Second Reading 27

A Lost Lady By Willa Cather (1923)YOUNG NIEL HERBERT appears to have been born serious; he is a studious boy who enjoys books and his relationship with his uncle, an esteemed small-town lawyer.

Through his uncle he becomes friendly with the Forresters. Captain Forrester had played a central role in the building of the railway; his wife, Marian, is much younger, a vivacious, charming woman possessed of a vitality and allure that ensures her every glance speaks volumes. "If she merely bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal relation."

Cather tells the story largely from the viewpoint of sensitive, correct Niel who watches everything, yet whose understanding is not quite developed. For him Marian Forrester represents his ideal. His romanticism is also undercut by a degree of snobbery. Willa Cather came from generations of Virginia farming stock. When she was eight, her father moved the family to a new ranch in Nebraska. Cather was never to forget being part of the pioneering frontier life. Interestingly, her work, particularly this candid mid-career novel, remains modern and direct.

Her vision of America caught between the glorious past and an ignoble present informed all of her writing, even her fiction. Cather was influenced by Henry James and Edith Wharton but as a graduate, and later a teacher and journalist, she also tended towards polemic. She was aware of change and didn't much like its impact on traditional sensibilities. When Niel is in the company of the Forresters he is aware that the elderly captain defers to his wife and to the other ladies present.

The graciousness is well handled by Cather who allows young Niel to be priggish but somehow likeable and desperately vulnerable, particularly when, having loved Marian in her role as the captain's wife, he discovers Marian's involvement with an attractive rake. The discovery renders the boy nauseous with rage.

In one of several brilliantly handled scenes, the adoring husband holds the letter his wife has written to her lover, and simply admires her handwriting.

Disaster occurs. The captain's investments fail and the couple are facing a greatly changed lifestyle. The old man, fearing for his wife's future comfort, suffers a stroke. Cather's sympathy for Marian is cleverly underplayed. It is obvious that Marian is not a heroine, she is a woman aware of the waning of youth's opportunities and constantly makes casual if deliberate comments to Niel on the subject of youth and beauty.

It is Niel who witnesses the phone call she makes to her lover's hotel on hearing he has married, and who protectively cuts the phone line before her playful tone turns to despairing recrimination.

Although My Antoniais her finest novel, A Lost Ladyconvinces as a study of Niel's youthful idealism being confronted by reality. In losing the world her husband has placed her within, Marian Forrester must then make her way through the compromises left to her.

In Ivy Peters, a scheming representative of the new order who not only rents the Forrester land, but drains it of its picturesque marsh, Cather introduces the ugly side of progress. But Peters is far more than a token villain, he is the force that not only challenges Niel's innocence but causes Marian to relinquish her acquired life and return to her earlier self.

Intelligent and unsentimental, this humane, taut narrative resounds with the psychological intensity that makes Willa Cather such an astute observer.

• This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon