Between the Angle and the Curve: Mapping Gender, Race, Space, and Identity in Willa Cather and Toni Morrison (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)

Citation preview

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LITERARY CRITICISM AND CULTURAL THEORY

Edited by

William E. Cain Professor of English Wellesley College

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

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LITERARY CRITICISM AND CULTURAL THEORY WILLIAM E. CAIN, General Editor OUTSIDER CITIZENS The Remaking of Postwar Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin Sarah Relyea

OVERHEARD VOICES Address and Subjectivity in Postmodern American Poetry Ann Keniston

AN ETHICS OF BECOMING Configurations of Feminine Subjectivity in Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot Sonjeong Cho

MUSEUM MEDIATIONS Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry Barbara K. Fischer

NARRATIVE DESIRE AND HISTORICAL REPARATIONS A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie Tim S. Gauthier NIHILISM AND THE SUBLIME POSTMODERN The (Hi)Story of a Difficult Relationship from Romanticism to Postmodernism Will Slocombe DEPRESSION GLASS Documentary Photography and the Medium of the Camera Eye in Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, and William Carlos Williams Monique Claire Vescia FATAL NEWS Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century Literature Katherine E. Ellison NEGOTIATING COPYRIGHT Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century America Martin T. Buinicki “FOREIGN BODIES” Trauma, Corporeality, and Textuality in Contemporary American Culture Laura Di Prete

THE POLITICS OF MELANCHOLY FROM SPENSER TO MILTON Adam H. Kitzes URBAN REVELATIONS Images of Ruin in the American City, 1790–1860 Donald J. McNutt POSTMODERNISM AND ITS OTHERS The Fiction of Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo Jeffrey Ebbesen DIFFERENT DISPATCHES Journalism in American Modernist Prose David T. Humphries DIVERGENT VISIONS, CONTESTED SPACES The Early United States through the Lens of Travel Jeffrey Hotz “LIKE PARCHMENT IN THE FIRE” Literature and Radicalism in the English Civil War Prasanta Chakravarty BETWEEN THE ANGLE AND THE CURVE Mapping Gender, Race, Space, and Identity in Willa Cather and Toni Morrison Danielle Russell

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BETWEEN THE ANGLE AND THE CURVE Mapping Gender, Race, Space, and Identity in Willa Cather and Toni Morrison

Danielle Russell

Routledge New York & London

RT6960X_Discl.fm Page 1 Monday, March 20, 2006 11:16 AM

Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Published in Great Britain by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97696-0 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97696-1 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Catalog record is available from the Library of Congress

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and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com

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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Chapter One Where Am I and How Did I Get Here?: The Connections between Space, Identity, and the Fiction of Willa Cather and Toni Morrison

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Chapter Two Background Foregrounded: The Significance of Setting or “Don’t Skip the Descriptive Bits”

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Chapter Three Maneuvering through the Maternal Landscape: Traditions, Tropes, and New Techniques

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Chapter Four Home, Hearth, and Harpies: Discovering a Space of One’s Own in the Domestic Sphere

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Chapter Five “This Way to the Egress:” Exiting Thoughts on the Cartography of Connection

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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The origins of this study are multiple and varied. I came to it, or it came to me, from several directions. Statements from a variety of sources triggered deeper consideration than, on the surface, they seemed to merit. As I taught Cather’s My Antonia and Morrison’s Song of Solomon, I had the strong impression that the two were connected. Something more than the classifications of “American Fiction” or “Women Writers” linked the pair. A student’s brutally honest confession about “skipping the background stuff ”—the attitude that setting was superfluous, unnecessary, open to editing—helped to sharpen my focus. I came to the conclusion that the setting—in all its complexity—is a crucial element in the process of interpreting the writings of Cather and Morrison; to edit it out is to rewrite (badly I might add) the text. A short time later, I read two interviews in which Morrison addressed the relationship between identity and place. In the first, she asserted that women have a stronger sense of place than men; in part because women perform intimate acts in places (the gendered division of labour has a spatial effect). In the second interview, Morrison distinguished between black and white women. Unlike white women, black women are able to combine the nest and adventure; that is, the security of home and the freedom of mobility. She opened up the territories for one group of women while reinforcing the gendered division of space for the remaining women. I was curious as to whether or not this assessment applied to Morrison’s own fiction and if Cather’s work supported or refuted the insistence that race altered the experience of gendered space. As I began my project, I recognized a need for a theoretical framework within which I could articulate my close textual analysis. My starting point was what I would call the traditional approach to geography. It entails an almost uniform division of space into two related categories: masculine/feminine, real/imaginary, public/private, urban/rural. The labels vary but the use vii

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of binaries and emphasis on separation is fairly consistent. An implicit (sometimes explicit) value system was embedded in, and sustained by, the divisions. One element was privileged at the expense of the other; more often than not, gender entered the equation. In particular, the work of Gaston Bachelard struck me as needing closer examination; his theories were cited repeatedly in the works of other scholars. The angle/curve, masculine/feminine distinction Bachelard identified seemed, at first, to carry a great deal of weight. If only visually, the gendered pattern made sense; the correlation between body and landscape seems to be logical. Bachelard’s refusal to consider non-felicitous space and his contention that confrontation or dissension can only occur in the space of hatred and combat relies on too narrow an interpretation. Re-negotiating boundaries is not entertained in Bachelard’s theories; nor is the possibility of alternative constructions of space. I turned to feminist geographers in the hopes of finding a broader approach—a less claustrophobic depiction of space. A wider recognition of the political implications of spatial divisions did emerge in my reading (the social effects of gendered space and the need to re-evaluate attitudes about the landscape in particular) but there was a troubling acceptance of the enhanced status of the public sphere. The emphasis was on moving women into spaces identified with men rather than ameliorating the spaces linked with women. Rejecting the domestic sphere in pursuit of the space of political action actually led to the same constrictive definitions of space. The home receives a great deal of attention in the fiction of Cather and Morrison; much of the action in the novels occurs in the home. Home as a site of oppression is a concept which is challenged in their fiction; their alternative and contrasting depictions promote nurturing and inspiring domestic spaces. The home is not reduced to a simple, idealized space by either author; nor is it generalized as a negative location. Complexity and the possibility of connection are central components of the domestic spaces (both natural and constructed) Cather and Morrison incorporated into their novels. The two authors have been approached in terms of similar categories or topics of discussion. They cover a great deal of common terrain; in particular, the importance of the land, gendered landscapes, and the significance of the home. The unique depictions Cather and Morrison create of the American landscape, in all its complexity, challenge existing mainstream assertions about American fiction. There was both an opening and need for this study; re-evaluations of the theories of space and identity will provide new insights into American literature.

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A concern with the limitations of space shaped this study in a tangible way; the constraints of a “manageable” text prevented a consideration of all the fiction written by Cather and Morrison. The desire for a balanced discussion meant that Cather’s fiction in particular had to be pared down. As a result, I have only selected novels (no short stories will be examined) and have opted to focus on three of Cather’s key landscapes—the prairie, southwest, and Southern settings—in an attempt to achieve a range within the physical restrictions. I therefore make no claims that this is an exhaustive exploration of space and identity in the writings of Cather and Morrison. The decision to utilize a thematic approach for the comparison, rather than a chronological exploration of individual texts, had two origins. First my interest is in the overall patterns of Cather’s and Morrison’s representations of space and the potential for shared territories and techniques. Second, close sequential analysis of each text was not possible given the range of the novels I wished to analyze. A thematic approach permitted a comparison which is rich in detail despite the constraints of a single volume study. This technique has sometimes led to a movement between texts that may seem abrupt to readers not familiar with all the novels but the desire for an extensive view of the literary landscapes created by Cather and Morrison was given priority over a single text approach. Cather and Morrison resist categorization. Space in their novels is depicted as fluid and interconnected rather than rigid and contradictory. Domestic space is naturalized; natural space is domesticated. The emphasis is on inclusion. Intimacy and immensity are achieved within the same setting. Cather and Morrison challenge hierarchies and dichotomies through their creation of hybrid geography. Expanding our understanding to the intricate connections between identity and place as they play out in the fiction of Cather and Morrison opens up the territory of American fiction. The result is not a space of conflict, but complementary space. The tension between the longing for home and impulse for adventure so often identified with American literature is in fact defused, although not completely resolved, in the texts in this study. The novels of Cather and Morrison refute the myth of a unified American landscape by broadening its territory. Protective communities which foster identity and encourage artistic endeavors are crucial factors in the fiction of Willa Cather and Toni Morrison. They have also played a vital role in my life. I would like to thank my family for their support through the daily struggles (both big and small, real and self-inflicted): my brothers for their humour and matter-of-fact conviction that I would succeed; my father for his unshakeable faith in my abilities; my mother for her practical involvement in the process, her impartial

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insights and her blatant bias in my favour; and my precious daughter (joy of my heart and light in dark places). Thanks are also due to my community of choice—the teachers and professors who showed me that my love of reading could become a way of life. Special thanks are due to Professor Elizabeth Sabiston for her guidance, support, ceaseless efforts on my behalf, and her friendship. I would also like to acknowledge Professors Susan Warwick and Leslie Sanders for the generous gift of their time and thoughtful comments.

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Chapter One:

Where Am I and How Did I Get Here?: The Connections between Space, Identity, and the Fiction of Willa Cather and Toni Morrison

Je suis l’espace où je suis. I am the space where I am. —Noel Arnaud1

As is so often the case, Arnaud’s seemingly simplistic statement raises an extremely complex issue. The conclusion that location (“where I am”) and identity (“I am”) are interchangeable is quite provocative. What happens to identity when the spaces we occupy are determined by factors such as gender, race, social class, or any number of arbitrary classifications? Where do choice and decree intersect in the space/identity equation? Spatial markers ground the English language. Communicating our positions is a daily practice. We rarely give a second thought to the spatial significance of phrases like “upward mobility,” “high society,” “public and private spheres;” they are merely “figures of speech.” We write, and read, of social, cultural, and political landscapes. Recognizing that our identities are formed in (and through) such spaces is crucial to any discussion of identity. Both the construction and representation of space (whether it is demarcated as geography, place, or landscape) are crucial to identity formation. Space is never neutral; it carries with it a history. Ideological, cultural, and social concerns inform both our understanding and depictions of space. Concepts of the nation, of gender, and of race have a particular resonance in explorations of identity and space. Whether in the

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“real” world or the realm of literature, the representation of space is central to comprehension of individual and collective identity. “A nation is an act of the imagination,” contends Terry Eagleton, “‘a country of the mind,’ rather than a tract of land or collection of individuals. It is in effect a myth and it needs that myth making mechanism known as literature to sustain it.”2 Such an assertion insists that a nation is written into being; in this context, literature and space theory, identity and geography, reinforce each other—each is subject to change and fluctuation rather than being fixed and stable. Galvin Cologne-Brookes proposes a circular relationship between the literary work and the literal landscape: “while America is written into being, American writing which totals up into the idea of America, is itself shaped by the physical geography of the land” (1). Mutual dependence, Cologne-Brookes suggests, characterizes the exchange between author and “subject.” What is the myth of America that emerges in its fiction? Clearly a single myth of America or American fiction cannot accommodate the multiple perspectives of the vast array of American authors. Nor, for that matter, can a single project provide an all-encompassing statement about “American Fiction”—a Sisyphean task if ever there was one. Within the literature of the United States, the connection between identity (national and individual) and space has garnered much attention from writers, critics, and readers. The fiction of Willa Cather and Toni Morrison offers rich territory for the exploration of this connection. Even a cursory glance at their fiction reveals the wide range of physical and symbolic terrains Cather and Morrison create; such an exercise effectively destabilizes the notion of a simple image of the American landscape. It also highlights the mythmaking role of the two writers: their stories enhance and expand the story that is America. Horse, raft, car, plane; trail, river, road, open skies—American literature is frequently identified by its vehicles for movement and avenues of escape. Cologne-Brookes highlights “America’s rich tradition of travel writing . . . ;” a journey through the American terrain has proved to be the impetus for many fictional adventures (16). Self- discovery is often depicted as occurring outdoors, whether it is a pastoral ideal or the more foreboding American wilderness. “We are taught,” observes Mickey Pearlman, that American literature “is about space, open space, and the ways in which hearty or hesitant, defiant or defensive, American heroes experience both its potential and its limitations” (1). Migration and freedom of movement often receive the most attention, but the importance of a home (literal or longed for) is also vital to the definition of American fiction. “American literary history,” cautions Joseph R. Urgo, “reflects the interplay of rootedness and

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migrancy, settlement and escape” (1). Apparently contradictory urges (and spaces) are actually interconnected; an accurate representation of American fiction must acknowledge each element. The ongoing engagement with the issue of geography and identity, which is so prevalent in American literature, has inspired a myriad of writers. Cather and Morrison are authors for whom the question of space and identity is central to their literary endeavors. “Writing” a country has typically taken a white, masculine slant. Images of early settlements in North America often focus on the conquest of a wild, but fertile land. The virgin soil is tamed by the pioneer; feminine landscape is made productive by the masculine farmer (a “conclusion” which will be explored in Chapter Two). Approaching the land as a female space is not original to North America. It is the by-product of a long standing tradition which resurfaces in “New World” literature. Other carry-overs from “Old World” fiction include the rich and complex symbol of the garden, the “country versus city” antithesis, and the identification of the landscape with, and as, the human body. This study will address how Cather and Morrison situate their works of fiction and their characters within such a tradition. It is a process complicated, or perhaps enriched, by such factors as gender, race, and the tension between independence and connection. Possible responses to the “standard” representations of literary settings, whether they are urban or rural, developed or natural, range from accommodation to covert undermining to overt rejection; all three tactics are employed, to varying degrees, by Cather and Morrison in their complex depictions of space and identity. “Instead of shaping masculine space into something feminine,” Ruth Salvaggio proposes, “women bring feminine space to life by writing from, through, and about the spaces women themselves have occupied” (262). While Salvaggio acknowledges that “black women and third-world women . . . have become increasingly aware of the absent space they occupy . . . [in] feminism,” she suggests that the common ground of being female leads to essentially similar experiences and conceptions of space (272). It is an assertion which I will revisit in my conclusion. Both Cather and Morrison challenge reductive responses to spatial demarcations. The relationship between the individual and the world is complex, but identity is intimately and irrevocably entwined with place. Neither author writes within a masculine space or the standard definition of feminine space; the two explore counter definitions and alternative terrains. The result is a hybrid territory of connection which incorporates both feminine and masculine characteristics. One is immediately and intensely aware of location when reading a Cather or Morrison novel. The variety of settings speaks to the richness of the American literary landscape. While Cather and Morrison incorporate

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extremely diverse landscapes—prairies and tropics, the southwest and the midwest among other locales—the importance of place in their fiction is strikingly similar. Settings dominate their texts; the land becomes a character unto itself in many of their stories. Eudora Welty praises Cather’s gift for never losing “sight of the particular in the panorama”—her ability to create impressive landscapes without sacrificing detail (44). It is a literary concern shared by Morrison. “I felt a very strong sense of place,” Morrison acknowledges in an interview with Robert Stepto, “not in terms of the country or the state, but in terms of the details, the feeling, the mood of the community, of the town” (10). Setting is not just a physical place, but a living presence in Morrison’s writing. Minute details and expansive visions combine to construct environments which engage both characters and readers. Cather’s characters, argues Laura Winters, “do not simply live in places; they live places emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually” (3). It is an assessment which could easily be applied to Morrison’s characters. What is typically background is foregrounded in the novels of Cather and Morrison; descriptions of the textual landscapes cannot be glossed over. The setting functions on several levels in the novels being examined in this study. Place can be a character and/or catalyst; it has both an identity of its own and an impact on the identities of those who experience it. The interaction between person and place can be mutually transforming; a specific site can alter an individual’s perspective as effectively as an individual can alter the physical landscape. In her interview with Stepto, Morrison offers an opinion on the significance of space in the formulation of identity for women in particular: . . . I think some of it is just a woman’s strong sense of being in a room, a place, or in a house. Sometimes my relationship to things in a house would be a little different from . . . my brother’s or my father’s or my son’s . . . I do very intimate things “in place.” I am sort of rooted in it, so that writing about being in a room looking out, or being in a world looking out, or living in a small definite place, is probably very common among most women . . . (10–11)

Women, Morrison proposes, have a more intimate relationship with place because they (generally) perform more intimate tasks in that space. The use of qualifiers—“some,” “sometimes,” “little,” “sort of,” “probably”—is telling; Morrison does not assert that this experience is universal to all women nor is it necessarily permanent.

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THE POLITICS OF LOCATION: IDENTITY AND PLACE The exchange between setting and subject in the stories in this study is quite complex. Identity, of person and place, is open to external manipulations which can be coercive or co-operative. The question of identity has inspired two (broad) theoretical approaches: the essentialist and the constructionist arguments. In plain terms, the essentialists contend that there exists an inner essence which is expressible through language. The constructionists counter that the subject is shaped by systems of language, culture, and ideology. I fall into the second camp and my interpretation of the characters penned by Cather and Morrison is informed by this line of reasoning. As will become evident in the subsequent chapters, the fiction supports the constructionist theory. Cather and Morrison depict individuals who are altered by the environments they experience. Identity is malleable in the writings we will be analyzing. The debate is succinctly articulated by Simone de Beauvoir: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (301). Neither biology nor some vague inner essence accounts for woman; she is the creation of a variety of interactions with the world around her. By extension, man is also a product (and producer) of his environment. Gender identity is “performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results,” insists Judith Butler (25). “Feminine behaviour” is not simply the by-product of a womb; it is also a response to socially prescribed expectations. Patriarchy (apologies to Freud) is not built upon (or by) the penis. As Linda Martin Alcoff notes, “gender systems are not the legacy of nature, they are the legacy of a power struggle” (21). Social practices and ideology have determined inequitable relationships based upon gender, race, class, or any number of arbitrary classifications. Race is often approached as an established, clearly demarcated status; however, such a conclusion rests on shaky ground. “In the United States,” asserts Siobhan B. Somerville, “the term ‘race’ has always been contested. In nineteenth-century scientific usage, it might refer to groupings based variously on geography, religion, class or color” (21). Over time the emphasis has shifted to the “color line,” but that too lacks rigidity. Gayle Wald’s work on racial passing illustrates how the “‘boundary’ of race is subject to ongoing contestation and mutation” (10). Race can be performed or denied, capitalized on or concealed. Somerville’s conclusion that race refers to “a historical, ideological process rather than to fixed transhistorical or biological characteristics: one’s racial identity is contingent on one’s cultural and historical location” proposes that identity has a greater range of possibilities than racial categories would initially suggest (7).

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While Andrew Pepper acknowledges that “terms like race and ethnicity no longer refer to categories that are fixed and stable but to ones that are best seen as fluid and relational . . . ,” he cautions, “the temptation to entirely collapse race and ethnicity on top of one another needs to be resisted” (243). “Black” is no more effective at conveying the identities and experiences of all people of colour than “woman” is at conveying the identities and experiences of all women. Subtle and not so subtle differences must be acknowledged in order to utilize the spaces of possibility located in the externally imposed labels. Negotiating identities within the definitions of race and ethnicity likewise requires recognition of the “cultural and historical location.” There are social, economic, political, and geographic effects created by the system of identification; re-, or self-, definition can be a powerful tool in dismantling inequitable power structures. Beauvoir’s distinction between biology and socially and culturally constructed categories challenges the assumption that identity is visually recognizable. The need to include “other” on census forms and other official documents is an acknowledgement of the pitfalls of such an approach. To attempt to reduce identity (individual or national) to a single statement is to conclude that there is a single identity which can be articulated. Stuart Hall rejects such a stance; in his theory multiple, overlapping (at times contradictory) identities constitute the “self.” Identifications, Diana Fuss similarly concludes, can shift, multiply, and contradict. “Subjectivity must be kinetic, not static; it must be multiplied, not single,” contends Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth (408). Identity is not just in process, it is in processes. It is in a state of “palimpsestuousness”3 concludes Ermarth, and its “singularity exists in the unique and unrepeatable sequence of a life, but not in some essential ‘subject’” (412). Each life is distinct because no sets of experiences are identical; subtle differences lead to individual identities. Movements or relocations can alter identities. “I need to understand,” writes Adrienne Rich, “how a place on the map is also a place in history within which as a woman, a Jew, a lesbian, a feminist I am created and trying to create” (212). Rich is located through categories of classification and the “place on the map” she occupies. In her discussion of Rich’s work, Mary Eagleton concludes, “the body is subject to the whim of locations, imponderable twists of fate that lead to doom or survival” (305). Geography can be a life or death issue as World War II and more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East depict almost daily. The spaces we live in shape survival rates and strategies. Identities emerge, in part, in response to the physical conditions (positive or negative) we encounter. The places we occupy matter. Distinguishing between the influence of the locale on the individual and the

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influence of the individual on the locale is no easy process. J. R. R. Tolkien raises the issue in The Fellowship of the Rings: Sam Gangee, musing on the elves, observes, “whether they’ve made the land, or the land’s made them, it’s hard to say, if you take my meaning” (473). Indeed, the boundaries blur even in the non-fictional world. Navigating the literal terrain is an integral component in creating our identities. Physical locations can be catalysts for self-knowledge. Cather and Morrison utilize various landscapes as springboards for discovery and exploration. I would like to highlight two key scenes illustrating the importance of place in Cather’s and Morrison’s depiction of identity. The protagonist of O Pioneers! has a “new consciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it . . .” (47). It is a recognition of her emotional investment in the country. A slightly different but equally moving discovery springs from Baby Suggs’ relocation in Beloved. Knowing little about her scattered children and even less about herself, she lacks the “map to discover what she was like. . . . [but] when she stepped foot on free ground . . . she saw with clarity . . . and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat” (140–1). Alexandra Bergson and Baby Suggs seemingly have little more than sex in common. Alexandra is a white woman, strong in body (indeed she is described as an Amazon), surrounded by family on land their father has left them free of debt. Baby Suggs is a freed slave whose body has been broken by forced labour, her family is scattered and shattered, her last remaining son has bought her her freedom, but himself remains a slave, and her home is derived from the charity of white abolitionists. Decidedly different life experiences, and yet, there are remarkable similarities in the excerpts. Each woman discovers a new awareness of the natural world which in turn leads to a recognition of her own heart. Their geographic journeys—Alexandra’s trip to gauge the potential of other farming locations and Baby Suggs’ movement from the plantation to free land—provide both women with the maps to orient themselves. Prior to these moments neither Alexandra nor Baby Suggs has had the leisure to contemplate her own place in the world. Opening themselves to the influence of the natural settings, the women are at last able to locate themselves in their environments. Identity and geography became personally intertwined in the “lives” of Alexandra Bergson and Baby Suggs. Another factor in determining identity is the audience. “‘Identity,’ though ostensibly a noun,” suggests Zygmunt Bauman, “behaves like a verb . . .” (19). It is an active operation, or, as Vaclav Havel deems it, “an accomplishment, a particular work, a particular act.”4 It is necessarily incomplete and ongoing. Maureen Whitebrook posits identity as expressing “something

