Willa Cather

1873-1947

Author

It took courage for a Victorian girl to dress as a man, but Willa Cather did it -- sometimes even dressing in military uniforms and calling herself William.

Cather, who for over forty years lived with editor Edith Lewis in Greenwich Village and arranged to buried with her, is often called one of America's best novelists for her works about Nebraska and the Southwest. Her novels show that she loved the land and hated conformity. Cather is best known for " Pioneers," "My Antonia" and "Death Comes For the Archbishop." The postal service honored her with an eight-cent stamp.

"It is the inexplicable presence of the things not named, of the overtone divined by ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself," Cather said of her work.

One thing is for sure. Cather, who destroyed many of her letters and wrote a will prohibiting quotation from her correspondence, would not approve of people writing about her personal life. Cather lived in a different time, though. No one knows what she might be like if she were alive in today's world.

"In the 1880s, it seemed to Cather that there were only two choices: active or passive, independent or dominated, male or female," biographer Sharon O'Brien says. "True womanhood seemed inconsistent with personhood, so the young Willa Cather chose masculinity."

Perhaps Cather would be surprised by how far the country has come since she died fifty years ago. Perhaps, though, she would be shocked that being gay, lesbian or transgendered is still not fully accepted. She might wonder why more people don't follow her example and choose the hard road -- living according to their passion instead of according to a culture that doesn't accept them. What good is fitting into a culture that doesn't want you as a part of it?

Want to know more about Cather's part in OURstory? Take a look at the book by Sharon O'Brien about Cather in the Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians series edited by Martin Duberman.