Willa Cather: Queering America

Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies

by Marilee Lindemann

Although it has been proven posthumously by scholars that Willa Cather had lesbian relationships, she did not openly celebrate lesbian desire, and even today is sometimes described as homophobic and misogynistic. What, then, can a reassessment of this contentious first lady of American letters add to an understanding of the gay identities that have emerged in America over the past century? As Marilee Lindemann shows in this study of the novelist's life and work, Cather's sexual coming-of-age occurred at a time when a cultural transition was recasting love between women as sexual deviance rather than romantic friendship. At the same time, the very identity of "America" was characterized by great instability as the United States emerged as a modern industrial nation and imperial power. Indeed, both terms, "queer" and "America," achieved fresh ideological potency at the turn of the century. Willa Queering America is an enlightening unpacking of Cather's writings, from her controversial love letters of the 1890s--in which "queer" is employed to denote sexual deviance--to her epic novels, short stories, and critical writings. Lindemann points to the "queer" qualities of Cather's fiction--rebellion against traditional fictional form, with sometimes unlikable characters, lack of emphasis on heroic action, and lack of engagement in the drama of heterosexual desire.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, LGBT

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 1999

Reviews

[William Mego · Rating 3 out of 5]

From http://willmego.com/2016/07/13/review...

Wila Cather: Queering America
by Marilee Lindemann
Columbia University Press
ISBN-13: 978-0231113250

So by way of confession, allow me to open with the statement that this is a review of a portion of the book, and not the entire work. With an upcoming community read of ‘O, Pioneers’ I wanted some background on the sexual politics of that book.

Let us take the young Cather in this photo, sporting a very short and (for the time) extremely masculine haircut. I’ll let you explore on your own the topic of whatever sense of her sexuality she would grow to inhabit, as we all grow into our own sexual identities as we pass from teenagers into adults, save to point out that she went by ‘William’ not long after this time. Strikingly beautiful, or at least I find her so, but again ‘her’ might not really be the pronoun I want. Apparently later in life, Cather tried to destroy any evidence of her personal life, which many presume to be an act of concealing her sexuality. At the time this meant lesbianism, but lately scholars have come to wonder if there’s a more subtle interchange of identity. Does gender identity depend to any extent upon knowing what labels are possible? Luckily today we now have a term to encompass any concept, which is “queer.” Now Dear Gentle Reader, I know that if you’re an older person this term might leave you uncomfortable due to its pejorative use throughout history, but language changes over time. You may safely think of queer as meaning “non-normitive.” So what is this (and other such) term for, then? It’s not to further split and divide up each little flavor of gender and orientation, but to provide a stable term for a wide variety of experiences. Wila Cather, who could be she, he, lesbian, somewhat trans, or indeed several other possibilities, can be queer. Queer embraces and encompasses. We’ll never know what Cather would of identified with in our more liberal world..at least somewhat more liberal in some parts of this country. It’s still illegal to be anything different in most of the world, and still legal to discriminate and punish Others in most of it.
Ok, so why all this talk? This book, Wila Cather: Queering America by Marilee Lindemann, shows Cather writing at the edge of a time where queer in any sense, whether in relation to body politics or to just plain being different, could be dangerous. By unpacking specific sections of the novels and placing “them in dialog with one another,” Lindemann illustrates many passages where Cather uses queer to mean anything from a purely physical difference to small behaviors which today would seem a mild eccentricity unworthy of comment, anything which brings a sense of ‘Otherness.’ This sense of Other has been very dangerous thing to be on the wrong side of throughout history and to those in the times and places we find the characters of Cather’s novels, even more so.
For me, Lindemann makes a strong and compelling case, though I wonder if it’s the case she initially set out to prove. I think the primary question is whether knowing anything about the sexual and gender politics of Cather has any impact on a reader of the novels, and I’d have to suggest it does. With this in the back of your mind, you can’t help but see Cather straining at the barriers of society. The main trouble for me is that Cather has a great many barriers to push against, such the right of a woman to control her own destiny or hold a place of equality with men, so it’s easy to lose track of what barrier is being tested in any passage. I’d recommend this book to anyone especially interested in Cather, or in exploring a hard time to be different in America.
Maybe it would work better if we were all “Queer” or some other label which means you have a gender identity of some kind, and a sexual identity of some kind and it’s ALL ok. Be any combination of any of it, love whatever you feel like loving, and if we’re all Queer, then none of us are, and there is no Other, only Us.

[Declan · Rating 5 out of 5]

butches galore (QE)