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of one’s self . . . for public consumption . . .” (6). Identity is selective, fragmentary. It is also intensely adaptable, she continues, needing to allow “that that expression may need to be modified by the reaction of others” (6). Cather and Morrison depict the flexible nature of identity in The Song of the Lark and Song of Solomon. Thea Kronborg, while a child, believes “public opinion could be placated” by mimicking mainstream behaviours (111). She alters her behaviour to accommodate the expectations of others; it is a feeble attempt to escape detection. Pilate Dead diminishes herself as a tactical maneuver. Bailing her nephew out of jail, she becomes “Louise Beaver and Butterfly McQueen;” she even appears to be shorter (205). Pilate “shrinks” herself, sacrificing her dignity and pride in order to attain her goal. Identity is an interactive process which is, to a large extent, shaped for, and by, the spectators. The performances may occur on several levels. They may involve appearance, public practices, or language use; the aim is to convey a particular persona or identity to others. Identity performance can therefore be a strategic act; it can defy or defuse, conceal or confirm. Willa Cather and Toni Morrison clearly recognized the potential for self-creation in the act of self-naming. Named Willela after an aunt, Cather rechristened herself Willa. It was the first in a series of relabellings: her middle name Love (for the doctor who delivered her) was transformed to Lova and finally replaced with Sibert in “recognition” of her namesake (so named by Willa herself ) William Seibert (the change in spelling should be noted— Cather subtly fashions her own identity). Biographical information on Morrison suggests her name shift was a slight one: Chloe Anthony Wofford became Toni Morrison after her marriage (and subsequent divorce). John N. Duvall reveals that the correct name was Chloe Ardelia Wofford— Anthony/Toni is in fact a fiction. Linking Morrison’s “gesture of authorial self-fashioning” to that of Cather, Duvall proposes that “as for Cather, authorship for Morrison seems to be in part a masculine activity” (35, 51). The other side of the coin is that in stepping into the “male” territory indicated by their chosen names, Cather and Morrison sought to challenge gender assumptions about identity. Self-identification is thus an exercise in (artistic) aggression as opposed to a concession on authorial authority. In point of fact, both Cather and Morrison retain feminine first names—Willa and Toni, not William or Tony—which undermine Duvall’s suppositions about authorship as a “masculine activity.” Artistic control was a grave concern for Cather in particular. The power she continues to exert over scholars who would like to utilize her private letters is well-documented. More insidious perhaps, has been Cather’s manipulation of the story of her “origins.” The widely quoted assertion that the

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formative years of a writer’s life are eight to fifteen camouflages Cather’s southern beginnings. Identity—at least “officially”—becomes an act of omission in Cather’s hands. An anecdote from her southern childhood reveals that Cather recognized the subversive power of performing identity early on. She is reported to have told an old, patronizing judge: “I’se a dang’ous nigger, I is!” The incident suggests both an awareness of racial difference and a willingness to break from conventions via a startling stance. Self-definition serves as a statement of rebellion; Cather vehemently articulates her opinion of the judge’s perception of her. CONNECTING THE PIECES: IDENTITY FORMATION AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION THROUGH STORY-TELLING The act of self-construction is a crucial part of the development of identity; so too is the process of connection. “Self-designation,” concludes Priscilla L. Walton, is empowering; “to say is to assert, and to resist the broad label placed upon one by society at large” (133). Pride in “difference,” in connections to the non-mainstream groups, enhances an individual’s self-worth while defusing his/her isolation. Language functions as a site of resistance, of connection, and of potential liberation; by its very nature it requires an affiliation (however tenuous) with a community. “Inhabiting a language,” theorizes Ermarth, “means inhabiting a reality, and that so-called ‘reality’ . . . changes with the language” (410). The possibility of transformation lies in the material itself. “It is in language that people constitute themselves as subjects,” proposes Catherine Belsey (47). Speaking one’s story and hearing the stories of others is more than mere entertainment in this context; they are survival strategies.5 Textual space is as vital to identity formation as is geographic space. Story telling as an identification process is an ambiguous activity. Selfediting or self-censorship can obfuscate as much as it can explicate. Awareness of the audience (whether supportive or hostile) distorts the attempt at communication; narratives of identity can therefore shift over time and reshape themselves to suit specific situations. Counterstories—defined by Hilde Lindemann Nelson as “the cluster of histories, anecdotes, and other narrative fragments . . . [which] resist an oppressive identity . . .”—are vehicles of defiance and a means of insisting on recognition (6). Cathy Moses utilizes a stronger term for these “alternative” narratives—dissenting fictions. They “focus on identities forged in struggle,” on “the materiality of the excluded, of the marginalized body in history and in resistance struggles” (12, 3). Story telling is a political act; it reinforces both individual and collective identities.

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It is an insistence on subjectivity and a demand for the inclusion of multiple voices/identities in the collective narrative.6 Stories are powerful tools for recording and recognizing histories which might otherwise be lost. They serve to protect and propagate connections which are vulnerable to being severed. Morrison’s Song of Solomon encapsulates the effects of disconnection: tragic consequences develop from the disruption of the Dead family’s story. Slaveholders clearly discerned the positive effects of shared tales. “Both during the crossing and in the New World,” observes Iyunolu Folayan Osagie, “slaves who shared similar language ties” were separated (44). The exercise in linguistic isolation was an attempt to defuse the “narratives of resistance . . . kept alive in slaves’ shared memory of cultural stories” (44). Denying cultural and personal memories by imposing language barriers was a tactic for robbing the captives of their identities. Jennifer Fleischer interprets the system of Southern slavery as an insidious “assault on each slave’s memory, a crucial basis of each person’s sense of self and reality” (27). Eradicating a collective base of knowledge disorients both the first set of victims and the subsequent generations. A pivotal resource for reinforcing identity is “lost” precisely when it is most needed. The process of stripping the slave of his/her humanity is an effective tactic for perpetuating the system of slavery. “Objects” cannot assert identity, nor can they insist upon basic human rights. It is a lesson in cruelty and propaganda graphically employed by the Nazis in World War II. The practice of slavery and the pursuit of the “Final Solution” had disturbingly similar effects on the identities of their victims. Film-maker France Akerman explains how the “repressed histories” of concentration camp survivors “returned to haunt the second generation . . . because they didn’t tell us about that past, because they didn’t pass it down to us, what they did pass down was . . . this sense of uprootedness” (Bergstrom, 98). In the silence, a gaping void is created. Again, the discontinuity distorts the identities of those who experience the denial first-hand and those who encounter its aftermath. Unable to access the oral histories of her parents and their communities, Akerman “searched for a false memory, a kind of imaginary, reconstructed memory rather than the truth . . .” (Bergstrom, 98). The need for knowledge, even if unreliable, is compelling. Resurrecting the past is a vital (and revitalizing) task for all victims of oppression. Recovering memory is a restatement of subjectivity. Landscapes of memory surface in many of Cather’s and Morrison’s novels; they connect (in some cases re-connect) characters with lost or forgotten experiences necessary for identity formation. Authors of slave narratives in particular, concludes Fleischer, “cross over the threshold of visibility into cultural memory

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[through their narratives], they effectively steal themselves back . . .” (3). While “steal” is a troubling choice—it implies the unlawful removal of a lawful possession—Fleischer’s recognition that identity can be re-established through story telling is perceptive. Collective stories provide a context for individual remembrances. “Corporate memory,” defined by Elizabeth Rauh Bethel as “the memories of families, of communities, and of generations,” affords “critical evaluation and reinterpretation to the individualized experience . . .” (vii). Meaning is enhanced by knowledge of similar or shared circumstances. Studies in social psychology “suggest that group identity is fundamental to the construction of self-identity,” summarizes Osagie (24). The need for a connection with members of a sympathetic group is particularly intense for oppressed or marginalized individuals. While the goals and identity of the collective may differ from those of the person, there is a reassuring strength in numbers. The pursuit of a “counter collective memory”—a recognition of the missing groups in Maurice Halbwachs’ term—is not simply an exercise in “feeling better.” It is a necessary step in establishing identity. The formulation of “remembrance communities,” observes Odile Jansen, expanding upon Halbwachs’ work, is a common trait of “groups with a weak power status” whose “memories and narratives are like the undercurrents of a river within the dominant collective memory” (37). Neither entirely silenced nor completely subsumed by the mainstream “narrative,” these remembrance communities afford much needed respite from the assault of an “official” story which ignores, if not denies, the possibility of their existence. “History,” asserts Robert Young, “is the realm of violence and war; it constitutes another form by which the other is appropriated into the same” (15). Accommodation is not the practice of history. Young concludes, “for the other to remain other it must not derive its meaning from history but must instead have a separate time which differs from historical time” (15). The danger in historical appropriation is the loss of any identity which counters the “norm.” Memory, or rather its suppression, argues Ernest Renan, “is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation. . . . the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common and also that they have forgotten many things” (11). Denial and distortion of facts, Renan contends, are a necessary part of the growth of a nation. The formation of America is frequently represented through the use of birth imagery. The myth of an empty land nurtured into life has a strong emotional and artistic resonance. It has little or no factual support; the land was not unpeopled, nor was it free to be claimed by the settler willing to “civilize” it. The removal of Native Americans, Mike Fischer insists, “was seen as

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a sine qua non for successful white settlement” (31). Accommodating the existing inhabitants did not mesh with the drive to establish a “new” country. The history of settlement has been sanitized. Building communities, Marilyn R. Chandler observes, “meant suppressing the guilt attached to violent expropriation of land . . .” (1). Romanticizing the dwindling tribes was a widespread tactic; the phrase “Vanishing American” was deliberately misleading. “The Indians did not simply vanish,” notes Janis P. Stout, “the process was not nearly so innocuous as that. But the notion became widely accepted because it so soothed the national conscience” (158). Knowledge of the violent origins of America was (and in many ways still is) too disconcerting to face. Recontextualizing the “process” of the country’s development fulfilled a psychological need of its new inhabitants. Birthing a nation is another means of circumventing the violent destruction of the indigenous peoples. It too operates on the premise that there existed only raw materials for a country and not a “recognizable” country. In Birthing A Nation: Gender, Creativity and the West in American Literature, Susan J. Rosowski proposes a provocative reading of Henry David Thoreau’s landmark text Walden. She asserts that “Thoreau shaped his sojourn in nature into the female version of creation demanded by the American challenge to give birth to a nation” (6). As evidence Rosowski cites the fact that two years, two months, and two days are compressed into one year with two distinct parts: “the first is a brief prefatory period of three months during which Thoreau accomplishes conventionally male pioneer tasks: he clears the land, hews timber, and constructs a cabin. The second consists of his nine months’ residency, and it culminates in multiple births—of spring, of himself as a writer, and of a new nation” (6). Thoreau “births” a nation through his writing—the positive interaction with nature obscures the historical facts of land appropriation (Thoreau does not appropriate the land on a literal level but does so on a literary level)—and peoples it—out of his experience is born the mythical American man: self-sufficient, at ease in his environment, and a perceptive philosopher. The “American Dream” has become a trite phrase, but its allure inspired many a migration. “America as both locale and dream,” note Werner Sollors and Maria Diedrich, “was nonexistent in the African cosmology” (4). The first Africans came, not as pioneers, but as prisoners and property. It was a decidedly different experience of the new country for the slave than for the European immigrant. Sollors and Diedrich emphasize the fact that “whereas Columbus conquered ‘new’ lands for Europeans, thus increasing their mobility and freedom and providing them with new perspectives, the African diaspora stands for the end of freedom, for the loss of perspec-

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tives . . .” (5). For an immigrant (whatever the motivation for relocation), the change in location serves as an escape (whether from something, or to something); possibility and hope are evoked by the concept of “America.” For the captive, enforced relocation is a movement from freedom to imprisonment; the reality of the brutal journey and the conditions of slavery prevent the individual from “recognizing” America as a “land of possibility.” Traditionally, the myth of America has not had room for this “alternative” reality. To insist on the existence of alternative memories, to refuse to “forget,” is to challenge the foundation of the nation. Exposing the structural supports of history-mis-remembering, forced forgetting—opens up a space of possibility. It is in effect a way of expanding “borders.” Multiplicity of identity destabilizes fixed notions of national identity. It can be an invigorating and/or terrifying journey. The new territory is spacious enough to accommodate multiple narratives, thereby extending the national story in the process. Willa Cather and Toni Morrison have been active participants in this literary expansionism. Rejecting the restrictive expectations frequently imposed upon American writers, each author embraces her own vision of story telling and “appropriate” subject matter; the results are bodies of fiction rich in details of uniquely American life experiences and landscapes. SHARED TERRITORIES: DISTINCTIVE YET SIMILAR TECHNIQUES A common interest in issues of identity and space take Cather and Morrison over a great deal of similar terrain. Starting from personal geographic touchstones (frequently, but by no means exclusively, the prairie and the southwest for Cather and the midwest for Morrison) the two create landscapes which feature immensity and intimacy. The novels reveal a shared interest in the emotional and psychological effects of landmarks. Multiple and interconnected landscapes add depth to the already evocative and provocative stories. Dreamscapes and geometrical nightmares are interjected through startling visual effects—a distorted tree in Death Comes For the Archbishop, a freefloating door/window in Paradise—while sensory reminders trigger shadowscapes—music in The Song of the Lark, ginger in Song of Solomon. Forays into the geography of memory further illustrate the complexity of space. Places, in the fiction of Cather and Morrison, are multilayered, having both visual/tangible aspects and imaginative/ethereal attributes. Energy and movement characterize their representations of the physical environment; landscape takes on a personality of its own. Moving within and outside the

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traditional depiction of the garden, the country versus city dynamic, and the sexualized landscape, both authors redefine and expand the places open to women. They play with the expectations raised by such symbols. Situating their characters in naturally occurring womb/rooms (caves, caverns, nests, and bowers), houses, and the larger physical and spiritual communities, Cather and Morrison imply that both natural and constructed, open and enclosed spaces are important factors in the shaping of identity. Critics have approached Cather and Morrison—separately—from a multitude of directions. Their works have been examined in terms of style, language, imagery, and literary influences; feminists, historians, linguists and even television personalities (specifically Oprah Winfrey) have sought to decipher their meanings. My interest lies in the treatment of humanmade and naturally occurring shelters, the representation of the landscape—both natural and human (physical and social settings)—how the spaces and places they occupy are reflected in (and reflect) specific characters, and perhaps most significantly, the ways in which “home” and “landscape” interrelate in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. Shared areas of concern, for both critics of Cather and Morrison and the writers themselves, include: the significance of the home,7 notions of confinement and movement,8 the relationship between identity and place,9 the importance of the land,10 gendered landscapes,11 and gendered responses to nature.12 While the pair has received attention in these categories individually, openings exist for critical inquiry examining Cather and Morrison together, and re-examining conclusions about single novels in the context of a larger body of work. UNRAVELING THE THEORY OF SPACE: ESTABLISHING COMMON GROUND While my emphasis will first and foremost be upon the novels themselves, I will draw upon theories of geography, psychology, social anthropology, philosophy, architecture and ecofeminism. “Space,” “place,” and “landscape” are potentially slippery terms which are often interchanged, but are in fact quite different. A brief survey of the definitions of these terms would be a useful prelude to a statement of their scope within the parameters of this project. Discovering common theoretical ground is necessary to appreciate the uncommon literary “ground” Cather and Morrison explore, and create, in their fiction. Space in particular has been approached from a variety of perspectives. Gaston Bachelard specifically concentrates on “felicitous space,” emphasizing

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“the human value of the sorts of space that may be grasped, that may be defended against adverse forces, the space we love” (xxxi).13 Within his very particular framework Bachelard contends that “space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor” (xxxii). The space itself is altered by the interaction with the individual. It is a measurable entity (“estimates of the surveyor”) but a malleable one (“seized upon by the imagination”). Bachelard expands the concept of space to incorporate the experience of the individual, but only experiences of a positive nature. Refusing to address the existence of “hostile space” creates a noticeable void in Bachelard’s philosophy, as does his assertion that the “space of hatred and combat can only be studied in the context of impassioned subject matter and apocalyptic images” (xxxii). The discussion of the representation of space in the fiction of Cather and Morrison in the subsequent chapters of this study reveals that the “combat” can, and does, take a more subtle form. The experience of space (particularly, but not exclusively) for female characters all too often incorporates the negative. Hostile space must be taken into account in any comprehensive analysis. Binaries are in fact commonplace in theories of space. Henri Lefebvre identifies “ideal” and “real” spaces. “Perceptual space” and “lived space” are E. Relph’s terms for categorizing space. Claudine Herrmann separates physical and mental spaces. The list of critics employing the “either/or” approach is a lengthy one. While the labels may vary, the implication of an oppositional relationship lingers. Classifying by categories suggests rigid divisions, but the possibility of interpenetrability subtly undermines such a position. The spaces, although linguistically exclusive, are in fact mutually dependent—each is defined against the other and the “boundaries” frequently blur. Penetrability and accessibility are central concerns in the distribution and maintenance of space. Issues of access and exclusion, control and defenselessness, surface repeatedly in the varied spaces Cather and Morrison include in their fiction. The complexity of space is evident in the multiple definitions Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language provides. In short, space is both “a lapse of time between two points in time” and “a specified quantity of time.” It is “a part marked off or bounded in some way” and “an unobstructed area (as of land).” Space is “the shaped volume defined by architectural forms (as walls, roofs, courts, and wings)” and the “part of space unaltered by the removal of a material object.” It is “the region beyond the earth’s atmosphere . . . all of the universe beyond the solar system” and “a blank interval between words or lines in written or printed matter.”

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The formal definition reinforced (and expanded) my sense of the term. In my reading space has generally been a rather vague, abstract term suggesting open territory, free from human development, more to do with nature than structures. Further study has emphasized the ambiguity of the word; the prevalence of binaries (implied and/or explicit) complicates the act of definition. Inside/outside, mental/social, perceptual/existential, psychological/physical—these pairings speak to the enigmatic quality of space. They suggest (but do not necessarily sustain) contradiction, opposition. My use of the term incorporates each of these couplings, but emphasizes their interconnectedness; categories are useful organizational features (particulary when dealing with such a slippery concept as space), but the neat divisions they imply cannot, and do not, exist. The other problem with divisions of space into pairs is the air of “inevitability” suggested by the technique. Identifying “natural” distinctions in effect camouflages their use as a tactic of control and containment. “Place,” at least on the surface, does lend itself to compact and concise categories. Drawing once again upon the authority of Webster’s Dictionary, place is deemed the “physical environment [or] surroundings;” “ a building or locality used for a specific purpose;” “ a particular region or center of population;” “an individual dwelling or estate;” “ a fortified military post;” “ a particular portion of a surface; specific locality; spot;” “ relative position in the social scale; degree of prestige;” “a proper or designated niche;” “an available seat or accommodation.” Space is an expansive term; place denotes the particular, the specific within space. Place is measured off space. It is often distinguished by a specific use or purpose. Place can indicate structures or physical geography, or the position of a person or a group of persons. It thus names, classifies, and, seemingly, contains through definition. Place can create security (protective enclosures) or a sense of confinement (“protective” enclosures). There is a human element to place; in the act of construction, of naming, physical geography is humanized.14 Landscape, like place, incorporates a human element. In its strictest definition, according to Webster’s Dictionary, landscape is a “picture representing a view of natural scenery (as fields, hills, forests, water);” “ the art of depicting such scenery;” “the surface of the earth; the land forms of a region in the aggregate especially as produced or modified by geological forces;” “ a portion of land or territory that the eye can comprehend in a single view including all the objects so seen;” “ vista, prospect.” As a verb landscape means “to make a landscape of; to improve by landscape architecture or gardening.” Landscape, in this sense, begins with nature, but it is a natural setting which has been “improved” (some might argue distorted) whether by

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pruning shears or paintbrush. There are two components to landscape: the viewed (the “natural”) and the viewer (complete with whatever emotional and intellectual baggage he or she brings to the interpretation). A broader connotation emphasizes the surrounding features (natural and/or constructed) of a particular setting. The details the eye takes in comprise the landscape; it is a wide terrain reduced to a “manageable” view. Physical surroundings and human social practices are key factors in the definitions of landscape. D. W. Meinig proposes that “landscape is related to, but not identical with, nature” (2). More than the physical environment is incorporated in the term landscape; it is Meinig’s assertion that “any landscape is composed not only of what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads” (34). The individual viewer shapes the landscape based upon his or her perceptions. Detached observation of the vista is an impossibility; associations and expectations infuse our interpretations. Nor can personal responses be entirely separated from collective ones; socialization is an inescapable factor in our modes of reasoning. Personal and cultural meaning are imposed on, and reflected in, the landscapes we encounter and create. The term landscape has been expanded to incorporate such modifiers as: economic, social, political, literary, and critical; in the process the initial link to the natural world has been weakened (and in some cases, obliterated). Sharon Zukin’s work on cultural landscapes is useful; specifically the recognition that systems of power lie behind the structures imposed on physical geography, and that the landscapes of the “powerful” and the “powerless” both create the panorama. My use of the terms landscape, place and space recognizes the hidden power structures that lurk behind the standard connotations. Issues of definition and counter-definition, of access to and control of, and the far-reaching implications of the division of space, place, and landscape are all facets of my approach to the fiction of Cather and Morrison. One of the conventional representations of space that Cather and Morrison work with, and against, is gendered space. The assumption of a division of space along gender lines has a variety of sources; one particularly insidious approach links woman with nature. Feminists, Gillian Rose proposes, “have discussed the distinction between Nature and Culture at some length, because they see it as one of those oppositions which are heavily gendered and power-ridden” (68). If woman is viewed as being close to nature, such a model concludes, then she is excluded from culture. The intellectual, political and social implications of such a simplistic equation are staggering. “Appropriate” places based upon gender are reinforced by citing the “self-evident facts.” To argue against the binary is to confront a system of beliefs

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about biological differences, social practices, and theories of identity with a weighty history behind it. Simone de Beauvoir’s landmark text, The Second Sex, (1949), courageously tackles the theoretical approach which asserts that the masculine is associated with culture while the feminine is associated with nature. Man, as a result of this rationalization, is able to dominate and manipulate both woman and environment. It is a dichotomy which she opposes, but powerfully articulates. Woman, a negation as the result of the male subject setting “himself up as the essential as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object,” is a blank space to be imposed upon (xx). Beauvoir challenges the definition of “woman as womb” pointing out the (seemingly) obvious fact that man too has glands that “secrete hormones” (xviii). Perhaps most importantly, Beauvoir questions the implicit power dynamic which stems from the explicit hierarchy of man being aligned with culture and woman with nature. She notes man’s troubled relationship with nature: . . . we know what ambivalent feelings Nature inspires in man. He exploits her, but she crushes him, he is born of her and dies in her; she is the source of his being and the realm that he subjugates to his will; Nature is a vein of gross material in which the soul is imprisoned, and she is the Supreme reality, she is contingence and Idea, the finite and the whole. . . . (162)

The exchange between man and nature/woman is a violent one in Beauvoir’s assessment. Combat seems to characterize the interaction and aggression is not limited to one side. Superiority and fear mingle in the masculine equation “woman equals nature;” containment and resistance collide behind the illusion of control. Forty-two years later, Elizabeth Wilson theorizes that the binary Beauvoir identified persists: “mapped on to the opposition of city and country, culture and nature, is male and female: man is culture and woman is the earth” (17).15 The division has achieved self-sustaining status. It is presented as reflecting the “natural” order; spatial systems are thus descriptive, not prescriptive. “Gender systems,” Alcoff adamantly asserts, are the result of power struggles, not nature (21). It is a conflict with a long history. The mind/body split Beauvoir and countless other feminist scholars16 have sought to refute has almost a timeless quality.17 Time and scholarly tomes have created an air of inevitability in the mind/body, male/female dichotomy.

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Woman as body and man as mind is problematic, not to mention a gross over-simplification. Reconfiguring this line of reasoning, HollyYoungbear-Tibbetts casts the connection between woman and her physiology in a much more favourable light. She asserts that . . . irrespective of the cultural conditionings . . . Whatever reality may be, our human delimination to three-dimensional life draws its spatial intelligence from the lessons of that initial intimate maternal landscape as well as subsequent landscapes of individual and collective experience. (32)

The female form introduces us to the tactile realm; these initial lessons colour succeeding geographic experiences and, more specifically, our sense of the world. The maternal body, in Youngbear-Tibbetts’ assessment, is a powerful paradigm and an invaluable source of information. It is the centre of geographic knowledge and the origin of personal knowledge (understanding the distinction between “her” and “I” is the first step in recognizing subjectivity). The identification of body and landscape is, however, often read in a more negative light. It is an equation which lends itself to exploitation.18 Physical locations are frequently read (and written) as gendered. The world is, at least symbolically, divided into masculine and feminine spaces. A myriad of voices has shaped the discourse on gendered space; one of the more pervasive has been that of Sigmund Freud—both through his own texts and by echoes in the compositions of countless others (many who reject his psychoanalytical theories nonetheless utilize his comments on spatial imagery). Freud’s work on dream imagery specifically draws upon biological (and visual) differences between the sexes to account for psychological and emotional differences. Female genitals, he contends, are represented by boxes, chests, pockets, ships, churches, and jewel-cases; whereas sticks, umbrellas, posts, and trees are substituted for the male genitals. Male organs are (not too surprisingly) projectiles. Female organs appear as locations— containers or vessels. Sexual differences are anchored in concrete objects in Freud’s theory of dream imagery. Emil A. Gutheil continues in this vein in his exploration of dream symbols. Substitutes for the phallus include: an “umbrella (opening signifies erection), hat, necktie, sail, flagpole, key, fishing pole, fountain pen . . . all types of rifles, guns, swords, knives . . .” (53). A “bag, wound, nest, cavern, ring, target, muff, door (front door), window, pot, box, cage . . . drawer” can read as representing the vagina (56). Putting aside the highly subjective nature of dream analysis as a diagnostic tool, even a novice interpreter can

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recognize the mimetic relationship between projectiles or (structural) erections and the penis, and containers or receptacles and the vagina. Visually, anatomy and article blend, but such approaches presume a simplistic equation—man acts and woman passively receives—which masks complex issues and interactions.19 It is precisely the complexities of space and identity which Cather and Morrison explore in their novels. While the gendered division of space most frequently reads as a simplistic equation—for example, masculine equals public, feminine equals private—the same cannot be said for the depiction of specifically maternal spaces. Womb imagery abounds in literature and theory, and ambiguity frequently surrounds its symbolism. Simultaneously life-giving and life-threatening, not surprisingly, it is often a source of anxiety. Beauvoir interprets the womb, “secret and sealed like a tomb” (165), as particularly problematic for men: . . . many young men adventure not without anxiety into the secret dark of woman, once more feeling childhood’s terror at the threshold of a cave or tomb, its fright at jaws, scythes, traps: they fancy that the swollen penis may be caught in the mucus sheath. (429)

Emasculation, infantilization, the mystery (and dread) of the unknown— woman (or more specifically womb) as Other is a terrifying territory in Beauvoir’s analysis. It is a space which defies man’s control. In the process it exposes the fragile basis of his “superior” position. The scientific drive to master problems of fertility and discover a means of recreating life outside the womb are perhaps attempts to deal “rationally” with the terror Beauvoir describes. If only visually, the test tube and the Petridish recreate the angle/curve polarity.20 Victor Turner offers a similar assessment of the womb; he links it to liminality. The womb, like liminality, represents a state “betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (95). It is a space in which identity is both lost and created. In her analysis of Colette’s Le Toutounier Ann Leone Philbrick also reads the womblike space as an enigmatic threshold which is “at once regenerative and smothering.” It is the “refusal to lock these forces into a clear didactic,” Philbrick contends, which results in the “ambiguity of familiar spaces that affirm and undo identity” (32). The use of womb imagery in literature is readily identifiable, but recognition has by no means decreased the ambiguity or mystery of this specialized spatial symbol. Contemplative site and prison, the womb is both beginning and end (and frequently beginning

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again). Maternal spaces represent the power of regeneration and termination; they hold both a promise and a threat. Rejecting the either/or insistence of categories like public/private, exterior/interior, Cather and Morrison expand the places open to women. They do not negate the importance of the home or sheltering spaces; in fact they honour them. However, they also acknowledge the significance of the larger world—natural spaces, community, sacred sites—and accordingly situate their characters in environments replete with variety, contrasting and conflicting spaces, and spaces that challenge the very core of identity. The expansive visions of Cather and Morrison push against the boundaries of gendered spaces. Images, not of flight or evasion, but connection dominate their fiction; connections which are frequently painful, but ultimately fulfilling, and above all, necessary. RECONTEXTUALIZING PERSONAL TERRITORIES On the surface Willa Cather and Toni Morrison seem to share little more than gender and career choice. One was born in Virginia and claimed that her formative years were spent in Nebraska, the other in Ohio; Cather died in 1947, Morrison is a contemporary writer. Cather was childless and is frequently identified as a lesbian while Morrison is a divorced mother of two sons. Cather was white and Morrison is African American. Biographical differences reveal only part of the picture; in many ways, literary similarities bridge the distance created by time, race, and personal experiences. Both Cather and Morrison received university educations, were teachers, worked in the publishing industry. Most significantly, both reveal a gift for writing lyrical and evocative prose. In point of fact the literary lives of the two authors do intersect—at least briefly—in Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Referring to Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Morrison reads Cather as working “out and toward the meaning of female betrayal as it faces the void of racism. She may not have arrived safely, like Nancy, but to her credit she did undertake the dangerous journey” (28). Acknowledging the attempt rather than the result—the tone is one of grudging respect—Morrison confirms that she is familiar with at least one of Cather’s novels. A discussion of the representation of space in the writings of Cather and Morrison would be incomplete without an examination of the intersection of race and space. Spatial divisions clearly occur along multiple lines, but race is a key determinant in the experience of space in America. While, as Gayle Wald theorizes, “racial, class and gender discourses are mutually

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reinforcing and inextricably linked” they cannot be collapsed into one another (9). The experiences Morrison documents are based upon very different histories from those of Cather’s characters. Enforced relocation and objectification leave a unique legacy. Emigration in the pursuit of a better life carries its own fears and hardships, but the very journey suggests a degree of autonomy (indentured servitude is another matter, but it too holds out the hope of freedom). Land ownership in America was a mark of freedom for emancipated slaves. European immigrants to America must also have viewed the land as an emblem of personal independence, but their travels to a new land were (at least on the surface) a matter of choice (albeit one shaped by a need to escape pogroms, poverty, and personal persecution) as opposed to being the result of captivity. Achieving the goal of land ownership was nonetheless a decidedly different process for white and black farmers. The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, at least theoretically, cleared the way for white settlers to earn their land through five years of cultivation. In practice, as Henry Nash Smith observes, “between the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 and 1890, only 372,659 entries were perfected. At most, two millions of persons . . . could have benefited . . . during a period when the population of. . . . the Western states within which most of the homesteading took place, [increased] by more than ten millions” (190). Although by no means a wide-scale success, the Homestead Act nevertheless offered opportunity and encouragement to white settlers. While the free-soil mentality rejected the extension of slavery into the territories, it also resisted the presence of black farmers. The “image of the yeoman with which the farmers of the Northwest identified themselves was a free-soil symbol” proposes Smith. He concludes, “the classless society of the fee-simple empire had no place for the Negro” (173). The Homestead Act did not address the ramifications of slavery although it did deter its spread. The invitation to the frontier(s) implied egalitarianism, but reinforced racial boundaries along spatial lines. Historical differences in the experience of space echo in present day spatial divisions. Despite social, economic, political and geographical inequities, Morrison articulates the distinction between black and white perceptions of space as (at least imaginatively) favouring the black individual. She addresses the intersection of race, space and gender in an interview with Claudia Tate: It seems to me there’s an enormous difference in the writing of black and white women. Aggression is not as new to black women as it is to white women. Black women seem able to combine the nest and the

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adventure. They don’t see conflicts in certain areas as do white women. They are both safe harbor and ship; they are both inn and trail. We, black women, do both. We don’t find these places, these roles, mutually exclusive. (122)

Race supersedes gender as the central factor in Morrison’s equation. Identity is linked to interior and exterior locations. It is adaptable to, and can accommodate the demands of each setting. Racism inadvertently creates a (potentially) empowering space. “Black men and women,” Kimberlé Crenshaw observes, “live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations which racism operates simultaneously to deny . . .” (222). For black women, not being tied to the limiting definition of “lady” can permit the fuller experience of being a woman. Morrison recontextualizes the process of exclusion: white women are denied access to the broadest range of practices. It is striking, however, that she refers to women, regardless of race, in spatial terms: nest, harbor, and inn. Her assertion that black women have the adroitness to combine what are generally posited as oppositions—adventure and safety, stasis and movement—is quite provocative; Morrison claims an ability to envision and create a place outside the traditional gendered division of space. I believe this assertion is an accurate assessment of her fiction, but question her exclusion of white women writers from this process of defining an alternative territory. Both Toni Morrison and Willa Cather, as this study will demonstrate (particularly the final chapter), create a hybrid space which challenges standard representations of gendered space. LOOKING BEYOND BIOGRAPHY: CREATIVE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CATHER AND MORRISON Despite differences in life experience, the two authors share strong literary similarities. An examination of their theories and practices reveals that the seeming distance between the women is, to a large extent, creatively bridged by the art they generate. In their own fiction and comments on the criteria for effective writing Cather and Morrison occupy a great deal of common ground. Each novelist demands active participation from her readers; the imaginative involvement of the audience is integral to the creative process. Cather describes the design of the text as being pared down: “whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it the verbal mood . . .” (On Writing, 41).

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Implication and suggestion rather than overloading the novel with unnecessary details, Cather theorizes, are the best methods for writing an effective story. The approach implies a confidence in the ability (and willingness) of the reader to flesh out the skeletal details and to name “the thing not named.” Morrison’s expectations are equally high: “my writing expects, demands participatory reading, and that I think is what literature is supposed to do. My language has to have holes and spaces so the reader can come into it.”21 The creative process of the text does not end with the printed word on the page. What the novel does and does not contain, what language can and cannot convey, are all catalysts for the reader. Meaning is conveyed through, and discovered in, a variety of forms: implications, allusions, patterns of imagery, and symbolically charged settings among other sources. PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE: AN OUTLINE OF THE PROJECT Having claimed my territory, it would be useful to provide a map of the terrain I will be covering. Chapter Two: “Background Foregrounded: The Significance of Setting or ‘Don’t Skip the Descriptive Bits,’” shifts into textual analysis with an eye towards illustrating the importance of place in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. Setting is crucial in the stories in this study. By exploiting the use of nature as an organizational feature, the natural world as “character,” and the humanized landscape, the link between identity and place is clarified. Layered landscapes—literal and literary, living and non-living, real and surreal—reinforce the complexities of space, place, and identity. The drive to locate the familiar in an unfamiliar terrain (particularly through the desire for comforting landmarks) provides insight into character formation. Naming is a tactic frequently employed in an effort to de-mystify an alien environment. Chapter Three: “Maneuvering Through the Maternal Landscape: Traditions, Tropes, and New Techniques,” moves from the general setting to the specifically sexualized landscape and tradition of gendered spaces. Efforts to familiarize natural spaces include approaching the territory as body—specifically as a female body ripe for male exploration and exploitation—and/or garden—domestication is also represented as a form of male conquest. Cather and Morrison reject such depictions of the land by exploring symbolically charged settings like the virgin land, the garden, the country/city opposition, and the landscape as body/body as landscape motif. Issues of autonomy complicate experiences of space and place, but the impulse to domesticate natural spaces is highlighted by both authors.

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From gendered landscapes and naturally occurring womb-rooms the analysis will turn to the concept of home in Chapter Four: “Home, Hearth and Harpies: Discovering a Space of One’s Own in the Domestic Sphere.” The naturalization of domestic places—home as an extension of nature—is crucial to the positive depictions of the home in the writings of Cather and Morrison. Womb-rooms as shelters/refuges and political spaces dominate the stories. Sites of (potential) connection, they are key elements in the formulation of identity. The complexities of the home—shelter can become prison—are explored and a redefinition of the home as a place of connection and mutual responsibility is asserted. The landscape of connection so prevalent in the novels is highlighted in Chapter Five: “‘This Way to the Egress:’ Exiting Thoughts on the Cartography of Connection.” The importance of the community—mainstream and communities of choice—in the development of identity is stressed in this section. Isolation is exposed as a dangerous path while genuine relationships offer the possibility of security and happiness. Sacred spaces—nature, the humanized natural world, and the spaces occupied by sacred symbols—assist in the quest for connection. The issue of whether or not interactions with the natural environment are gendered is addressed by Cather and Morrison. They play with expectations, challenging spatial models based upon hierarchies and rigid dichotomies. In the process a hybrid territory beyond the boundaries of masculine and feminine space emerges—a place between the angle and the curve.

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Background Foregrounded: The Significance of Setting or “Don’t Skip the Descriptive Bits”

Identity—individual and collective—is inseparable from setting. Whether it is a positive or negative influence, the environment must be acknowledged in any consideration of character. The diverse and seemingly unconnected physical terrains encountered in the texts of Cather and Morrison—prairie and plantation, desert and tropics, countryside and cityscape, Southwest and Midwest, North and South—speak to the tremendous richness of the American literary landscape. Immensity and intimacy are key features in the settings created by Cather and Morrison. Mythic material for provocative and enduring stories, the geography of America affords each author a crucial element of tale telling. Several distinct landscapes emerge in the works of Cather and Morrison: for Cather, the prairie and the Southwestern canyon country are often central locales (New York City, Quebec and Virginia also appear in her novels), while Morrison frequently incorporates the rural south, Midwestern towns, and northeastern cities. Personal landscapes provide fertile starting grounds for imaginative works. Their connections to specific places have furnished both Cather and Morrison with creative centres; the two are linked in that the geography of memory surfaces in their fiction and is “expressed in the language of space.”1 Fryer concentrates on the influence of the Southwest on Cather’s artistic voice: “Center implies circumference, a place in space. To find the center of one’s boundless desire, to give it form, is to begin in a space that is felicitous, one that frees the imagination. For Cather, the American Southwest was such a liberating space, one to which she returned, as to a touchstone” (Prairie Schooner, 29). It is a landscape which is recreated in several of 27

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Cather’s novels and short stories. It resonates with artistic and emotional significance. Fryer acknowledges that the Southwest is not Cather’s sole geographic influence, but offers a fairly compelling argument that it is the primary touchstone. While I wholeheartedly accept the imaginative importance of the Southwest in Cather’s fiction, I believe that her prairie and southern experiences must also be recognized as “felicitous” spaces which free the imagination. Much critical attention has been focused on the importance of Cather’s prairie years; her fictional representations of being relocated to this unique terrain (whether from Europe or the American South) have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives. Discussions of her Southern roots have been slower to surface; Cather herself dismissed her beginnings through her statement about the formative years of an artist (which coincide with her relocation to Nebraska). Southern influences can, however, be traced in several of her novels. Transplanted Southerners appear in My Antonia and A Lost Lady, and in Sapphira and the Slave Girl Cather returns to the land of her childhood. Judith Fetterley assumes a provocative position, arguing that Cather “could construct Nebraska as a subject for art precisely because she came to it at a certain age and as an outsider, an immigrant” (Romines, 13). A degree of detachment and an openness to new experiences accompanied the child’s move; they served the adult writer well. Familiar territory is a key factor in Toni Morrison’s fiction. Geography becomes an artistic element in the hands of a gifted writer. In an interview with Claudia Tate, Morrison speaks of her own geographic touchstone: “I am from the Midwest so I have a special affection for it. My beginnings are always there. No matter what I write, I begin there. I may abandon this focus at some point, but for now it’s the matrix for me” (119). The places experienced during her youth and maturation are linked to Morrison’s fictional process. Lorain, Ohio, specifically serves as the setting for The Bluest Eye, but its influence, Morrison asserts, surfaces in each of her works. Literary landscapes, in the fiction of Morrison and Cather, are infused with the emotional responses evoked by literal environments in the authors’ lives. The shapes, moods, and characters of these specific locales are woven into the fabric of the narratives. LITERARY LANDSCAPES: SUBSTANCE AND STYLE What might be dismissed as “mere” background in fiction, the physical setting of the story, is subtly foregrounded in the writings of Cather and Morrison. Open or natural spaces, the places where identity is honed, and the

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larger cultural landscape are key components. Each thread must be recognized in order to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the tales Cather and Morrison weave; a great deal of information is encoded in their landscapes. The bold and disturbing assertion of a former student—“editing out the descriptive bits saves time on reading”—reveals the mindset against which instructors and authors must all too often struggle. The assumption that details of landscape, whether it is natural or social, are mere “filler” obscures the manifold function of the unique environments which are meticulously (re)created in the novels in this study. A review of the term “pathetic fallacy”—”the attribution to natural objects of human capacities and feelings”—suggests one reason for not “pruning the greenery.” The term was introduced by John Ruskin in 1856 (Modern Painters, Volume III, Chapter 12). It was not a compliment. As the entry in A Glossary of Literary Terms observes, “as used by Ruskin—for whom ‘truth’ was a primary artistic criterion—the term was derogatory, since it applies to descriptions, not of the ‘true appearances of things to us,’ but of ‘the extraordinary, or false appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or contemplative fancy’” (129). Cather and Morrison do inject their landscapes with the “extraordinary,” “emotion,” and “contemplative fancy.” They implicitly reject Ruskin’s “objective truth,” offering instead their own versions of “truth” in representation.2 The judgment evident in Ruskin’s concept of the term is defied by Cather’s and Morrison’s evocative “attribution to natural objects of human capacities and feelings.” Infusing the natural environment with human sentiment or emotions (a tactic which stops short of complete personification) enhances the complexity of a story. The method can enrich both the style (adds a “poetic” or playful flavour to the prose) and the substance (contains a statement about human behaviours) of the work. In her study of Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo, Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall interprets the three artists as exploring “nature as a geography of the unconscious in which human forms and relationships masquerade as natural features and landforms” (3). The visual effect in their paintings is striking; shapes and colours, shadows and light prompt a re-evaluation of the connections between inner and outer landscapes. In the texts of Cather and Morrison, reading the language of the land expands the spoken and unspoken aspects of their tales. Pathetic fallacy, while now identified as a “neutral” term, carries with it a negative history.3 Another designation is needed to redeem this creative approach; humanized landscape seems to venture too far into the territory of personification. “Humanesque” terrain is perhaps a more accurate indicator of the lively and life-like geography found in the fiction in this study. A landscape

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that mirrors a character’s emotional state can be an evocative literary device; to dismiss its potential for expanding the levels of communication is shortsighted. Cather and Morrison do, however, range beyond this technique: nature is also utilized as an organizational feature; the environment itself becomes a “character” within the story; and the concept of identity is clearly connected to place in their fiction. Authors frequently draw upon nature, and more specifically the four seasons, as a structural device for their works of fiction. Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explicitly uses the cycle of the seasons. It is composed of a “Prologue” (a backward glance by the narrator), and four sections titled “Autumn,” “Winter,” “Spring” and “Summer.” The effect of the titles is shocking. Progression is implied, but not achieved. “There is no renewal for Pecola,” concludes Jan Furman, “in spring she is violated; by summer she is annihilated” (22). The structure of the novel speaks directly to the story itself. The use of natural processes contrasts disturbingly with the unnatural events in Pecola Breedlove’s life. Cather’s My Antonia links the narrative action to particular seasons. While chapter titles do not expressly identify the natural cycle, the descriptions of key events do incorporate specific seasons. Varying the use of nature as a means of shaping a story, Cather ties the structure of O Pioneers! directly to the development of the land. The first four parts of the novel trace the pioneer and prosperous phases of the Divide; the final section—“Alexandra”—reinforces the connection between the land and the central character. Each of the narratives I am discussing utilizes elements of nature and/or natural landscapes as a means of conveying information about particular characters and enhancing the richness of the story. Even in Morrison’s “city novel” Jazz and the city scenes in Cather’s The Song of the Lark, the underlying presence of the natural world is clearly noticeable. Landscapes of memory surface frequently in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. Whether triggered by external stimuli or consciously recalled, the geography of the past is irrevocably a part of the terrain of the present. “The past leaves its traces,” insists Lefebvre, “no space ever vanishes utterly . . .” (37, 164). In unexpected ways, the spaces of the past make themselves known in the spaces of the present. William James’s work on the sensation of place explores the “unarticulated affinities” between a person and a place (244). Seldom a conscious connection, to describe it James utilizes such terms as “psychic overtone” and “fringe” to indicate the intellectual distance of the individual from the emotional or non-intellectual significance of the particular space. It is a sensation or impression that hovers rather than an explicit statement of relations. “A tune, an odor, a flavor,” proposes James,

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“sometimes carry this inarticulate feeling” of familiarity (244). Seemingly unrelated elements are actually the components of an intricate web of connections. Recognition often occurs on a visceral level. Death Comes for the Archbishop contains a particularly striking example of an external factor conjuring up distant landscapes and long past times. The sound of the Angelus ringing carries Latour back to his lodgings in Rome. It is, as Deborah Williams aptly describes, “a series of echoing associations that come together to form a whole” (81). The strokes carry him even farther, to somewhere he has never been: “Jerusalem perhaps. . . .” (43). Latour accesses landscapes personally familiar, and familiar only through the teachings of his faith. New Mexico recedes as the spaces of remembrance surface and yet it is the bell rung in a Santa Fe church that inspires the imaginative (and historical) journey. The bell itself has a remarkable provenance. It is inscribed in Spanish and dated 1356 when it was pledged during the wars with the Moors (44). Latour’s reflection that the Spanish learnt silver work from the Moors disconcerts Father Joseph. It is Latour’s subsequent explanation for why the sound struck him as “oriental,” however, which scandalizes the simple priest: the Angelus is an adaptation of a “Moslem custom” introduced by the Templars (45). Father Joseph cannot face this element of the bell’s history; he closes his mind (and ear) to the concept. Latour’s perceptive hearing, however, detects the echoes of distant lands, cultures, and faiths behind the familiar sound. Distant and distinct geographic points on a map converge in Song of Solomon. A warm autumn night carries the scent of ginger on the air, linking Michigan with Africa. Haunting the dreams of sleepers and reshaping the thoughts of those who are awake, the African air is unexpectedly inspiring. It distorts dreams, and those who are awake have thoughts which are “both intimate and far away” (185). Responses are intensely individual: Milkman detects luxury while Guitar senses vengeance in the evening breeze. The inhabitants of the Southside have no personal memories of Africa, but the scent-laden air reaches their subconscious, collective memory much as the bells inspire a never-visited Jerusalem for Latour. Thoughts and activities are thus “both intimate and far away,” personal and distanced. The shadowscapes of Africa and Jerusalem enter the texts through external stimuli; these landscapes surface above, and then recede behind, the actual (physical) locations of the incidents. Music proves to be the trigger for Thea Kronborg’s journey, in The Song of the Lark, into the landscapes of the past. Listening to Dvorak’s symphony “From the New World” she is brought back to the familiar land of

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Laramie. In the music she intuitively discovers her own “sand hills” and “the immeasurable yearning of all flat lands” (174). Thea’s emotional response to the notes inspires the recreation of familiar territory—a feeling of home— and an unexperienced terrain. The places she has known merge with those she has never consciously encountered. So too, does time escape practical boundaries; Thea envisions a time which long precedes her experience. The music is evocative, summoning visual images from both a personal and a collective background. Layers of lands and experiences linger behind the chords, elevating mere emotional responses to identification of, and with, the larger world. Connecting personal experience with the life-lessons of humanity is a process Tom Outland must internalize in The Professor’s House. Living on the mesa, the isolated adventurer discovers the artifacts of a lost civilization. The presence of humans moves him; “the evidences of human labour and care” strikes Tom as a stirring message (173). The landscape holds the memory; it waits only to be discovered and deciphered. It is a painful, but essential task; understanding those who have existed before him is crucial to Tom’s development. In time, Tom himself will become a symbol of the landscape of the past. The Professor refers to the region as “Outland Country” and observes an “unusual background behind [Tom’s] shoulders . . .” (112). Man and mesa merge; the memory of Tom is sheltered in, and by, the land, not in the lab where he makes his portentous discovery. For Tom and the Professor, the geography of memory is both personal and historical. Recognition of the interaction of the past and present is particularly important for Americans, proposed Morrison in an interview in City Limits in 1988. She was concerned with the culture’s failure to come to terms with the past: “we live in a land where the past is always erased and America is the innocent future in which immigrants can come and start over, where the slate is clean.”4 Rejecting this sanitized version of history, Morrison’s fiction highlights the fact that the past must be acknowledged. It will not “stay in the past,” but intrudes in the present and threatens the future. Beloved is the most startling of Morrison’s explorations of the past/present link. “Here is no extended Proustian act of remembering a lost world with the help of a madeleine dipped in tea,” wryly observes Eusebio L. Rodrigues (62). The return of the murdered daughter obliterates any notion of separate epochs. Beloved becomes the living past, the lost daughter returned. She also embodies a past that was not personal. Ferguson’s observation that “as the baby daughter of a second-generation slave” Beloved’s memories represent a “displacement . . . backwards in time,” is quite perceptive (162). Cryptic recollections of the “other place” provide snapshots of life on

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the slave ships. Beloved carries a past that is not (directly) her own into a present in which her own existence is extremely tenuous. “Memory itself is understood as geographical space,” Weissberg writes of Morrison’s Beloved (115). Places of the past occupy both concrete and abstract space in the novel. They simultaneously exist in landscapes captured in memory and in the locations of the present. The geography of memory has a tangible presence in Sethe’s explanation of “rememory” to her daughter Denver: “places are still there . . . a house burns down, it’s gone, but the . . . picture . . . stays . . . out there, in the world . . .” (36). The physical structure may be destroyed, but the concept or essence of the place remains. Nor is it simply an abstract notion, for in Sethe’s theory the places of the past are as real as those of the present. Sethe’s “analysis” is supported by Lefebvre. “Theory,” he notes, “has shown that no space disappears completely or is utterly abolished in the course of the process of social development—not even the natural place where that process began. ‘Something’ always survives or endures . . .” (402). The division between time periods is challenged by Sethe’s interpretation. The woman who carries the mark of the past on her back—scars from being whipped—articulates a world of fluid and interconnected spheres. The distinctions between time periods are similarly obliterated in Sethe’s philosophy. “Rememory, as Sethe defines it,” concludes Budick, “is the relocation of the mind’s thought-pictures of the past ‘out there,’ in the physical world. It is the concrete and corporeal resurrection of the past in the present, as if time did not exist” (118). Boundaries between the past and the present, the psychological and the physical are variable in Sethe’s assessment. She makes it clear that even if she dies the picture remains and further, that if Denver were to go to Sweet Home “it will happen again . . .” (36). The interaction between person and place is a key part of the process; the “picture” lingers, but requires a viewer to bring it into focus. Past and present landscapes mingle in the mind and in the eye. Space thus spans time and physical boundaries. The wide-reaching connections of geography are perceptively illustrated in an exchange between Milkman and Guitar in Song of Solomon: “‘ . . . gimme the tea, Guitar . . . No geography.’ . . . ‘Okay. . . . What about some history. . . . Or some sociopolitico—No. That’s still geography . . . I do believe my whole life’s geography’” (114). Guitar emphasizes the intricate connections between history, politics, and other social practices and geography. The places we know and the spaces we occupy are more than simply decorative; a lesson Milkman (and the attentive reader) must internalize at great personal cost. Location has a substance far beyond its descriptive value.

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The importance of the physical environment is indisputable; location dominates a Cather or Morrison text. “Her novels are rooted in place,” Rosowski asserts of Cather (51). Rigney offers a similar assessment of Morrison: “locale is always deeply and historically significant for Morrison . . .” (63). Morrison herself, in a conversation with Thomas Leclair, acknowledges, “I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals” (370). Moments in Cather’s writing suggest a similar experience; characters recede and the landscape insists on recognition. Whether it is a geographic region, town, city street, or single home, intricate details of location are initiated with the first words of, and sustained throughout, the novels in question. UNCREDITED CHARACTERS: PERSONALIZING NATURE From Cather’s southwestern canyons to Morrison’s lush tropical island, the geographic settings are spectacular. Each of these authors has a remarkable gift for recreating the physical environment through the written word—a vivid picture of the natural scenery leaps off their pages. True to life landscapes become life-like in another sense, for both Cather and Morrison, to varying degrees, engage in personification of the natural world. There is a key moment in O Pioneers! when Alexandra Bergson discovers a love for the country; it is an intensely personal (and mutual) exchange between the land and the woman. Drinking in the panorama “until her tears blinded her” it is as if “the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it . . . bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before” (44). The Divide is not simply a life sustaining space; the land produces crops, but it also provides an epiphany. It speaks to Alexandra’s heart and, having heard her response, bends to her—it is humanlike, indeed almost lover-like, in its interaction.5 What was an object—the land—becomes an interactive subject—a free spirit willing to receive her desire. Morrison employs a similar technique in Beloved. The focus, however, is on the seasons rather than the physical terrain. Public performance characterizes the personification. In this novel the natural world is not a lover, but a disgruntled player. The seasons act like prima donnas; each “convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it . . .” (116). The spectacle of the changing seasons is replete with the petty egos and behaviors of the human realm. The richness of the seasonal colours is mirrored in Morrison’s lyrical description. Humanizing the natural world in this passage permits a mixture of playfulness and poignancy—the “prima donna” palavers while the landscape dies.

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Tar Baby is the text in which Morrison sustains the personification of the natural realm beyond a single (or several) episode(s). Landscape features and wild creatures are thinking and feeling entities in this novel. The first chapter introduces the Isle des Chevaliers in bold strokes. Development disturbs the natural order; the “clouds and fish were convinced the world was over . . . Only the champion daisy trees were serene . . . they ignored the men and continued to rock the diamondbacks that slept in their arms” (9). Vibrantly coloured, teeming with vitality, the tropical island is clearly a symbiotic collection of life complete with human attributes—it is a sentient being. The intrusion of the actual human world in the humanized natural world threatens the balance of the island. The fact that this natural space is being decimated in order to build wintering places for outsiders injects an emotional element into the description. The landscape resists conquest; island and mansion, with their diametrically opposed needs, are at odds throughout the story. Ultimately, it is the dwelling that is infiltrated by the island’s forces. The importance of the humanized landscape is highlighted in Saposnik-Noire’s reading of Cather’s My Antonia. In her analysis the “landscape acts as a silent protagonist because we cannot speak of the actions or feelings of characters . . . without invoking images of nature” (179). The human qualities of the land—“a personality possessed of a sense of motion, sexuality and mood”—Saposnik-Noire contends, are directly connected to the human characters (171). Jim Burden’s first experience of Nebraska is daunting to say the least. He is struck by the emptiness of the environment and yet he felt motion in the landscape “as if the shaggy grass were . . . herds of buffalo . . . galloping, galloping . . .” (12–13). This young boy, transplanted from Virginia upon the death of his parents, has an immediate awareness of the life force which surrounds him. The movement, the vitality of the land, seem to enter him—he “felt,” not “thought”—and as the novel progresses it becomes increasingly clear that the growth and development of Jim and his companion Antonia are mirrored in (and mirror) that of the prairie. Humanizing the natural world permits a degree of playfulness and level of emotion in what might otherwise be an unremarkable descriptive passage. A minimum of words achieves a maximum effect; the distance between natural and human spheres is imaginatively bridged. A powerful counterpart to this tactic of humanizing the natural is the practice of dehumanizing the human through natural references. Following a particularly horrific emotional confrontation with his wife, Valerian Street, one of the central characters in Tar Baby, notices “the Negroes had all gone out of the room, disappeared like bushes, trees, out of his line of vision . . .” (232). Morrison

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chillingly conveys Valerian’s attitude towards his employees: they are ranked with the landscape features. The implicit value judgement stems from the denial of the servants’ humanity. In a variation of this technique, Cather utilizes natural imagery to illustrate Ivy Peters’ inhumanity in A Lost Lady. In this novel the character’s physical appearance and personality strangely validate the comparison. Valerian Street fails to see his servants as anything other than objects because they are black servants; when they step out of that role (by leaving the room) they step into invisibility (out of his line of vision). Ivy Peters insists on being recognized; he intrudes freely and frequently on the gazes of the other characters. The text draws close attention to several of his physical traits in particular, his red skin “flecked with tiny freckles, like rust spots,” and small eyes with the “absence of eyelashes [which] gave his pupils the fixed, unblinking hardness of a snake’s or a lizard’s” (14). Ivy is a nasty creature who revels in being repulsive; his nickname—Poison Ivy—is spawned, not by his complexion, but from his propensity for poisoning dogs. His brutal character is instantly recognizable and Ivy’s subsequent actions (maiming a bird, destroying the landscape) sustain this first impression. Appearance mirrors personality in Ivy’s case; he is determined to be as inhuman as possible. Whereas Valerian fails to recognize the humanity of his employees, Ivy denies his own (and that of his victims) humanity. Ivy has no qualms about exploiting the natural and human landscapes for his own benefit. Valerian too profits from the natural landscape: literally in the development of the Isle Des Chevaliers and symbolically through the servants who have maintained his luxurious lifestyle for years and are left with a “promise of being taken care of in the will . . .” (233). Each of these men, Valerian and Ivy, approach the human and natural realms as separate spheres with distinct hierarchical positions and vulnerability to exploitation. Linking a character with nature need not be a negative practice; Cather and Morrison create deep connections between the natural world and two of the most compelling female characters in literature. Antonia Shimerda, the title figure in My Antonia, has eyes which are “like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood” and brown skin (17). She exudes warmth, vitality and fertility; she is the embodiment of nature. The earthy tones used to describe Antonia here and throughout the book telegraph her ultimate (and triumphant) status as an “earth mother.” There is no sense that Antonia is diminished in any way by her close association with nature. The contrast between Antonia and her fruitful family and farm and the childless, landless Jim Burden is clear and poignant. It is not ownership of the land, but an active connection to the rhythms and lessons of the natural world which gives Antonia her strength.

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Morrison fashions a figure that shares Antonia’s affinity with nature and her remarkable life force: Pilate Dead. In an eerie, but evocative act of amelioration, Morrison ties a woman whose final words reflect her great love of humanity and eagerness to assume responsibility for the fates of others with the man who washed his hands of accountability. The name is a confused gift of love from her grieving father; being illiterate, he selects a “group of letters [which looked] . . . strong and handsome . . . like a tree hanging in [a] protective way over a row of smaller trees” (18). His “reading” of the controversial name—relying on the visual impact of the letters—is strangely appropriate; Pilate is associated with trees in the novel, is intensely protective of her family, is strong and handsome, and guides (pilots) her nephew through the terrain that will afford him an opportunity to discover his own identity. She is a distinctly positive character who is not diminished, but enlarged through her identification with nature. Intertwined spaces, not separate spheres, mark the lives of Pilate and Antonia; the two exist in harmony with, rather than at the expense of, the earth. PLACE AND IDENTITY: INTIMATE CONNECTIONS The interaction between individuals and the physical locales they inhabit are all -encompassing. Place (whether fictional or existing in the “real world”) is not experienced objectively; it affects the individual in each aspect of his/her personality. Welty’s assessment of “Place in Fiction” reveals that: Place has the most delicate control over character . . . by confining character it defines it . . . Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, . . . gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. (122)

The physical site has an emotional resonance; the human element cannot be divorced from the definition of place. The connection between the person and the place helps define the individual and the space. Humanized space becomes place. Group identity, particularly for the displaced or marginalized, is often located in a shared space. Stressing the epistemological value of the physical setting, Christian makes a strong case for the importance of the land in Morrison’s novels: “the land is a participant in the maintenance of the folk tradition. It is one of the necessary constants through which the folk dramatize the meaning of life. . . . Setting then is organic to the characters’ view of themselves” (65). Communal land is a part of the community’s traditions

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and value systems; this collective experience of the environment is directly related to concepts of identity. More than a specific location is shared; the site becomes the locus of personal (yet public) history and knowledge. Selfidentification, Christian contends, hinges upon location. The key to whether the identification with place is a positive or negative dynamic, for any character, hinges upon the issue of whether it is a selfdetermined or externally imposed identification. Steward Morgan recognizes the personal value of the land in Paradise. Roaming his pastures brings Steward the reassuring knowledge that he could never be lost on his own land (95). Ownership of his ranch is an integral part of Steward’s identity—his stability is linked to its stability. He locates himself through his home. Equally important to Steward’s process of identification is his connection to the town of Ruby. It is a place founded by eight families; intricate webs of relationships sustain the community. Outsiders, particularly the women of the convent, are viewed as violating an intensely specialized space. Murder becomes a justifiable means of maintaining boundaries in the minds of the men of Ruby. Violation of the home does occur in Beloved. Outsiders (slave catchers) introduce violence into a (relatively) peaceful, communal location. Self-identification is a painful process for Baby Suggs; it begins with her awareness that she never had the opportunity for her personality to develop (140). A large part of her newfound freedom is Baby Suggs’ struggle to “place” herself emotionally, intellectually and physically. Having accomplished this necessary, but arduous task, she is at last able to become a participant in the community. It is a position Baby Suggs maintains with grace and insight until the fateful celebratory party drives a wedge between her and her neighbors. Through the space created by this detachment returns the horror of the slave plantation; no warning call precedes the arrival of the schoolteacher and his men. Slavery and racism clearly compromise Baby Suggs’ and Steward Morgan’s efforts to find spaces of their own, but their struggles are crucial to self-preservation. A person’s “place” is a complicated designation in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The system of slavery in Cather’s text is a (mostly) benign entity which serves to locate individuals. Till, the mother of the “Slave Girl,” seemingly views her connection to the Dodderidges “as one of the fixed conditions you were born into . . . ;” a fourth generation slave. She accepts it as “their natural place in the world” (219). She does not openly question the inequity of the hierarchy and can only articulate her concern for her daughter’s safety after her flight as a “low, cautious murmur . . .” (249). To speak otherwise would be to step outside of her “natural place” but Till does voice the hope that in the new setting “she’ll have some chance.”

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Nancy does indeed have a chance at a better life in Canada. The facilitator of her flight, Rachel Blake, observes of another character, “a man’s got to be stronger’n a bull to get out of the place he was born in” (130). Nancy’s escape is all the more surprising. She flees the prospect of being raped by Martin Colbert rather than actively seeking a life of autonomy and self-fulfillment. However frustrating Cather’s representation of Nancy is, the young girl’s refusal to be her owner’s pawn is a bold stance of self-definition. Nancy’s vision is limited, but it ranges beyond Sapphira’s label of sexual object ripe for exploitation. Wielding the power is no protection against being “placed” by others. Neither Sapphira nor her husband is native to the area; they moved to the Virginia backwoods after their marriage. He in particular is viewed by the locals as an outsider: the absence of a “Southern accent amounted almost to a foreign accent” (5). Sapphira too “spoke differently from the Back Creek people; but they admitted that a woman and an heiress had a right to” (5). The couple is approached with caution (if not suspicion). They do not become “naturalized” citizens despite their love for the place. Love of the land mitigates, but does not eradicate the “foreignness” of the Colberts. An emotional attachment to the land in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark and O Pioneers! does provide the central female characters with a sense of identity and a source of inspiration unparalleled in their human relationships. Each woman recognizes a crucial element of her own personality in the geography of her formative years. Thea Kronborg approaches coming home as returning to a refuge where “one’s heart sang” and there is a sensation “of going back to a friendly soil, whose friendship was somehow going to strengthen her. . . .” (191–2). Thea is attuned to the land; its harmony provides sustenance not only for the woman she has become, but also for the artist into whom she continues to evolve. Alexandra Bergson’s interaction with the natural landscape is equally affirmative. She experiences happy days “close to the flat, fallow world about her, and felt . . . in her own body the joyous germination in the soil” (135). Alexandra’s connection with the Divide seems to extend beyond identification or sympathy, into empathy— she is the land, the land is her. Godfrey St. Peter, the title character of Cather’s The Professor’s House, turns to the natural landscape for solace during a period of personal confusion. He reconnects with his boyhood in Kansas, rediscovering “the original, unmodified Godfrey St. Peter” (239). This child of the earth, or more accurately of the water, embodies the personality St. Peter has clung to during his married and academic lives: what he deems “his original self ” (242). Throughout the text waterscapes, in particular the lake, serve as sources of

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inspiration and consolation for St. Peter. They are key elements in his sense of identity. The professor, Alexandra, and Thea all recognize and embrace the importance of place in their self-definitions. In tune with their surroundings, the three derive internal strength from external settings. Morrison offers several responses to the problem of externally imposed categories of identity based upon place. Joe Trace in Jazz is labeled “country” by his neighbors and customers. Far from a putdown, the appellation reflects a sense of the familiar, a recognition of the emotional resonance in his voice: “it had a pitch, a note [which]. . . . reminded them of men who wore hats to plow . . .” (71). Joe evokes images of the country homes abandoned in favour of the city; his voice is soothing and comfortable—a nostalgic breeze that carries the country of their youth to his urban listeners. They are at ease with his presence in their homes. Joe enters more like a welcome visitor than a working salesman. The psychological effect serves him well; being “country” assists Joe in selling his beauty products. The “country versus city” pattern, with its implicit hierarchy, permits Joe’s customers a sense of superiority. The women become the sexual aggressors. They tease and cajole him and their husbands treat the flirting as non-threatening; he “counted on flirty laughing women to buy his wares . . .” but knows the interaction can go no further (71). Joe Trace is not an urban predator. He is a reminder of a more benign way of life, and yet it is Joe who ultimately pockets their money. Cather too introduces the country/city paradigm, offering a distinction between country and town girls. They are terms that encode a system of social values. On the surface, the scales tip in favour of the town girls, but the narrative offers extended and sympathetic portraits of the country girls. My Antonia is peopled with immigrant girls who are physically striking with a “vigour which . . . developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement . . . ;” in sharp contrast to the town girls whose “muscles seemed to ask . . . not to be disturbed” (127, 128). Social positioning devalues the farm girls—elitism esteems town-life over country existence—but Jim Burden clearly recognizes the superiority of this new “breed.” Initially at least, he is in the minority; despite the attraction, town boys continue to marry their “own kind.” To do otherwise would require stepping outside of the social framework; the young men lack the fortitude to break with tradition. Divisions between town and country are perpetuated in personal relationships. Ultimately, however, it is the immigrant girls and their families who prosper. Morrison’s Tar Baby offers an unequivocal example of how a label can be limiting. Local groundskeeper Gideon is known to most of the central characters simply as “Yardman.” Conceding that it is not his actual name

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(given by his employers not his parents), Jadine coldly observes, “he answers to it” (115). Only Son, the man who guards his own name like a treasured secret, is disturbed that Gideon has been rechristened “Yardman, as though he had not been mothered” (161). The origins of the servant are irrelevant to the fulfillment of the services. Gideon is literally defined by his “place”—he is the man of the yard—and that definition robs him of his identity, if not humanity. The process of location (or relocation) is no less dehumanizing in The Bluest Eye. At first glance Morrison’s treatment of the transplanted Southern girls is a positive connection between identity and place. Having soaked up the “juice of their hometowns,” they have deep roots and firm stalks (81–2). On the surface these characters seem to have strong origins—their roots are deep—which are directly connected to their “home” land. But there is an eerie, unnatural stillness about these girls; a sense of self-stifling accompanies them. In fact they move “without a stir” (82). They do not affirm, but deny their affinity with nature. What they struggle to cultivate is not the “natural” but the “civilized.” Life is approached as a war against the “funkiness of passion, . . . of nature, . . . of the wide range of human emotions” (83). Fear of losing control, of being linked with “niggers [who] were dirty and loud” controls the lives of the Mobile girls (87). They accept, and perpetuate, the judgements of a racist society; self-definition is distorted by an external code of behaviours and values. Negotiating the spaces of conflicting communities can lead to geographic dislocation and confused identities. In her reading of Tar Baby, Ryan contends that Jadine Childs’ “rootless” condition (she is an orphan) is further exasperated by “receiving a Eurocentric education” which results in her being “grafted onto a self-alienating cultural base from which to view her own and the experiences of other African peoples” (78). Jadine receives intellectual and psychological nourishment from sources worlds away from her family roots. The process expands her horizons at the same time that it shrinks them. She moves between locations and communities, but is never completely at ease. Transplantation similarly distorts the perspectives of the Southern girls who learn to serve the white community (The Bluest Eye, 83). More than simply moving north, it is their deliberate erasure of their personalities which displaces these girls. They have stepped outside one community (the “common” black neighborhood) without being able to completely access the new community (if not the white society then the next best version of it). Occupying a false “personal space” is thus linked to the physical places a character inhabits. The distortion of identity can accompany a geographic relocation.

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CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS AND SYMBOLIC MANIFESTATIONS: THE INTERSECTION OF THE LITERAL AND THE LITERARY Cather and Morrison are extremely adept at capturing literal landscapes in their fiction. “Placing” a character is a key element of their narratives; concrete details create geographic settings which can help to identify individuals. Soaphead Church’s letter to God in The Bluest Eye relies heavily on real world geography: Once upon a time I lived . . . on one of your islands . . . in the South Atlantic between North and South America, enclosing the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: divided into the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Bahama Islands. Not the Windward or Leeward Island colonies, . . . but within, . . . the Greater of the two Antilles . . . (176–177)

Soaphead’s meticulous, indeed obsessive, positioning of himself effectively inserts a map into Morrison’s novel. It is significant that the precise geography is in fact a landscape from Soaphead’s past. He appears to offer a concrete statement of location, but is in fact dodging the issue by focusing on the “once upon a time.” He makes no reference to his current locale. The fairytale quality of Soaphead’s correspondence with God—once upon a time—links his letter with the compulsion to locate oneself often associated with childhood. Adrienne Rich categorizes her childhood habit of recording her address as an exercise in locating herself: Adrienne Rich 14 Edgevale Road Baltimore, Maryland The United States of America The Continent of North America The Western Hemisphere The Earth The Solar System The Universe6

It is a playful means of testing and affirming her own boundaries. Detail is a source of comfort; it confirms the existence of the child Rich and the larger world in which she is contained.

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Alice Munro employs the tactic in Lives of Girls and Women. The child Del addresses a letter for the child-like Uncle Benny: I wrote his name and address in full: Mr Benjamin Thomas Poole, The Flats Road, Jubilee, Wawanash County, Ontario, Canada, North America, The Western Hemisphere, The World, The Solar System, The Universe. (12)

Despite the close attention to geographic connections, Uncle Benny protests “You haven’t got far enough. Isn’t Heaven outside of the Universe?” (12). While the exchange is quite comical, it does raise weighty ontological issues. Questions of knowing and being lurk behind the ever-expanding series of spatial markers. Geographic ambiguity in fact reflects Soaphead’s own tenuous situation; in the previously cited letter he makes a claim to godhead—he has usurped God’s powers by “changing” Pecola Breedlove’s eyes to blue. He is blurring boundaries of creation. The literal landscape incorporated in the text thus affords subtle insights into character; what Soaphead omits reveals a great deal about his uncertain status. Rich warns that what is harmless in the child can become in an adult “the arrogance of believing ourselves at the center.”7 Aspiring to godhead, Soaphead has symbolically removed himself from the human map. The actual geography is no longer relevant as he has relocated himself to a higher plain. The omission of details identifies Soaphead’s position in the literary landscape: he is deliberately attempting to step outside its parameters. In effect, Soaphead rewrites the landscape in his refusal to write himself into the existing setting. Playing with the practice of reading a literary landscape literally, Cather has Godfrey St. Peter and Tom Outland of The Professor’s House essentially “write themselves” into a literary setting. The pair takes a Fray Garces’ manuscript into the Southwest and retraces “his trail on horseback. Tom could take a sentence from Garces’ diary and find the exact spot . . .” (235). The young man brings the landscape of literature alive for St. Peter. Scholar and adventurer step out of academic discussion and into the Southwestern region. Cather creates characters that recreate written geographies. Texts within texts and landscapes within landscapes; the practice adds depth to an already (emotionally) profound landscape. It is a setting that is intellectually and emotionally evocative for both reader and character; the novel blurs the distinction between the two—following Tom’s adventures on the mesa, the reader mirrors the process employed by Tom and St. Peter. We too access the landscape through the written word.

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The questioning of boundaries and the formation of alternate spaces speaks to the complexity of place. Recalling Welty’s interpretation of “place in fiction”—the “concrete . . . spot of all that has been felt”—provides a glimpse of the intricate nature of place (122). “Concrete” and “felt” would appear to be mutually exclusive states; one is tangible, the other ethereal. In fact, all places accommodate these seemingly contradictory qualities. There is the point on the map—represented by degrees of latitude and longitude—and there is what the map cannot capture; the symbolic and emotional components of place exist beyond the borders of cartography. Map drawing is the art of demarcating boundaries and yet the edges of the map (the limits of the paper or the book) also frame an absence. What lies beyond the arbitrary borderlines? Geography is both what the eye can see—the particular landmass or body of water—and the mind imagine or recall from past encounters—the possibilities hovering behind, and in, the physical. The two elements are mutually dependent. Dixon interprets “the symbolic geography in Morrison’s fiction” as emerging from “precise physical details . . .” (115–6). The fictional location has roots in the real world. Similarly, the American Southwest in Cather’s writings, Fryer asserts, is “a space [which is] both metaphorical and actual, a space which can be both sensed and touched” (Prairie Schooner, 185). Each author builds her symbolic and emotional landscapes on the solid foundations of physical geography. “Real world” geography expands into a variety of spaces and landscapes in the novels of Cather and Morrison. From the surreal dreamscape to the desperate need for a landmark in an expansive terrain, it is the exchange between human being and territory which takes precedence in their literary landscapes. THE SPACE OF ABSENCE: CONVENIENCE OR COMMENTARY? To varying degrees, all novels incorporate gaps and/or silences. “Editing” of events results in “offstage” occurrences—the “time passes” section where a character matures or peripheral problems are resolved—Cather does not narrate Antonia’s “fall,” Morrison withholds the moment of Eva Peace’s mutilation. Space as an entity is, however, specifically recognized by both authors. Cather’s treatment of space(s) is not as self-conscious or sustained as Morrison’s forays into space. Although a character in The Professor’s House, Crane, is working on “the extent of space” little reference is made to his experiments; there are no explicit comments on the concept of space, whether occupied or not, in Cather’s novels (72). Morrison directly addresses the space of absence. Her conclusions about the strong “nonwhite, Africanlike (or Africanist) presence or persona”

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in American literature provide insight into Morrison’s interest in the space of absence. In Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, she insists that “the contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination” (6, 5). As a writer Morrison enacts what she proposes as a critic: her fiction brings the absence/presence issue in American literature front and centre. What is often a structural feature in fiction becomes a striking thematic device in several of Morrison’s novels. The space of absence is a recurrent image in her work, but perhaps the most evocative example occurs in Beloved. As several critics have observed, the central address in the novel— 124—foregrounds the fact of loss. 124 “signals many absences,” states Budick, “not least of which is Beloved, the missing third child” (131). The disruption in the logical order of the numbers—1 2 3 4—mirrors the disruption in the natural order—the loss of ancestors and descendants. Rafael Perez-Torres identifies these “concrete absences” as creating a floating space for the reader, “a space that floats somewhere between an absent past and an absent future” (93). The unrecoverable past and the unattainable future haunt the present. Personal and historical continuity have been hindered by the system of slavery. The rupture in time takes a spatial form. Perez-Torres approaches the equation from the reader’s perspective, but his observations are equally applicable to Sethe’s experience. Ignorance over the fate of her husband takes a shape of its own. It is a space of “resentment at . . . his cowardice, or stupidity or bad luck” which “was filled now with a brand-new sorrow . . .” (95). The absence of Halle is an ambiguous, but tangible space for Sethe. Just as the geographic specificity of the house number externalizes the personal loss, so too does the internal space, structured around the missing husband, concretize Sethe’s private sorrow. Paul D’s disturbing information about Halle’s fate (his failed attempt to escape the plantation) serves only to alter, not to eradicate this space of suffering. Empty space is a particularly frightening prospect for many of Morrison’s characters. While not a specifically haunted space as is the case in Beloved, unfilled space does have a haunting presence in several of her novels. There is a jarring visual effect in Paradise that encapsulates how disconcerting the space of absence can be. The men discover a huge cross with only a space “where there used to be a Jesus” (12). What is missing is chillingly clear; the void has been deliberately created, and it has a powerful emotional resonance. The women of the convent unwittingly create a “justification” for the murderous actions of the men: they are punishing the godless. This

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rationale conveniently overlooks the fact that the rampage has begun before the cross is encountered; the space of absence the women create (maleless, godless) is nonetheless the source of their deliberate destruction. An accidental, but no less disturbing emptiness is created in Sula with the drowning death of Chicken Little. The young boy’s encounter with Sula and Nel has catastrophic consequences. Child’s play leads to his death by drowning and the alienation of the young girls. The literal absence of Chicken Little—his failure to surface—is less significant than the space his death opens between Sula and Nel. The space of silence looms between the pair. At his funeral “there was a space, a separateness” which is not bridged until the two girls imaginatively detach the coffin in the earth from the memory of his laughter (64). Chicken Little is resurrected as a living memory associated with a space of physical loss. Locating the dead body in the lifeless coffin liberates the laughing child’s spirit. The revelation seemingly frees the girls; they never discuss the incident. A subsequent encounter with the space of loss elicits a deeper response from the adult Sula. She is altered by the departure of her lover Ajax. Seeking signs of his having been there she finds only “his stunning absence;” it is “so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult . . . to understand how she had ever endured . . . his magnificent presence” (134). The space of absence that lingers is oddly enough a full space—decorative and ornate belie the emptiness created by Ajax’s exit. Ajax’s absence is as consuming as his presence; Sula’s home becomes a shadowy shrine: the mirror he used becomes “an altar” (134). Ajax transforms the place even as an absence. Common objects are elevated by virtue of being used by the lost lover. Sula’s space is no longer her own and it clearly bewilders her. The loss of her boyfriend redefines both Sula and her home. It is an experience which echoes the effect of her affair with Nel’s husband on Nel’s space and sense of identity. Sula’s rationale for sleeping with Jude illustrates both her contempt for the town’s value system and her method of organizing her life: “there was this space in front of me, behind me, . . . Jude filled it up” (144). Sula experiences life spatially. Her best friend’s husband is simply a means for filling internal and external space; Sula’s concern is not with consequences, but with personal satisfaction. Although the gratification takes a sexual form, it is not the sex act itself, but the problem of empty space that drives Sula. Empty space is no less challenging when it occurs in the natural landscape. Ten generations in Paradise shape their lives around a fear of the physical and psychological ramifications of unfamiliar territory. Space beyond recognizable boundaries implies openness and possibility, but it also contains

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antagonistic forces. “Out There” space which was “beckoning and free, became . . . a void where random and organized evil erupted . . .” (16). The men of Ruby embrace insularity in light of the horrors of “Out There.” The very words suggest a territory beyond the safe zone, a space which houses past and future torments, a removal or exclusion from the (implied) civilized “here.” Open space is overwhelming. It is both a literal threat—physical vulnerability occurs in an open terrain—and a psychologically intimidating entity—“Out There” challenges the foundations of identity. The dread of outdoors is more subtly described in The Bluest Eye than in Paradise, but it is no less frightening. The reality and symbolism of the wilderness are utilized to modify undesirable behaviour and to reinforce the communal values of the contrasting, civilized space. As Claudia MacTeer recognizes early in life, outdoors was the “the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact . . .” which defined their condition (17). Early in her life Claudia is taught to fear open territory as a termination and source of terror. It is not only represented as a negative space, but as a punishment for negative behaviour. Being outdoors is an affliction; it involves a physical and social vulnerability. The possibility of ending up outdoors functions as a powerful tool of social conformity. Nancy’s desperate flight in Sapphira and the Slave Girl is a journey from her “natural place” to “there” over which looms the fear of “nowheres.” Preparing for her journey, the young girl worries about the work she has not completed, but consoles herself with the thought that she can send it back once she gets “there” (232). Nancy has only the vaguest sense of where she is heading. Even the practical Mrs. Blake has but a shadowy notion of the destination; “how vague . . . [she thought] was this ‘there’ that Nancy spoke of—there was Canada, wasn’t it?” (232). It is a space beyond their experience, indeed almost beyond their comprehension, and as such it can only be envisioned as a hazy location. It is this lack of precision which disheartens Nancy when she must part from Mrs. Blake; her terrors are encapsulated in her lament: “I can’t bear it to belong nowheres!” (237). Nancy desires firmer ground upon which to build her identity. Belonging is an integral part of identity. Acknowledgement or denial of an individual’s existence is a chillingly effective method of social control. The Bluest Eye captures one of the spatial effects of racial prejudice. Armed with the appropriate fee and a desire for Mary Janes, Pecola Breedlove enters a candy store. The clerk virtually negates her identity. Looking at him there is a “vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge . . . The total absence of human recognition . . . it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates” it (46–49). The white shop owner briefly recognizes, then dismisses the fact of Pecola’s

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existence. The “audience” withdraws; the performance of identity therefore fails. She is the vacuum—the space entirely devoid of matter—she does not matter in his assessment. Pecola’s blackness is thus a space unto itself; a space separated from human recognition. Despite achieving her goal of purchasing the candy, Pecola is instructed once again on her “position.” As her heartbreaking and insane quest for “the bluest eyes” reveals, Pecola clearly understands that she is defined by what she is not—white and blue-eyed like the namesake of the candy she devours with orgasmic pleasure. She attempts to fill the vacuum with a self-image that completely denies her own reality precisely because it is too painful for Pecola to acknowledge. The space of anger is potentially invigorating, but extremely unnerving in The Bluest Eye. Exiting the store, Pecola first feels shame, and then anger but “reasons” at least “there is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence” (50). Pecola attempts to reinsert herself in the social landscape via the space of anger. The energy of her anger fuels a desire for recognition. It voices her need to be acknowledged. Ultimately, however, she cannot sustain the anger and her shame returns; external labels (black equals nothing) stymie the act of self-definition. Only the consumption of the candy can subsume Pecola’s misery; empty space is too daunting for the neglected and abused child to master. The press to fill it (whether with food or the fantasy of having the bluest eye) is an effort to stave off the anger that lurks beneath the surface. For Pecola it is a coping mechanism, but it is also an avoidance tactic, a fear of facing her true situation. It is a practice the narrator in Jazz recognizes. Dismissing as an illusion the expressed desire of her neighbors for a space “that need not be filled . . . other than [with] their own thoughts,” the narrator cautions, it would “knock them down” (16). This vacant space will be characterized by “the seep of rage” (16). It will not be the space of ease, but rather the space of disease. The buried anger will surface in this empty space with destructive potential. The final pages of Jazz force the narrator to confront her own method of filling up space. Having assisted the reader in accessing the story of Joe, Violet and Dorcas the narrator anticipates the fate of the subsequent triangle of Joe, Violet and Felice but they defy her efforts: “they were, busy being original, . . . while I was the predictable one . . . thinking my space . . . was the only one . . .” (220). Her narrative, she concedes, has missed the point— in “watching the streets” she neglected the hidden emotions (221). The assumption that the story occupies a single space blinds the narrator to the multiple and interconnected spaces of the characters. And yet, however inaccurate the narrative may be, it is not a false space; it is but one of many

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(potential) narrative spaces. The recognition that her textual space is not the only one, or perhaps even the one that mattered, highlights the diverse nature of space. COLLIDING “WORLDS”: LAYERING THE LANDSCAPE Multiple spaces co-exist in the novels of Cather and Morrison; each author explores both the varieties of space and their interconnections. Rigid boundaries are not reinforced in the novels in this study. Dreamscapes, with their surreal movement between the familiar and the uncanny, are a particularly striking feature in their fiction. As Rigney points out, “all of Morrison’s fictions partake of a dreamscape, contain a quality that is surreal at times, largely because of [a] refusal to mark dreams as distinct or separate from ‘reality’” (27). It is an observation that is also true of Cather’s writing. Each of these authors challenges the divisions of the real and the non-real; the issue of reality is treated in all its ambiguity and intricacy. The spaces Cather and Morrison create are often discomforting and frequently disorienting. The line between the “spirit world” and the “real world” is virtually erased in Beloved. The missing, murdered, third child returns with a vengeance and the concept of separate spheres is shattered. Through Beloved, Morrison “presents an apocalyptic demolition of the boundaries between the earthly and spiritual realms,” contends Susan Bowers, “an invasion of the world of the living by the world beyond the veil” (211). Cryptic descriptions of the space of the dead and the journey to re-enter the landscape of the living hint at a shadowy, crowded place. It lacks a concrete quality in part because it is accessed through the perceptions of a child—Beloved was barely walking when she was murdered—and because the concrete is seemingly absent from the spirit realm. Indeed, she has trouble with her own physicality; keeping her head on and her teeth intact is literally a struggle for Beloved not to fall apart. The collision between the living and non-living worlds is less extreme in Morrison’s other novels, but it is still present. Milkman Dead dismisses Freddie the janitor’s story that his mother was killed by ghosts and his birth brought on by a woman who was transformed into a white bull. In Milkman’s frame of reference it is merely the superstitions of the uneducated and gullible. As Song of Solomon progresses Milkman must acknowledge his own ghosts and the intertwining spaces of the past and present, “real” and “unreal.” In time, he will encounter the spirit of his own grandfather, a murdered man who brings cryptic messages to Pilate. Macon Dead I is a restless soul who insists on recognition. He moves between the spirit realm and the

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spaces his progeny occupy in a desperate attempt to be understood. Initially, however, Milkman’s reaction is one of skepticism and discomfort; he insists not only on separate spheres, but also on the non-existence of the spirit world. Avoidance through denial is a tactic employed by Richard Misner and Anna Flood in Paradise. Entering the convent grounds after the attack on the women they sense something, but cannot agree on what it is. The encounter sparks a seemingly light-hearted debate: What did a door mean? . . . a window? focusing on the sign rather than the event . . . anything to avoid . . . what they were wondering. Whether through a door . . . or a beckoning window . . . What would be on the other side? (305)

Lacking the personal incentive of Milkman or the tangible presence of Beloved (a bridge between the two realms), Richard and Anna attempt to keep their discussion light and on the surface level. The laughter is, however, tinged with fear and dread. Sensing another realm, they can neither open the door intellectually nor peer through the window imaginatively. The haunting question “what on earth” gestures towards a terrain the pair cannot enter; they retreat behind laughter to the security of the “real world” (305). Dreamscapes make the intangible tangible. The blend of concrete details with the surreal and fanciful create the impression that the landscape is both “real” to the touch and ephemeral in nature. Song of Solomon has a key scene where Milkman describes what he calls a dream to Guitar. Watching his mother planting tulips, Milkman is witness to an unreal phenomenon: “the flowers grew [to the point that] only her shoulders [and] flailing arms [were visible] high above those bobbing, snapping heads” (105).8 In narrating the experience Milkman denies its “reality”—it was a dream—but the moment of experience is very real to him. Despite this fact, he hides behind the defense that it was merely a dream when Guitar challenges him on his failure to help his mother. Putting aside the issue of personal responsibility (a lesson Milkman will painfully learn), the exchange between the men suggests that Guitar sees, and seeks, no distinction between the waking world and the dream state. He can access a variety of sources of knowledge. It is a skill Milkman must develop during his journey to his ancestral home. At this point Milkman insists upon a separation of, and value distinction between, the two spheres. Fanciful and physical landscapes are represented as inseparable in Sula and Tar Baby. Interaction between the two types of spaces is spontaneous

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and frequent in these two texts. Long before a physical encounter, Nel and Sula meet in dreams. Solitude sends them “stumbling into Technicolored visions [which] included . . . someone, who, . . . shared the . . . dream” (51). The dreamscape is a comforting space for Nel and Sula. It is a space of colour and connection that blends seamlessly with their everyday settings—Edna Finch’s Mellow House and Garfield Primary School. Ill at ease in their homes and in the company of their families, the dream world offers the young girls what the real world withholds. Son’s efforts to insert the geography of Eloe into Jadine’s dreams in Tar Baby are conscious attempts to circumvent the obstacles which separate him from the woman he desires. Awake in the “real” world, Son whispers a landscape into being, manipulating the terrain of the sleeping woman’s mind. He attempts “to insert his own dreams into her . . . about yellow houses with white doors . . . and the fat black ladies . . . minding the pie table in the basement of the church . . .” (119). Son too approaches dream and real world settings as inseparable. He attempts to seduce Jadine via her dreams not as an end unto itself, but as a prelude to consummation in the waking world (45). Cather’s forays into the dreamscape also incorporate physical geography with imaginative realms. The focus in A Lost Lady is on the landscape as the concretized dream. Captain Forrester shares his philosophy of dreams: “a thing that is dreamed . . . is . . . an accomplished fact” (44–45). The “railroads across the mountains” sprang from their dreams much like he “dreamed [his] place on the Sweet Water” (44–45). Settling the West was in effect the creation of a dreamscape; it is the living embodiment of the visions of a group (or groups) of people. Unfortunately, it is a dying dreamscape. Vulnerable to the manipulations of a generation “trained to petty economies,” the space and “the princely carelessness of the pioneer” territory is literally, and figuratively, losing ground to economic exploitation (90). Practical concerns supersede aesthetic values. Ivy Peters drains Captain Forrester’s beautiful, but unproductive marsh in order to create grazing land; it is both a pragmatic and spiteful act. The “noble” vision is fading. It no longer dominates the physical terrain or the value systems of the men of power. Alienated from his own generation (Ivy Peters and his ilk), Niel Herbert is cast in the dubious role of the recorder of this soon to be vanquished era: “the visions . . . would always be his” (145). Men and dreams are drifting into the territory of memory. The airy visions, briefly realized, are destined to be remembered in the reveries of a kindred soul, not immortalized in the living landscape. They become a lingering presence behind the visible features of the environment.

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Visions inspired by the landscape in Death Comes For the Archbishop are both disorienting and reaffirming for the title character. Cather plunges Jean Marie Latour into an unfamiliar setting that tests his physical endurance while reinforcing his spiritual commitment. New Mexico challenges Latour’s sense of reality as “every mesa was duplicated by a cloud mesa” and the “great tables of granite . . . were inconceivable without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part of the censer . . .” (95). Cloudscape mirrors landscape. There is a surreal quality to the cloud formations; they shift shapes. In this exotic environment surface the memories of others—specifically the Orient. Alternately “flat terraces” and “silvery pagodas” the clouds are as much a creation of the viewer as they are of atmospheric conditions (95). The reference to the censer in particular suggests that these impressions are filtered through the perspective of a religious man. Latour’s response speaks to his aesthetic sensibilities and his intellect. Imposing an alien culture on the setting (pagodas) the priest highlights the foreignness of his own faith in such a land. As he will come to understand, Latour must connect his religion to the landscape if he is to propagate it. Learning to read the Southwestern terrain is crucial to Latour’s personal, and professional, spiritual development. The recognition that more than merely complementary, land and sky are “inconceivable” without each other is a pivotal discovery. Latour envisions an inverted order stemming from the unique physical setting: while normally “the sky is the roof of the world . . . here the earth was the floor of the sky” (232). One lives not on the earth, but in the sky, Latour concludes. The importance of the land pales in comparison with the celestial sphere. It is rather fitting for a man of God to raise his eyes to heaven, but it is not just the cloudscape that inspires Latour’s meditations. The opening pages of “Book One” find him lost in a “geometrical nightmare.” The monotony of the landscape bewilders Latour: the “blunted pyramid, repeated . . . upon his retina . . .” prompts him to close “his eyes to rest them . . .” (17–18). Disoriented by heat, exhaustion, and the seemingly endless monotony of the New Mexico terrain, Latour tries to shut the “intrusive omnipresence of the triangle” out completely. Truly a lack of insight, for it is in the external environment that Latour finds the internal fortitude to endure his physical hardships. The New Mexico desert functions as a physical embodiment of Latour’s spiritual terrain—if only he would utilize both his eyesight and his imagination. Opening his eyes, the priest discovers the tree which resembles the cross. Physical and spiritual landscapes merge as the triangle is refined into a more readily recognizable representation of the Holy Trinity—the

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Cross. Prayer before the juniper tree leaves him “refreshed” and leads him to contemplate Christ’s sufferings (19). The desert withholds physical relief, but provides spiritual nourishment. “Bringing” faith to the “heathen” territory, the missionary rediscovers his own spirituality in the land. Latour need only recognize the possibility; meditating on the tree and the sky leads away from earthly concerns and back to God. As disorienting as the panorama is, particular details inspire Latour to remember both the sufferings of the Lord and his own spiritual commitment. MARKING THE LAND: PLACING OURSELVES IN THE LANDSCAPE The exchanges between people and places are frequently concretized in specific landscape features. Webster’s Dictionary defines a landmark as “a mark for designating the boundary of land: a fixed object . . . by which the limits of a farm, a town, or other portion of territory may be known and preserved; a conspicuous object on land that serves as a guide to navigation at sea; a natural object or man-made structure that marks a course or characterizes a locality; an event, achievement, characteristic, or modification that marks a turning point or a stage.” Landmarks help create territories; they separate one space from another. Focusing attention on specific details, they can be naturally occurring or artificially imposed on the landscape. Each type is inscribed with meaning beyond its physical presence. The true power of a landmark lies in its emotional and ideological significance. “Whether constructed by nature or by people,” O’Brien asserts, “landmarks are products of the human imagination, the visual equivalent of folktales and stories” (61). We have a strong need for landmarks; they both ground us (tangible presence demarcating boundaries) and free us (appeal to our imaginative processes). They weave our stories into the fabric of the physical world. Cather explores the disconcerting effects of an absence of landmarks in several of her works. Unfamiliar territory leaves a traveler with little or no frame of reference. The intangible benefit of a landmark is highlighted in Death Comes For the Archbishop. Comparing the plight of the early missionaries to New Mexico with that of St. Paul and his companions, Latour concludes, that there was a comfort in suffering “in that safe little Mediterranean world, amid the old manners, the old landmarks” (276). Among the numerous hardships endured by “New World” missionaries, foreign terrain and the absence of familiar (and therefore emotionally comforting) features are the primary privations in Latour’s estimation. To

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endure torment in a visually recognizable landscape is somehow less painful than suffering in an alien setting. The missionary experience, as Latour describes it, is not unlike that of the prairie pioneer. The overpowering presence of the land itself and one’s consequent inability to discern scattered and diminutive dwellings in the landscape have an emotional and psychological impact on settlers. Jim Burden’s transplantation from Virginia to Nebraska in My Antonia captures the disorienting effects of an unfamiliar terrain: there was “nothing to see; no fences, no creeks, or trees . . . nothing but land . . .” (7). This new landscape is described in terms of what it is not; absences define it as it is contrasted with Virginia—a place of distinct landmarks. The vastness of Nebraska instills a sense of alienation, of being inconsequential, leading Jim to confess, “between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out” (8). It is a space in the initial stages of becoming place. It holds both the opportunity for artistic creation and the possibility of continued isolation. Locating himself in this unsegmented environment is a daunting task to the young boy; he has no means of grounding himself. A desire to assert identity, indeed to mark existence, is frequently translated into the construction of a structure designed to dominate the natural landscape. It is a public performance of identity; often a tangible representation of an intangible value system. The building becomes an external symbol of the internal struggle to overcome the debilitating effect of the new country. “The absence of human landmarks” in a new country is “depressing and disheartening,” insists the narrative voice in O Pioneers! (13). A proud symbol of personal and collective identity, the Church of Sainte-Agnes is visible for miles, unlike the town. Although of a more modest scale, it is not unlike Latour’s cathedral in Death Comes for the Archbishop. The strong physical presence of the place of worship—“powerful and triumphant”—is a dramatic declaration of the enduring faith of its parishioners (141). It is both a structure and a message that insists on recognition. Although the expressed purpose of the building is spiritual, it also fulfills a secular function: it breaks the psychological and physical effect of the otherwise uninterrupted landscape. The secular and the spiritual comingle in a prominent structural feature in Paradise. Responding to the “extravagant space” of freedom the original founders of Haven construct a communal oven: “having been routed from office by whites, refused a homestead by coloreds, [they] wanted to make a permanent feature in that open land . . .” (99). The oven is a testimony to the strength of the group. It speaks of the hardships they have weathered as a unit. It is, initially, a site that serves practical purposes: suste-

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nance and companionship. It unites the community. When the descendants of Haven’s settlers must relocate they “broke up the Oven and loaded it into two trucks even before they took apart their own beds” (16). The moment marks a shift in the collective experience of the landmark. Symbolic value supersedes practical concerns; this former emblem of communal cohesion creates a quiet, but insidious division. The once valued landmark is transformed into a bulky burden: the women say nothing “but privately they resented the truck space given over to it. . . . Resented also the hours spent putting it back together . . .” (103). Preoccupied with the more “prosaic” details of relocating their families to an as yet unformed town (Ruby), the women do not acknowledge the symbolic importance of the oven. Soane Morgan seems to speak for all the women when she expresses a concern that “a utility [has] become a shrine . . .” (103). The quest to “make a permanent feature in that open land” in this novel is a gendered one. It is also generational; the youth of Ruby have no interest in maintaining the Oven, openly challenging its meaning. The evolving needs of the community are not reflected in the static symbol. Its significance is lessened by its failure to fit into the cultural landscape. A landmark need not be religious or quasi-religious in order to have emotional or psychological resonance. Houses too can be symbolic features of the landscape.9 When the Burdens move to Black Hawk in My Antonia their home is a landmark for those from the country. The building signals a transition from the country to the town; it thus has a practical geographic value. It carries a message separate from its inhabitants—the Burdens purchase it from Preacher White—but the human element is an integral part of the landmark. The house is a distinct symbol of hospitality—the barn is at the disposal of the farmers and the dwelling provides rest, refreshments and a place to tidy up after the long journey. A house likewise fulfills a dual function in Beloved. 124 evolves into a symbol of cordiality and a marker of a journey’s end. Under Baby Suggs’ loving care, the structure on the edge of the community becomes a site of safety and healing for those escaping slavery or other forms of persecution. It was a “cheerful, buzzing house where . . . Strangers rested [and] . . . Messages were left . . .” (87). The existence of a recognizable landmark is particularly powerful given the physically disorienting effects of slavery. Denying the slave knowledge of the countryside was a crucial element of control; as Diedrich and Sollors observe: “if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where to run” (5). Like the Burdens’ home, 124 takes on a significance beyond the dwelling of a particular family. Each house is a part of the physical and verbal landscapes; the structure is visible on the horizon and the sanctuary it affords

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is reflected in, and through, oral tales shared by travelers. Clearly human interaction elevates these two homes; it is the kindness and nurturing received within the walls and the opportunity to connect with fellow human beings which raises their status above a country-inn or waystation. Close attention to the description of 124 reveals a poignant fact: it exists only in the past. It “had been” a positive and nurturing place. Jim Burden revisits his family home via his memoir. Despite the distance of time, it remains a heartening and active location. Time is not so kind to 124. The house is invaded by slave-catchers and a mother responds in a horrifying way. After the murder and attempted murders (death before re-enslavement is Sethe’s distraught conclusion), 124 ceases to be a landmark because of the actions of its inhabitants. The physical presence of 124 (on the outskirts of town) remains, but its recuperative powers (whether for the body or the spirit) are obliterated. Social ostracism and desperate violence nullify a previously integral sanctuary. 124 takes on an entirely new symbolic significance after Sethe’s release from prison. It serves as a warning to the rest of the community of their personal and collective vulnerability. Naturally occurring landmarks occupy a different, but equally precarious position. Human intervention can physically destroy a natural landmark—manipulating the environment for any number of purposes—or emotionally shelter it. In a sparse landscape, unique features take on a heightened importance. Jim Burden explains the protective sentiment towards trees: “trees were so rare . . . that we used to feel anxious about them . . . the scarcity of detail . . . made [it] so precious” (21). A distinctly visible and poignant part of the prairie, trees achieve a presence beyond their physical size. Individual trees are readily identifiable, but it is their symbolic representation of the settlers’ own struggles which makes them so evocative. Jim’s trees give shape to the prairie and to his personal experience. An external sign of an internal state, the frame of mind of the viewer enhances the visual impact of the natural symbols. Natural landmarks surface at key points in Death Comes For the Archbishop, particularly in the story of Father Junipero. Lost with a companion in the desert, the pair is disheartened until they see “three great cottonwood trees . . .” (278). They are taken care of by a “pious” family who reside near the trees (279). When the missionaries return to the monastery their auditors declared the trees are a local landmark, but no one lived in that region. Failure to locate the dwelling and the memory of the serenity of the family (the child in particular) leads the priests to conclude that their saviors were not earthly, but spiritual entities. The tangible presence of the three stately trees evokes the majesty of the Holy Family. As the men of faith feel their “hearts”

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weaken the desert landscape offers spiritual sustenance. Archbishop Latour is so moved by the story that he permits himself to repeat it only twice; perhaps his protective gesture is a testament to his own spiritual encounter with a Cross-like tree (18). Spiritual or sensual, the knowledge of a landmark’s existence can inspire a variety of pilgrimages. Naturally occurring monuments take on a decidedly erotic tone in Morrison’s Paradise. Sent on an elusive quest by her boyfriend, Gigi seeks a rock formation “shaped like lovers;” near “a town called Wish” she will find “loving to beat the sky” (63).10 There is no official record of the town “too small for a map;” residents of Tucson dismiss her queries as “crazy” (64). Gigi gives up her attempt to reconnect with her missing boyfriend, but not “the desert lovers [who] broke her heart” (64). Conceding Mickey has the location wrong, she clings to the conviction that his claim simply “summoned to the surface what she had known all her life existed . . . somewhere” (64). Morrison’s use of the ellipses succinctly conveys the intangible nature of this “landmark.” For Gigi it is real, despite her inability to locate it; the rock formation concretizes a feature of her internal landscape. The town is aptly, if incorrectly, named, for this intimacy is precisely what Gigi wishes for—“loving to beat the sky.” The search for the rock lovers leads Gigi to the discovery of another sensual symbol. A traveling companion tells her he has heard of “two trees [which] grew in each other’s arms” (66). Ruby, Oklahoma is said to be the location of this natural phenomenon. Legend has it that the entwined trees increase sexual desire and squeezing between them leads to “an ecstasy no human could invent or duplicate” (66). Again it is a “landmark” which must be sought out to be viewed—it is not labeled on a map or advertised as a tourist attraction. It is a tale told by a new acquaintance who has only “heard of,” not witnessed, the natural wonder. While the story of the tree lovers propels Gigi to travel to Ruby, she never locates the trees. It is a privilege which belongs to Consolata, the pseudo-nun whose lover shows her the two entwined trees. The pair of arboreal lovers provides their human counterparts with shade and the “protection of [their] agonized trunks” (231). The natural realm sanctifies what the social world would condemn—an illicit love affair. The connection between the sets of “lovers” gives the landmark its poignancy as the odd couplings mirror each other. Morrison’s landmarks lack the high visibility normally associated with public markers, but they are intensely significant in the personal and erotically charged landscapes of her characters. They fail to appear on official maps, the records of white, mainstream cultural geography. They are

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nonetheless part of the “panorama” Zukin identifies as incorporating “both the landscape of the powerful—cathedrals, factories, and skyscrapers—and the subordinate, resistant, or expressive vernacular of the powerless—village chapels, shanty towns, and tenements” (16). Markers, in Morrison’s fiction, are located via “counter” maps that privilege the personal over the authenticated. It is often a subversive space accessed through verbal rather than physical guides. Hovering around the edges of “recognized” landscapes (the ones with the authoritative “voices”), the monuments offer alternate definitions of what constitutes a landmark. They are an example of what McKee deems “Morrison’s black American cultures [struggling] to claim the spaces of their existence, their culture, and their history that whites have seen as empty” (Producing American Races, 25). They are only visible to a specialized eye, inserted into the landscape for a distinct audience. Sought out by characters who are themselves on the fringe of the dominant society, it follows that the landmarks are likewise marginalized. Despite being isolated farmers or spiritual pilgrims, Cather’s characters are able to carve out clear positions in the landscapes. The landmarks they create or discover (for the most part) fit seamlessly into the social map (even Latour’s Cathedral, while visually jarring, is accommodated in the social landscape by virtue of its purpose). Churches, crosses and houses are easily recognizable and blend into the collective environment with little or no conflict. Rock or tree lovers in sexually explicit positions, ovens verging on shrines, and houses which support escaped slaves (and later a murderer) are a challenge to the notion of common landmarks or even a shared experience of geography. And yet, although they have diverse appearances, landmarks in the fiction of Cather and Morrison are, at their cores, similar. Both authors utilize these features to convey a message of hope, support, and a sense of belonging to the individuals who view them. Connection to, and through, the landscape occurs on several levels: self-identification is contingent on place, the identification of place is largely determined by the individual’s sense of identity, and the place of the individual within the group and the group within the larger society, all shape the experience of space. Locating oneself in the cultural, social, or physical landscape is made easier by the presence of landmarks. Recognizing these markers requires an awareness of the entire terrain; the “background” therefore functions as the explication to the story in the foreground.

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Chapter Three

Maneuvering through the Maternal Landscape: Traditions, Tropes, and New Techniques

Identity and place, as Chapter Two illustrated, are intimately connected. Such an assertion has several interpretations; firstly, who we become has much to do with the places we develop in and, secondly, the definition of place hinges upon human identification. The use of landmarks to reshape (and thereby redefine) an alien environment is one method of coping. Another popular tactic is to render the mysterious as recognizable, to make the exotic domestic. Through the act of naming we change space to place, the unfamiliar terrain to the familiar territory. In this drive to decipher a disconcerting landscape we frequently (and perhaps logically) turn to human— primarily female—features to demystify the unknown quantity. “The complicated topography of the female genital parts,” Freud asserts, “makes one understand how it is that they are often represented as landscapes.”1 I would argue that the easily recognizable visual relationship between land forms and female features (hills and breasts, valleys/caves and vagina/womb) affords a more compelling rationale. In identifying the landscape as female, we are, in effect, transforming the unfamiliar into the “familial.” “Mother earth,” however, is not the only interpretation of the feminized terrain. Concepts of the virgin territory and land as object of (sexual) conquest do complicate the use of topography. The mimetic relationship between body and land is appreciated with little effort by the eye. The “I” too responds, for, as Holly Youngbear-Tibbetts observes, our “first knowledge . . . is topographic—the landscape of the maternal body . . .” (32). There is a degree of intimacy created through the equation of earth and mother; tentative, tactile, explorations of identity 59

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(physical boundaries, emotional connections) are played out in the infant’s discovery of his/her body and that of the mother. Similar exchanges between the seeing “I” (of whatever age) are (to varying degrees) shaded by these early interactions. The seemingly benign connection between the female form and the natural environment does, however, have potentially sinister implications.2 Both “Woman and Nature are vulnerable to the desires of men,” cautions Rose (Feminism and Geography, 96). Exploitation can be both literal and literary; sexualized landscapes frequently objectify woman and nature for particular ends. Appropriation of natural resources and indigenous women are well-documented aspects of colonization. The human cost of the push to “tame” undeveloped regions is painfully recorded in various sources—history books, company ledgers, and the writings of both the conquerors and the conquered. Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose document the tactic of incorporating “sexual imagery” in Imperialist literature “to create and sustain the heroic stature of male colonizers who conquered and penetrated dangerous, unknown continents, often characterized by the fertility of both indigenous vegetation and women” (10). The explorer is thus a virile, sexual adventurer. Such a paradigm excludes woman as colonizer; there is no “masculine” wilderness ripe for her to subjugate. Action is the prerogative of the male while passive acceptance is the lot of the female. Even the relatively domestic chore of settling “non-foreign” territory exploits the concept of a gendered landscape. The farmer is a rather ambiguous figure of adventure; raising crops and animals, while hard work, is rarely viewed as being the equivalent of “conquering” and “penetrating” “unknown continents.” The literary representation of the masculine pioneer, however, frequently collapses the distinction between the heroic explorer and the man who cultivates the discovered land. MASCULINE FARMER, FEMININE LAND: SETTLEMENT OR SEDUCTION? Images of early settlements in North America often focus on the conquest of a wild, but fertile land, “a mythic place” Susan Armitage identifies as “Hisland,” which is “perpetuated in western history texts . . .” (3). It is a region populated by “a cast of heroic characters [who] engage in dramatic combat, sometimes with nature, sometimes with each other . . . they are mountain men, cowboys, Indians, soldiers, farmers, miners, and desperadoes, but they share one distinguishing characteristic—they are all men” (3). I would add, they are all conspicuously single men.

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The myth that emerges from (or perhaps along with) the American frontier, is the unattached male braving the wilderness free from the constraints of domesticity and women. Nash Smith provides a rather telling letter from a witness to a wagon train: . . . there assembled during May, 1843, American citizens with their families . . . each one on himself alone dependant [sic] . . . Surrounded by his wife and children, equipped with wagon, ox-team, and provisions . . . without . . . other protection than their invincible rifles and the wives and progeny clustered around them. (38)

The author, William Gilpin, ranks the wife and children ahead of the wagon, but behind the “invincible rifles.” Migration is a family affair (three references in a brief excerpt), but the focus remains on the “American citizen”— the male pioneer. Despite historical evidence to the contrary—Daniel Boone too had a wife and children—the socially unfettered fellow dominates western mythology. He is freedom personified. The difficulties of accommodating a sedentary lifestyle within a masculine myth of adventure are fairly obvious: mobility versus settlement, selfindulgence versus social responsibility, bachelorhood versus marriage. Smith concludes that, by virtue of his profession, the frontier farmer had little popular appeal as a literary hero. Redefining the parameters of the farmer’s activities is one tactic of elevating his heroic status. A “national erotics of male dominance,” theorizes Mary Paniccia Carden, reads America as “begotten by self-made men on the sometimes pliant, sometimes resistant, but always feminized wilderness” (275). It is a decidedly sexual exchange. Playing with the writings of Richard Slotkin (Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier) and Frederick Jackson Turner (The Frontier in American History), Carden captures the symbolic physicality of the interaction: America is a “wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top; in the ‘virgin soil of the frontier,’ this ‘thrusting’ male pioneer enacts the violent heroics of masculine creativity that expand national borders” (275).3 Territorial conquest is an act of sexual aggression and possession. The plough is a substitute penis that breaks the virgin soil for the cultivation of crops. The pioneer foregrounds the fact that the frontier is a transitory state. Settlement belies the notion of the limitless expanse; the boundary can only be pushed so far. The frontier scout is therefore an endangered species from the moment he enters the literary imagination. Re-casting the role of heroic nation-builder is an inevitable development. Westward movement, Smith’s

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study concludes, formulated new communities, “communities devoted . . . not to marching onward but to cultivating the earth. They plowed the virgin land . . . and the great Interior Valley was transformed into a garden . . .” (123). Man reconstructs the unruly environment; taming the land is an act of imposing order and productivity. The relationship between settler and setting is decidedly adversarial. Pioneers respond to the landscape, Smith notes, with hostility tinged with fear. Warfare, not harmony, best describes his reading of the settler/setting relationship; the “idealized frontier farmer [is] armed with that supreme agrarian weapon, the sacred plow” (123). The peaceful imagery evoked by the reference to a garden is undercut by the implication of violence. Cultivation is an act of aggression in Smith’s context. It becomes a self-defensive gesture in Roderick Nash’s assessment. He similarly identifies “conquest of [the] wilderness” as the “major concern” of the pioneer (24). Significantly the notion of subduing the wilderness is not limited to the land; while on the “direct, physical level, it constituted a formidable threat to his very survival . . . civilized man [also] faced the danger of succumbing to the wildness of his surroundings and reverting to savagery himself” (24). The untamed land poses a physical and emotional threat to the early farmers. It has the potential to be a benefactor, but is approached as an opponent. In both studies, the pioneer is clearly masculine while the landscape is suggestively feminine—the virgin soil.4 America as a garden raises several related, but contradictory images in writings about the frontier. Smith’s garden is the product of “heroic” physical toil. Annette Kolodny offers an alternative vision in The Lay of the Land: America is the garden, waiting to be experienced. Many immigrants she asserts, were inspired by a desire to embrace “a maternal ‘garden,’ receiving and nurturing human children . . .” (5). “Eden, Paradise, the Golden Age, and the idyllic garden,” Kolodny proposes, “were subsumed in the image of an America promising material ease . . . and a return to the primal warmth of womb or breast in a feminine landscape” (6). The new landscape is a sheltering space providing sustenance and security. While it is approached as an ideal (and idealized) locale in this romanticized assessment, the land is not immune to the manipulations of the settlers. As they quickly recognized, Kolodny points out, “the success of settlement depended on the ability to master the land, transforming the virgin territories into something else . . .” (7). It should be noted that once again the land is feminine and the settler masculine (Kolodny draws attention to the obsession with “the lone male in the wilderness”). The gendered landscape, while theoretically idyllic, is in need of practical “improvement.” Settlement, by its very nature, must alter the environment.

