony as a weapon. She is sarcastic in the sense, she is giving suggestion
regarding marriage in the first part, but latter on she demands attention, that why she was not
informed regarding the marriage. She is not a woman who should be kept in dark for a long
time, though she was married earlier than her boyfriend, but she demands explanation that why
she was not informed about the development.
Mariam’s rigid strength in the character is shown vividly in the novel, she avoids Niel
suggestion and she is not bothered with what the people in the town talks about her, she only
cares about her. She doesn’t have any complains over the rumors and she is not bothered with
any grapevine. She rather enjoys being called by the town people as “Merry Widow”, she likes
their derogatory meaning of this title. This shows she is a woman who won’t care about the
peoples conservative thoughts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the novel presents the valiant female character dismantling the notion of the
social norms and values established by patriarchy. Though her husband is seen dominating,
Marian seems defying such male domination with her behavior. She is shown as a docile and
subservient character, but, her continuous defiance and escapist route from the household
chores and her husband’s strict eyesight. is shown breaking the male restricted zones and
transcending these so called zones by surpassing such limitations. Marian is shown as a homely
housewife character, but she has a grit and determination to uproot such character in the novel.
She knows the domination laden by her husband and her war with her husband is inherent and
she plays her part silently. She is shown placing orders to her husband and breaking the docile
image. She is shown as a woman who presents her desire and feelings in front of another male
persona. To conclude, Marian dismantled the male rules which were attributed to the woman
by patriarchy.
References
Abrams, M.H. (2004). A Glossary of Literary Terms. Bangalore: Eastern Press Pvt. Ltd.
Beauvoir, S. D. (1949). The Second Sex, Woman as Other. New Delhi: Penguin.
Biblibio, M. (2009). A Lost Lady by Willa Cather. Rambling: Book Please.
Cather W. (1923). A Lost Lady. New Delhi: Harper Collins.
De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex, trans. and ed. HM Parshley (1953), 447.
Figes, E. (1970). The Patriarchal Attitudes. London: Faber and Faber.
Firestone, S. (1970). The Dialectics of Sex. Texas: Morrow.
Greer, G. (1970). The Female Eunuch. Portland. Oregon: Straus and Giroux.
Millet, K. (1968). Sexual Politics. Chicago: Uillinois, HP.
Morrow, N. (1984). Willa Cather's a lost lady and the nineteenth century novel of adultery.
Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11(3), 287-303.
Rich, A. (1977). Of Women Born. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.

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ISSN 2721-0960 (Print), ISSN 2721-0847 (online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Sociale, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0