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The pioneer experience reshaped both the land and the human landscape. Mike Fischer contends that “there can be no Eden in Nebraska, because its origins are not innocent” (37). “Populating” the new territory was actually a process of displacing and replacing the Plains Indians. Oblique references to the existence of Native Americans surface in My Antonia, but the absence of a continued presence is effectively glossed over. The origins of the “garden of America” differ markedly when the myth is compared with history. Shelley Newman detects a similar discrepancy between the story of America and the reality of slavery. “Slavery is the original sin in the American garden,” she insists, noting that “linked with slavery, the myth of origin is doubled, opposing the foundation myth with the reality that fuels it” (57). The assault upon indigenous peoples and the violent relocation of Africans are crucial elements in the process of creating America. The myth of the garden welcoming, or fostered by, the white settlers cannot accommodate the facts of settlement, but it maintains its hold over the literary imagination. GARDENING IN THE NEW WORLD: “NATURALIZING” FEMININE SPACE The frontier as a whole is a garden in Smith’s version; it is the fruit of men’s labours. Kolodny narrows the scope of the cultivated space and redefines the gardener in The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers. Many female pioneers sought to defuse the apprehension created by the vastness of the new territory through “idealized domesticity.” Gardens and orchards break the immense terrain into manageable (and managed) portions. Practical needs and psychological supports are served by the familiarized natural space; the sustenance it provides is both physical and spiritual. The land and gardener achieve a type of harmony, albeit a tenuous one, given the harsh conditions of the environment. “Domesticity” suggests that the garden is an extension of the home while “idealized” introduces the notion of perfection or excellence. Rather than being “the garden of the world” these individualized gardens are intimate spaces, no less important to the process of settlement, but intensely personal places. They are protective enclosures in a landscape seemingly without borders (descriptions of the prairie in particular emphasize its immensity). The image of the garden as an intimate, often idealized, but always specialized space resonates throughout literature. Gardens recall what David Stouck identifies as “a literary tradition that locates innocence and happiness in a rural retreat, a tradition that equates the golden age with the garden of Eden” (53). Stouck specifically concentrates on pastoral art, but the

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image of a private place of near, if not complete, perfection sheltering an emotionally fulfilled individual, is found in many types of writing. “The place of perfect repose and inner harmony,” A. Bartlett Giamatti concurs, “is always remembered as a garden” (11). Tranquility and a symbiotic relationship with nature are frequently associated with garden imagery. Connection with the land is equated with a type of spirituality and/or inner peace. It entails a withdrawal from the larger world into a self-contained space. More than a mere cultivated plot, the garden is a place of physical and intellectual retreat, theorizes J. Douglas Porteous: The garden, since Genesis and the Koran, has been a symbol of both earthly and future delight. Gardens have traditionally been places of privacy and retirement, where one may leave the troubles of the outer world and come to terms with the eternal cyclic round of growth. Gardens are symbols of regeneration and care. (96)

Contemplative sites, havens for spiritual regeneration, gardens are protective enclosures. They hold out the possibility of a desire fulfilled (spiritual or earthly) and the (re)-achievement of a symbiotic relationship with the natural realm. Part of the power of the garden’s appeal is its separation from worldly trials and tribulations; of course, should the isolation be externally rather than self-imposed, a creative centre can be transformed into a prison. The enclosed, walled garden can be protective and prescriptive. Multiple readings accompany the image of the garden, from “idealized domesticity” to “symbols of regeneration and care,” but it is primarily read as a feminine space. The figure in the garden, more often than not, is a woman. The man enters her space (and not infrequently her!); the fertility and sensuality of the land blend with that of the woman. Noting a “shift in the literary representation of the garden after Dante,” Giamatti identifies the major difference as the depiction of the woman in the garden: . . . in Dante’s Eden, for instance, Matelda was descended from Eve. . . . in the enchanted gardens of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, Alcina, Armida and Acrasia are lineal descendants of Homer’s Circe. They are sorceresses, and what is true of them is true of their gardens: the more attractive they appear, the more dangerous they are. (5–6)

The female space is represented as tempting, but treacherous. He cites examples of “Knights seeking ease and pleasure who . . . succumbed to a ‘state of

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virtually infantile passivity’ as they lay motionless in the arms of the dominating female figure in the gardens” (359). Seduction is thus an act of destruction (Eve lost Adam Eden!). “Distracted” from their noble quests, these men are essentially emasculated by their experiences in the female gardens. Giamatti brushes over the fact that the Knights were “seeking ease and pleasure”—the gardens (and gardeners) in fact fulfill their desires. Whether derived from the sexual knowledge of Eve or the magical knowledge of Circe, the power of the woman is represented as a threat to the man. He must be on guard when entering her domain.5 CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS: THE CITY AS A MASCULINE DOMAIN While country and garden are represented as feminine landscapes the city is frequently written, and read, as masculine space. With its tall towers and carefully mapped streets the modern city can be interpreted as embodying Freud’s phallic symbols and Bachelard’s straight angles. It is a physically imposing landscape of concrete and steel erections. Space is divided into readily identifiable sections with specific purposes. Location reinforces social hierarchies: penthouse versus squat house. The city, at least in theory, is a place of distinct boundaries. In practice, however, commercial, financial, residential and entertainment districts often blend. While architects and city-planners do take the visual effect into account, utility is the primary concern of the city structure. The contrast between city and country is visually striking, but so too is the ideological comparison. The assumption that woman has a closer affinity with the natural realm than man does, and social theories on the “appropriate” behaviour of respectable women regarding the spaces and places they may inhabit, combine to render the city a male domain. It is “a space which is fashioned, shaped and invested by social activities during a finite historical period,” theorizes Lefebvre (73). Susan Merrill Squier proposes that because “the city is a cultural artifact” and “women have always had a problematic relationship to culture itself,” the division is socially engineered by “both biologically based and socially enforced stereotypes” (4). Susan Warwick offers a compelling observation: the garden and natural landscape are also cultural constructs; that is, even if the individual does not physically alter the environment, the act of viewing and interpreting imaginatively and intellectually constructs the setting.6 The concept of a naturally occurring feminine space is a mere myth. Elizabeth Wilson interprets the representation of the city as a purely masculine space as being equally mythical. While she concedes, “the city is

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‘masculine’ in its triumphal scale, its towers and vistas and arid industrial regions,” Wilson asserts that “it is ‘feminine’ in its enclosing embrace, in its indeterminacy and labyrinthine uncentredness” (7). The city is neither masculine nor feminine; in her reading it is both. Despite a case for the androgyny of the city, the two spaces are more frequently approached as adversarial: “country versus city, feminine versus masculine.” This paradigm reinforces the notion of gendered territories; “the city cannot exist without its opposite,” Wilson observes. She summarizes the pattern as mapping “on to the opposition of city and country, culture and nature . . . male and female: man is culture and woman is the earth” (17). Such interpretations deny the complexity of both the city and the country (and male and female!); simplistic divisions and definitions only scratch the surface. The “nature” of the woman in the city, all too often, is oversimplified. Along with the image of the city as the bastion and cradle of civilization there exists the seamy, sexual component. The relative anonymity of the city creates openings for behaviours and desires not sanctioned by “proper” society. Accommodating woman as both a public and private occupant of the city (also a public and private entity) is not easy in the “either/or” paradigm. As a result, the presence of women in the city is frequently linked with sexual license; she is “temptress,” “whore,” “fallen woman,” “lesbian,” concludes Wilson. She is also “heroic womanhood who triumphs over temptation and tribulation” (6). She is both threat and the one threatened. Woman is the anomaly in the urban setting; not until Theodore Dreiser’s taboo-breaking Sister Carrie (1900) did the heroine boldly venture into the American city. Sexuality in fact is the key to Carrie Meeber’s success. AT PLAY IN THE CITY: RECONFIGURING THE CULTURAL ARTIFACT Representations of the city are not the mainstay of a Cather text; while several cities (New York, Chicago, Washington and Quebec for example) are featured in her writings, they are effectively overshadowed by rural settings. Despite the fact that she preferred to live and work in a city, Cather focused on country or natural settings in her fiction.7 When the city does appear in her writings it is often treated with ambivalence or outright hostility. Cather appears to write within the tradition of the city as a masculine space. Few of her female characters venture from their country homes; more often than not, Cather directs her artistic energies away from the urban environment. My Antonia briefly addresses the female experience of a non-country space. The sexual threat of the urban environment is conveyed through

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Antonia—she is seduced and betrayed in Denver—but the action takes place “offstage” and is only recounted briefly. While Denver is still in the west, and not much of a city at this point in time, it is clearly a distinctive space. It is larger than the town of Black Hawk and the brief glimpse provided by Mrs. Steavens—“she’d been living in a brick block, where she didn’t have proper conveniences to wash . . .”—suggests a squalid tenement (202). It is a block, not a home, and Antonia’s garments are not the only sullied items. Sexual and emotional vulnerability surround Antonia’s journey away from the country. It is to the rural land that the battered, but undefeated heroine returns; re-immersing herself in farm life heals Antonia. The city as a source of culture and entertainment is, however, valued in My Antonia. Cather has Antonia marry a man who likes “theatres and lighted streets and music” (235). He is a kindred spirit to Antonia’s own refined father. The “city versus country” debate is nonetheless lopsided in My Antonia: the “city man” Cuzak’s success is linked to Antonia’s fruitful farm and the children they create. He achieved nothing on his own in the city. Even the apparent success of Jim Burden—prominent lawyer, married “well,” lives in the city—is suspect. Jim follows the usual pattern of success: leave the farm for town, go to university, build a career in a cosmopolitan city, but his loveless and barren marriage and virtual detachment from the natural world (as a lawyer for the railway his connection with the landscape differs dramatically from his boyhood affinity with the environment) give his achievements a melancholy air. The city is not a glorified space in this novel. The image of an individual adrift in a heartless city surfaces in O Pioneers !. In this narrative it is a male character damaged by the urban environment. Cather anticipates the modernist interpretation of the city as an alienating place. Carl Linstrum laments the soul-crushing indifference of the city. He is one of thousands with “no ties . . . When one dies, they scarcely know where to bury him” (83). Freedom, Carl warns Alexandra, “means that one isn’t needed anywhere” (83). Based upon his personal experience and observations, Carl rejects the representation of the city as a superior cultural space. Anonymity and isolation mark the city experience, but Alexandra does not accept the conclusion that country life is inherently better. Behind the idyllic facade lurks the potential for emotional and intellectual atrophy: “We pay a high rent, too [growing] hard and heavy here . . . and our minds get stiff ” (83). The awareness that there is something larger than her farm comforts Alexandra. She voices a desire for her youngest brother Emil to journey to the city, but does not propose the adventure for herself. Knowledge that the city exists is sufficient for Alexandra; she expresses no need for a first-

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hand view. Realistic about the limitations of her home, Alexandra still chooses to remain on the farm. She does not, perhaps cannot, envision herself within a city. An appreciation of a life force beyond her personal experience serves as a validation of Alexandra’s own life choices. A country girl alone in a big city is frequently a recipe for disaster in literature. Plunged into an unfamiliar cityscape in pursuit of her dream, Thea Kronborg, in The Song of the Lark, resists this pattern of defeat. Initially, Thea is indifferent to her surroundings; Chicago “was simply a wilderness through which one had to find one’s way” (169). The young girl is not impressed with the cultural construct. Thea conflates the country/city binary; Chicago is a “wilderness,” not a “civilized” space. The city is a necessary evil; labyrinthine, it must be deciphered in order to be navigated. Her father’s assessment of the city as a sordid site fails to titillate Thea (137). The city holds no allure for Thea. A soul-stirring concert and a mistake in directions are required to make Thea “conscious of the city itself . . .” (175). Accosted by several men, Thea begins to lose the sensation evoked by the music. The city poses a physical, sexual, and artistic threat to Thea. It is an adversary to be met head on, but that very resolution suggests that the city is also a catalyst, a challenge to the emerging artist. Negative in nature, the city is nonetheless a positive force for Thea; it introduces her to music as a true art form and intensifies her determination.8 Thea’s experience of the city is as close as Cather comes to an endorsement of urban life. Cities figure prominently, if ambiguously, in two of Morrison’s novels: Tar Baby and Jazz. The rural versus urban dynamic comes into play in Tar Baby, but it is the male character Son who is identified as, and champions, the country. Son describes the all black town of Eloe as “ninety houses, three hundred and eighty-five people;” so remote is this rural site that it cannot be reached by plane, train, bus or taxi—only “bumming a ride” can take you to Eloe (173, 244). The sharp contrast between Son and Jadine is concretized in their “native” environments. Jadine is a city girl, at ease in “Baltimore. Philadelphia. Paris” and above all, New York (173). Son is pure country. New York disorients Son. Alone in a hotel, he needs Jadine to provide “the ballast and counterweight to the stone of sorrow New York City had given him” (217). A self-reliant and self-sufficient man, Son is now adrift in a city inhabited by a strange race. The men are emasculated, the girls sorrowful, and old age and childhood have been hidden. It is a surreal experience which challenges his own sense of identity. Son interprets the inhabitants of New York as deformed and de-naturalized. They are familiar and yet unrecognizable. It is

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the urban environment, he concludes, which is responsible for the distortion of character. As he moves through the city he sees the walking wounded (the psychologically damaged) and feels himself slipping into a similar state of being. The city disturbs and diminishes Son, but it invigorates Jadine. New York reorients Jadine. She too is physically and psychologically altered by the metropolis, but it is an empowering experience for Jadine. The city seems to enter her body: her “legs were longer . . . her neck really connected her body, to her head . . . if ever there was a black woman’s town, New York was it. . . . she would . . . take it and give it to Son” (221–2). The “possession” is mutual; woman and city share a symbiotic relationship. Jadine has a freedom of movement, a feeling of belonging in New York which she is unable to achieve in Eloe or on the Isle des Chevaliers. It is not a damaging location for her; it heals Jadine on several levels. New York restores Jadine’s autonomy and independence. Concepts of masculinity and femininity are destabilized by the city. It is Jadine’s to “give” to Son; she will be his guide and provider (her friends sublet them the apartment, she earns thousands of dollars modeling). Son clearly feels “un-manned” by this “black woman’s town.” Despite her feelings about New York, the lovers relocate to Eloe. Jadine credits Son with making her feel “unorphaned,” not the city (209). The journey to Florida in fact “reorphans” her; the expectations of the tiny community drive a wedge between Jadine and Son. She is no more at ease in his rural hometown than Son is in her urban environment; neither can adapt to the behavioural codes of the other’s territory. Repulsed by the “flaws” in their respective “homelands,” geographic relocation becomes an exercise in redemption for Son and Jadine.9 Each interprets the other as needing to be rescued; conflicting locations are cast as adversaries in the struggle for autonomy. The city dominates Jazz. A strong presence in the text, it almost becomes a central character. The narrator confesses difficulty in distinguishing the people from the “work of the stonemasons,” when viewing the metropolis from an elevated vantage point (7). City structures and the lives of individuals become visually inseparable—both combine to create the City that requires no name. The narrator identifies the City as an invigorating place: it “makes me dream tall and feel in on things. . . . I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible—like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one” (7). And yet, as the final pages of the novel make clear, the narrator is not a participant in city-life, but a mere voyeur. She is not “in on things” and her strength is suspect given that she fails in her anticipation of the tragedy of Violet, Joe and Felice (having

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witnessed the violent resolution of the Violet, Joe, Dorcas entanglement, she incorrectly assumes the subsequent grouping will share a similar fate). The narrator’s false (and perhaps smug) sense of security is effectively conveyed in the haunting declaration that all the wars are over. Each of the narrator’s assertions about the City has a two-sided quality; she contends that the City affords freedom—“ordinary people can . . . get on the streetcar . . . and ride anywhere,” but they choose to remain in their neighborhoods “because everything you want is right where you are: the church, the store, the party, . . . the postbox (but no high schools), . . . the bootleg houses (but no banks) . . .” (10). It is a qualified freedom at best. Educational and financial institutions and opportunities lie elsewhere. Morrison’s use of brackets functions as a textual representation of social exclusion. The narrator describes a city within a city; race effectively divides the urban space. The area inhabited by black residents is defined against the larger—“white”—city. The implicit defiance of the statement, the insistence on freedom of movement, is belied by the limited choices available to black individuals. And, as was the case in Tar Baby, the City somehow distorts human progression: “the young are not so young here, and. . . . Sixty years . . . is as much as anybody feels like being bothered with” (11). City-life clearly exacts a personal price. Possibility and limitation, freedom and constraint, the City in Jazz is all things and nothing. Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua articulates the contradictory nature of the city: it is “nurturer and agitator,” it reflects “the innermost desires, frustrations, and fears of [the] characters,” and it “paradoxically offers and denies . . . opportunity and freedom” (169–170). To a large degree the character of the city is contingent upon the characters themselves; personal choices and attitudes colour the city experience. The narrator’s decision to observe the lives of others signals an avoidance of the life force of the City (220). Adopting the role of mere watcher isolates and diminishes the narrator. Although she assumes a position of knowledge and authority, the narrator must finally confront both her acts of self-delusion and her lifeless life. By acting as the “objective” chronicler of the lives of others, the narrator denies her own subjectivity. In effect, she steps out of her own life in order to step into the lives of Violet and Joe. Failure to connect with other human beings leads to a sense of alienation which warps the narrator in Jazz; she is ultimately detached from both herself and the other characters. Failure to connect in Sula leads to worldweariness and indifference. Sula’s adventures cover a great deal of geography but all she discovers is boredom. The cities and men “merged into one large personality” (120–121). The inability to find a friend, to connect with her

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lovers distorts Sula’s experience of the city. New York fails to invigorate Sula as it did Jadine. Morrison explores the need for connection in “City Limits, Village Values: Concepts of the Neighborhood in Black Fiction.” She theorizes that the “missing quality in city fiction” is the ancestor. The presence of this figure transforms the setting: “the city is wholesome, loved when such an ancestor is on the scene, when neighborhood links are secure. The country is beautiful—healing because more often than not, such an ancestor is there” (39). The absence of an ancestor in Sula, Jazz, and Tar Baby accounts for the ambiguous representation of the city. Sula’s ancestors are in Medallion; despite her disconnection from her family, she returns “home” from the ancestor-less city. Joe and Violet connect with each other, but lack an ancestor—Joe’s mother is an elusive creature and the rest of their family is scattered, possibly dead. Jadine has the sensation that New York is home but having broken from her only relatives, she too lacks an ancestor. She returns, not to New York, but to Paris after her break up with Son. While Morrison holds out the possibility of connection in both an urban and rural location (wherever there is an ancestor), connection in Cather’s writing occurs in the country, not the city. Cather seemingly writes within the tradition of the city: it is represented as a sexual threat (Antonia’s experience), an indifferent creature (Carl’s impression), a hostile force (Thea’s sensation), and an emotionally barren place (Jim’s life and marriage in particular). With the exception of Thea’s experience, we only hear of city-life from a distance; the urban site is granted a peripheral position in most of Cather’s fiction.10 She does, however, diverge from the tradition of the city as a male domain in her treatment of the female artist. Cather acknowledges the potential artistic and intellectual value of the city through Thea’s development and, to a lesser extent, Alexandra’s conviction of the humanizing power of the city. “Possibility” is a stronger feature in Morrison’s representation of urban life than it is in Cather’s work. Morrison plays with the tradition of the city. She exposes the emotional detachment and isolating effect of the urban landscape through the narrator of Jazz and the character of Sula. There is, however, a strong suggestion that these two figures are complicit in their alienation; the narrator reduces her own life to being a mere observer of the lives of others, while Sula confuses a physical act with emotional intimacy. The possibility of personal connection is illustrated by the re-connection of Violet and Joe. The pair rediscovers the city as friends and lovers. Sexual freedom for women in the city is not without its pitfalls, Morrison makes clear, but nor is it without its pleasures. While Sula’s

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affairs fail to gratify her emotional needs, Jadine’s relationship with Son clearly adds a dimension to her already empowering connection with the city, albeit temporarily. The social mores of Eloe which demand that Son and Jadine not only not share a bed, but also not share a house, do not come into play in New York. The traditional pairings of city and country, male and female are dramatically reversed in Tar Baby. Morrison challenges the stereotypes and the implications that accompany them. CULTIVATING THE PLOT: STORY TELLING THROUGH SPECIALIZED LANDSCAPES Another symbolically charged locale which both Morrison and Cather incorporate in their fiction is the garden. It is a specialized space with a scope of meaning which reaches far beyond its physical boundaries. Gardens have appeared in literature as sanctuaries and retreats, protective and empowering enclosures, sites of imprisonment, and symbols of fertility. They serve practical, emotional, psychological, aesthetic, and spiritual purposes. Typically the figure in the garden is female—nurturing, tending the vulnerable plants— her fertility is suggestively linked with that of the garden. Gardens figure prominently in Cather’s fiction, appearing in all of the texts in this study. While Morrison includes gardens in only three of the novels under discussion, they are also intensely significant symbols. In Song of Solomon, Paradise, and The Bluest Eye details of description are fairly sparse as the actual garden is secondary to the metaphorical one. Ruth Dead’s garden, as related by her son, is a surreal space in which the flowers smother her, “taking away her breath with their soft jagged lips” (105). Milkman interprets the episode as a warning against “seriousness,” but Guitar’s response suggests an alternate interpretation (105). He asks why Milkman, recognizing that his mother is being suffocated, did nothing. Guitar’s perception is razor sharp. The “dream” reveals Milkman’s irresponsibility and emotional detachment. What does the garden imply about Ruth? Milkman insists that she enjoys gardening and yet she appears to be “the unhappiest woman in the world” (104). Prior to her marriage, creativity through nature was a source of strength for Ruth. She took great delight in arranging fresh flowers and other natural objects in a bowl. Her husband’s inability to appreciate the beauty of her driftwood centerpiece (he criticizes her meal) destroys this creative outlet for Ruth. From this point on, the centerpiece is not an element of nature, but a watermark on the table. It too anchors Ruth; it functions “as a mooring a checkpoint . . . [assuring her]. That she was alive somewhere, inside . . .”

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(11). As a consequence of Macon’s cold criticism, Ruth has difficulty distinguishing her waking state from the realm of dream. Disconnected from nature and a natural life (her world is virtually reduced to her loveless marriage and tension filled house), Ruth appears to be unable to resist the oppressive forces acting upon her. And yet, Milkman sees her as “kicking to the last;” Ruth is diminished and ineffectual, but rejects defeat (105). The garden is a place of pleasure and misery for Ruth. The incident speaks to her sense of being overwhelmed by her own life—she after all plants the bulbs which rapidly grow into a life-force which smothers her—and to her relationship with her son—his callous indifference to her welfare in the dream reflects his attitude and behaviour in “waking” life. The message, like the surreal scene, is hazy. What is clear is that the mother’s garden is more complex than a simple, positive symbol of fertility, source of pleasurable labour, or retreat from the harshness of life. Gardens become instruments of war in Paradise. Spanning a ten year period, the battle of the blossoms accompanies an improvement in the material lives of the women of Ruby. Labour saving devices grant leisure time and allow the women to act on desire rather than necessity (90). The surplus time and energy are put to poor use and a hobby becomes a “habit” which in turn becomes “so frenetic a land grab, husbands complained of neglect . . .” (89). The conspicuous consumption of materialism is concretized in the town’s gardens. They serve no practical purpose—indeed they supplant vegetable gardens—and have little aesthetic value. The gardens become “de-naturalized” spaces, which serve as part of a social dialogue (“mine’s bigger than yours” mentality). Although the rivalry is over by the time of the story, the landscape is marked by “frenetic” competition. Ruby is filled with “fat, overwrought yards;” they are neither peaceful nor pleasing to the eye (90). The violence suggested by the phrase “garden battles” is precisely that—only a suggestion—but Morrison does link violence to the garden more directly in Paradise. The attack on the convent leaves no physical evidence (the bodies disappear) except in the garden which is a mixture of “blossom and death” (304). Without human care, the once productive garden reverts to a wild state. The death and regrowth visible in the yard mirror what has happened in the house. An absence of bodies and the inability to comprehend and articulate their disappearance is intensified by the sudden appearance of a door/window in the middle of the garden. Though incomprehensible to the viewers, the intrusive feature signals a world beyond the violence and destruction. The physical garden is transformed into a surreal site. Temptation and terror enter a garden robbed of its tranquility and order by a single act of violence.11

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The violation of the garden takes a harrowing significance in The Bluest Eye. The child narrator Claudia MacTeer links the lack of marigolds with Pecola Breedlove’s tragedy. Haunted by guilt that she planted the seeds incorrectly, Claudia observes, “we had dropped our seeds just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt” (5–6). Pecola is literally her father’s garden; her infertility is linked with the infertility of the land: both seeds and baby die (6). Cholly Breedlove’s act, whether “lust or despair,” is the direct cause of his daughter’s psychological destruction. He is the primary, but not the only person responsible for Pecola’s misery. No marigolds grow in the neighborhood, and the symbolic link between Pecola and the plants is an indictment of the entire community. Claudia personalizes the guilt over, and sense of responsibility for, Pecola’s fate, but the larger group is culpable. It fails to protect the young girl and then hypocritically shuns her when she descends into madness. The image of the garden—a place of growth and sanctuary—is shattered just as Pecola, the “plot of black dirt,” is psychologically fragmented by the rape and stillbirth. Morrison utilizes a space replete with symbolism to explore emotionally charged issues—rape and incest. Cather’s representations of gardens tend to affirm the positive image of the garden. Imbued with more concrete details than those of Morrison, their symbolic value is in no sense diminished by the descriptive touches. Perhaps the most memorable of Cather’s gardens is Antonia Shimerda’s personal sanctuary. Rediscovering Antonia after a twenty year separation, Jim Burden senses: “the deepest peace in [her] orchard” (My Antonia, 219). The atmosphere is tranquil; the location is insulated and isolated. Antonia’s orchard serves as a refuge from life’s struggles, but it is a temporary retreat offering solace and the strength to face hardships. The prospect of burying their dog in this special place seems to be a genuine consolation for Antonia’s youngest children (219). The garden is not an avoidance of the difficult aspects of life. It is in fact a mechanism for facing them. The emotional needs of the grieving children are fulfilled without allowing them to become debilitating. Antonia’s garden provides a means for dealing with the realities of death and the continuation of life. The genesis of Antonia’s garden is a crucial element of its power. While it is clearly a maternal space—Antonia’s trees “were on [her] mind like children” and the fertility of the land is mirrored in her own large family—Antonia does recreate the “bench and . . . table under the bushes” of her father’s garden in her “grape arbor with seats built along the sides and a warped plank table” (150, 219). More importantly she preserves the social value of her father’s garden; it was a place where “he used to, sit . . . with his friend

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. . . [and] talk—beautiful talk” (150). Antonia opens her garden for the school picnic each year. As insulated and isolated as the enclosure seems to be it is, nonetheless, a social space. It is accessible to the community, albeit on Antonia’s terms. The society which once judged her, now seeks out Antonia’s enclave for social gatherings. Antonia’s garden symbolizes the successful merger of Old and New Worlds. It is a “cultivated plot” on several levels. Bountiful in terms of the fruit it provides, it is also a source of spiritual nourishment. The value of the sanctuary is poignantly emphasized by the absence of such a space in Jim Burden’s life; his only retreat is in his memory. Jim has an abstract connection with the land—loving it “with a personal passion”—but is virtually detached from it (2). Antonia has both a practical and a spiritual relationship with the country. Her garden sanctuary provides a temporary respite for Antonia; it is an idyllic space, but she is very much a part of the stream of life. “Idealized domesticity” through gardens is foregrounded in The Song of the Lark. Taming a portion of the prairie and de-mystifying the new terrain are crucial survival aids for the pioneer. Mrs. Kohler attempts to recreate her former Rhine Valley village in Moonstone, Colorado. Hiding in the transplanted vegetation, she “lived under the shade of what she had planted and watered and pruned. In the blaze of the open plain she was stupid and blind like an owl . . .” (20). Mrs. Kohler makes a “foreign” landscape familiar by reproducing the motherland. The emotional value of the cultivated plot outweighs its practical benefits. It anchors the woman. On the prairie Mrs. Kohler is altered, diminished; in her garden she is active and knowledgeable. Physically more open than Antonia’s enclosure, the Kohler garden is in fact the more isolated of the two places. Mrs. Kohler effectively barricades herself in her garden. She only leaves to make Christmas purchases (20). Mrs. Kohler is not an entirely anti-social figure. She does embrace Thea and undertakes the reclamation of Professor Wunsch: “the old woman went at him as she did at her garden . . .” (21). Unfortunately, Mrs. Kohler is less successful with the man than she is with the landscape. Professor Wunsch reverts to his old ways. In contrast, the prairie encroaches on, but does not conquer, the garden. The creative nature of the Kohler garden is elevated to a new level through Thea Kronborg. For the child, it was one of a limited number of welcoming spaces; at odds with the community, Thea sought out emotional resources in non-public places. Frequently, in the midst of (adult) artistic struggles and disappointments she finds herself “in the Kohlers’ garden:” “they save me: the old things, things like the Kohlers’ garden”

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(384). Imaginatively, Thea returns to Mrs. Kohler’s garden when she needs nourishment for her soul. Although she refers to it as the “Kohlers’ garden,” the text is quite insistent that it is Mrs. Kohler who is truly responsible for its success. She creates “a garden of her own.” Thea is returning to a maternal space and the artistic stirrings of childhood and early adolescence. A self-protective creation is transformed into a site of inspiration which enhances Thea’s artistry. The garden is an imaginative sanctuary that liberates rather than restricts the growth of the artist. The garden itself can be a medium of artistic expression. The visual impact of their creations is clearly a factor for Mrs. Kohler and Antonia Shimerda; each woman cultivates an aesthetically pleasing setting which also serves practical purposes (fruit production, much needed shade). While typically the figure in the garden is female, Cather also incorporates male gardeners. Unlike the two women who combine utility with beauty, several of the men focus solely on the aesthetic impact of their gardens. Godfrey St. Peter, the title character in The Professor’s House, spends over twenty years creating “a French garden in Hamilton:” . . . not a blade of grass [in the] tidy half-acre of glistening gravel and glistening shrubs and bright flowers. There were trees, . . . a spreading horse-chestnut, a row of slender Lombardy poplars . . . Masses of greenbrier grew . . . the prickly stems interwoven and clipped . . . (6)

Ordered and meticulously maintained (qualities increasingly absent in his changing life), St. Peter’s garden has been “the comfort of his life” (5). It is not associated with his family—gravel hardly invites children’s play and it is the place where he “worked off his discontent” staying behind while his wife and daughters went on vacations—but “it was there that he and Tom Outland used to sit and talk . . .” (7). The garden has an exotic or foreign air about it. As Marilyn R. Chandler observes, St. Peter reveals a “preference for the European, the decorative, the exclusive, and the secluded over the more frank, sociable American use of outdoor domestic space” (195). Avoidance of the domestic is part of the allure of his garden for the professor. Unlike Antonia and Mrs. Kohler whose cultivated plots welcome their families and friends, St. Peter’s garden serves as a barricade against unwelcome intruders (his wife, daughters, and neighbours in particular). St. Peter makes a protective and male-centered enclosure. It is almost an unnatural natural setting bearing the mark of the interior designer more than that of a gardener (absent is the lush fertility of Antonia’s creation).12 The plants are not native to the region (not unlike Antonia’s and Mrs.

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Kohler’s introduction of non-native plants) and are essentially pruned into submission. St. Peter’s garden functions as a retreat from both his family and the larger human landscape (decidedly unlike Antonia’s use of her garden, and, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Kohler’s semi-inviting space). Not an inherently bad thing, if temporary, but there is a danger of a refuge becoming life-denying as opposed to life-sustaining. Escape can easily become abnegation. Captain Forrester’s garden in A Lost Lady is markedly less formal than Professor St. Peter’s, but the pitfalls of self-isolation remain. Incapacitated by an injury, Captain Forrester worked “in his garden, trimmed his snowball bushes and lilac hedges, devoted a great deal of time to growing roses” (23–4). This once giant of a man grows “heavier and weaker” (91). He is diminished, one might even say emasculated, by both his physical injury and his wife’s infidelity. Unable to satisfy his wife’s physical and economic needs, Captain Forrester is reduced to marking time on a sun-dial. Retreating to the sanctuary of his garden is a type of negation; the Captain is literally marking his time. It is also an avoidance tactic: focusing on the flowers distracts him from his failed marriage (distracts, not blinds—he knows about his wife’s infidelity). Godfrey St. Peter’s retreat to his garden is less dramatic in terms of his physical appearance, and yet he too approaches it as an opportunity to detach himself from family life. Characters who withdraw from the reality of life pay the ultimate price in O Pioneers !. Marie Shabata and Emil Bergson consummate their love in what appears to be an ideal location. Emil discovers Marie in the orchard which was “riddled . . . with gold . . .” (174). Marie emerges from a dream and, finding herself in Emil’s arms, whispers “I was dreaming . . . don’t take my dream away !” The orchard is sensual, almost a fairytale world, and the frustrated lovers are at last in a place conducive to their passion. Relatively private, the orchard is protected by a hedge “so dense that one could see through it only by peering closely between the leaves” (176). They are seemingly in a “walled garden of love.” The fruit garden, however, promises what it cannot provide. It is in fact an extension of a house made claustrophobic by jealousy. Violence enters the garden in the form of Marie’s husband—a figure conveniently forgotten by the lovers. The sanctuary afforded by the natural space is temporary; its protective powers are a mere illusion. Their dreamlike encounter is ethereal and Marie and Emil pay for their transgressions with their lives. Nature alone responds sympathetically to the ill-fated pair: the blood stained grass “told only half the story. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies . . . were fluttering in and out among the interlacing shadows, diving and soaring . . .” (182). The brutal reality of the murders is but part of the story; the passage implies that

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some type of transcendence is the other. Earlier in the text Marie is described as moving “flutteringly, along the path, like a white night-moth;” both she and Emil are “free spirits” (166). Whether we interpret the white butterflies as Marie and Emil, or symbols of a life-force beyond that of individuals, the natural world seemingly commiserates with the lovers. Despite the presence of the murder victims, the tranquility of the garden reimposes itself: the natural cycle continues.13 Temptation and betrayal in a garden have a strong literary and religious resonance. In O Pioneers ! the garden, or more specifically the orchard, is the initial temptation. Marie Shabata tells Carl Linstrum (the original caretaker of the trees), “we’d never have bought the place if it hadn’t been for this orchard, and then I wouldn’t have had Alexandra . . . ,” nor, presumably, her brother Emil (91). Charmed by Frank Shabata’s appearance and eager to be free of the restrictions of school and family, Marie marries impulsively, but soon repents. Emil awakens Marie to the knowledge of love, desire, and genuine connection. The price of the knowledge takes on biblical proportions: expulsion from the edenic environment via the explosion of a shotgun. The allure of the fruit-garden sets into motion a whole series of misfortunes. Death Comes For the Archbishop explores the temptation of the garden on several levels. On its most basic level, the garden is a source of physical sustenance. Further development sharpens an epicurean attitude to food; Father Joseph laments the difficulties of cooking without proper vegetables. Missing his Sandusky garden and vineyard, he observes, it is a “missionary’s life; to plant where another shall reap” (39). The aesthetic value of the garden eludes the priest. Accustomed to a wider variety of tastes, Father Joseph is concerned with the practical benefits of cultivating crops. But he is also a truly religious character who recognizes the role of the missionary—planting seeds and sacrifice. He is therefore philosophical about his dietary deprivations. In sharp contrast to Father Joseph’s acceptance of austere conditions, Cather incorporates the story of Friar Baltazar, the tyrannical priest of Acoma. Driven by worldly desires and tastes, Baltazar exploits his flock for personal gain. The garden becomes the symbol of the discord between the religion he preaches and the personal demands he makes. It is formed and maintained through forced labour. The seeds Baltazar plants are the seeds of hostility. He alienates his congregation through exploitation and self-indulgence. Tempted by the physical and sensual gratification of the garden—“the Friar at Acoma lived more after the flesh than after the spirit”—Baltazar betrays his own faith (105). His exploits ultimately end in murder; one he commits and the other is his own. The women of Acoma in particular

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delight in the death of the garden. Tyrant and symbol both perish. The “loss” of the garden, in this context, is an act of liberation rather than a privation. The spiritual value of the garden is reinforced through the philosophy and actions of Father Latour. Recognizing the symbolic and practical value of the cultivated plot, the priest capitalizes on both attributes: his garden fulfills bodily, aesthetic, and spiritual needs. The Bishop’s sole recreation is his garden and it is truly a labour of love. He introduces “fruit as was hardly to be found even in the old orchards of California . . . [urging] new priests to plant fruit trees . . . and to encourage the Mexicans to add fruit to their starchy diet. Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden . . .” (265). Much like Antonia and Mrs. Kohler, Latour recreates the motherland in a foreign terrain. Indeed, the French priests are to be identified with, and by, their gardens. Latour’s horticultural efforts encourage inclusion; his cuttings reshape “many Mexican gardens” (201). Latour and his followers are planting seeds which alter the physical landscape. The variety of plants Latour’s garden produces provides physical benefits to priests and parishioners alike. More significant from the church’s perspective is the fact that they are sowing the seeds of faith which transform the spiritual landscape. A favorite quote, which Latour often shares with his students, highlights the symbolic value of the garden: “Man was lost and saved in a garden” (265). Delicate plant and fragile faith must be tenderly cared for in the harsh New Mexico environment. The garden is a simple, but enduring symbol of faith; it offers both temptation and salvation. The garden becomes a particularly complicated space (and symbol) in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Technically, it is Sapphira Colbert’s domain; she owns both the land and the gardeners (her slaves). Visiting a dying Jezebel, the mistress emphasizes their joint labour in transforming the Virginia countryside: “When I sit out on the porch and look around, I often think how we used to get up early and rake over the new flower-beds and transplant before it got hot” (87). She articulates an experience of collective creativity, an immersion in nature, but the chore is imposed on Jezebel just as surely as the non-native plants are imposed on the land. In response to Sapphira’s prodding, “I expect you remember those things, too,” Jezebel simply “looked up at her and nodded” (88). The gesture is, at best, a vague articulation of assent. The silence suggests a different memory from that of the slave owner, but the text refuses to provide it. Jezebel’s involvement in the garden is framed as an honour: “until Jezebel was eighty years old, Sapphira had entrusted her to oversee the gardens . . .” (96). To say the least, the lack of choice renders the privileged status suspect. The focus of the cultivation is significant: Sapphira

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desires a tangible reminder of her homeland (Loudoun County). Jezebel is herself “transplanted” from Africa; her sly joke about relishing “a li’l pickaninny’s hand” is a hint that this is not her garden (89). She injects a jarring (and violent) element into Sapphira’s nostalgic conversation. Jezebel plants her own “seed,” insisting on a counter vision of the garden she has “gained” at the cost of her world. The connections of Sapphira and Jezebel to the garden are largely in the past. Each is housebound—Sapphira to the mainhouse and the chair carried by slaves, and Jezebel to her slave cabin—movement in the garden is no longer the option it once was. Both slave and mistress are detached from any beauty or comfort the transformed terrain may have offered (again, in the case of Jezebel, it is unclear how much personal pleasure her obligation afforded); that privilege falls to Nancy, the young slave girl. Persecuted by Sapphira’s lascivious nephew, Nancy finds genuine solace in the landscape: “Nancy didn’t believe there was a lovelier spot in the world . . . She felt so joyful . . .” (196–197). Despite her vulnerable position—out of favour with her mistress and with no means of redress against Martin—Nancy opens herself to the beauty and emotion of the garden. Her eye does not scan the sight from a distance; she is immersed in the luxurious growth. Unnoticed, Nancy glories in its charms; it renews her faith in her home. The passion it inspires is joy, not fear. The garden is, at least temporarily, a space of “idealized domesticity” for Nancy (despite her slave status). The young slave girl is a striking figure in the garden; her beauty is reflected in, and reflects, the blossoming flowers. The site is hers, but she is the possession of Sapphira. Ownership of the garden is complicated by the issues of legal right, proprietorship through labour, and possession through spiritual kinship. Sapphira’s authority over the garden is not absolute; the act of appreciation is itself a form of possession. The complexity of garden imagery is apparent in the multiple representations found in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. Cather incorporates the garden more frequently than Morrison, but both authors play with the expectations raised by the image. Morrison’s gardens tend to emphasize the imaginative over the tangible. She ventures into the surreal whereas Cather grounds her garden imagery in minute details which frequently gain mythic status. Examples of “idealized domesticity” through gardens and orchards are found in My Antonia, O Pioneers !, Death Comes For the Archbishop, and Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Each of these texts depicts the garden as a sanctuary which introduces a small piece of the motherland into a foreign landscape. Morrison reveals how easily the idealized can be distorted through the garden battles of Paradise; gardens are figurative weapons, not sanctuaries, in Ruby.

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Violence enters the garden (and novel) with the attack on the convent women. In The Bluest Eye the violence is no less real, but the garden is symbolic—Pecola is treated like the dirt plot. Cather too introduces violence into the garden in O Pioneers! and Death Comes For the Archbishop, but it is defused through natural imagery and the distance of story telling. The depictions of the life-stifling retreats of Godfrey St. Peter and Captain Forrester are recognitions of the detrimental effects of withdrawing from the mainstream of life in favour of the garden. Bishop Latour’s inclusive garden sanctuary provides a counterpoint to the tempting conclusion that it is the male character who “misuses” the garden. While a case could be made that Latour’s celibacy (and exclusion from the social role of husband) is a factor in the positive status of his garden, it should be noted that the professor and captain are also celibate (in the present tense of the novels they have separate sleeping quarters from their wives, and largely separated lives). Despite his spiritual role (perhaps because of it), Latour does not withdraw from the stream of life. Like Antonia’s, the bishop’s garden is a continuation of life, not a substitute for it (as is the case with St. Peter and Forrester). Mrs. Kohler’s near isolation in The Song of the Lark also resists a gendered reading; she is selective about who gains admission to her spiritual oasis. Gardens are complex and frequently ambiguous spaces in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. REDEFINING THE HEROIC ENDEAVOUR: INTERACTION WITH THE FEMININE LANDSCAPE The practice of equating woman with the land and portraying man as the heroic (and all too often sexual) conqueror is a shared area of concern for Cather and Morrison. The Bluest Eye provides a particularly powerful indictment of the assumption that both woman and land are available for appropriation and exploitation. The “rape of the land” metaphor so often used to describe the cultivation of the wilderness is concretized in Pecola Breedlove— she is literally the violated virgin land. Morrison implicitly rejects the image of the hero armed with a plow imposing order on an untamed land. Cholly Breedlove’s action bears no fruit: the child dies, Pecola descends into madness, the already troubled family disintegrates, and he disappears. At best he is impotent, at worst lethal; disorder, not order, grows out of the assault. Cholly is cast not as the hero, but as the villain. He is not a noble figure; his actions call into question the sanitized versions of the settlement of the frontier—America was not an “unpeopled” land open for the taking. Cholly’s act of possession carries historical implications (his own history of being violated and the violation of the country).

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Cather too challenges the concept of the hero, but in a less harrowing manner. The farmer as a triumphant conqueror of the prairie is undercut in O Pioneers !: “the record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, . . .” (13). The “mark” left on the land is, at best, ambiguous. It verges on inconsequential, failing to identify its author. Grandiose notions of heroic settlement are mocked by the imbalance in the scale of the land to the accomplishments of the man. It is important to recognize the context of the commentary. John Bergson is dying and in his eleven years of farming he has failed to conquer “the wild land he had come to tame . . . Its Genius was unfriendly to man . . .” (13–14). Weak and defeated, John Bergson has lost his battle with the land and yet, bypassing his three sons, he passes the legacy of the struggle to his daughter Alexandra. Redefining the pioneer, John implores her to persevere where he cannot. He assesses his children and astutely selects Alexandra to pursue his dream. Practical concerns override gender expectations in John Bergson’s decision. He clearly clings to the dream of conquering the prairie despite personal feelings of frustration. Prosperity and order do ultimately come to the countryside and Alexandra is firmly in the forefront of the development. Life becomes easier on the Divide and the earth “yields easily to the plow . . .” (52). Sixteen years of hard work and the formidable prairie is “tamed.” The implication is that it is the whim of the land, not the work of the people, which is responsible for the transformation. The “Genius” of the Divide which was “unfriendly” to John Bergson speaks to his daughter. Alexandra achieves a type of harmony with the land that her father was unable to discover. The truly heroic act appears to be a willingness to “listen” to the earth and to endure through hardships.14 The redefinition of the heroic figure continues in My Antonia. In this novel the father once again is a failure as a farmer. It is Antonia Shimerda who succeeds in the environment which conquers her heartbroken father. In one of the most visually powerful moments in the text Antonia, Jim, and the other immigrant girls witness a remarkable sight: “Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, [a plough] stood out against the sun. . . . There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun” (156). The emblem of the pioneer’s struggle—the plough—is dramatically displayed. Immense and powerful enough to compete with the sun, the image “writes” the story of the farmer. Coming as it does, on the heels of a discussion of Coronado’s adventures in America, the symbol suggests a new concept of heroism. When Jim tells the girls that Coronado “died in the wilderness, of a broken heart” they empathize with the explorer: “more

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than him has done that . . .” (155). The young immigrants personalize the historic adventures. On one level an empathetic response diminishes the heroic figure— Coronado is not larger than life, he is a recognizable character—but it also gives him depth by reinforcing his humanity. As darkness descends, the “forgotten plough . . . sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie” (156). The sharpness of the details fades into vagueness and the magnitude of the emblem shrinks into littleness. Transitory though it is, the moment offers a counter-definition of the heroic. The combination of personalizing the great explorer Coronado, and making historical the personal endeavours of the farmer, implicitly challenges the distinction between adventurer as hero and farmer as hero. In a similar re-evaluation the farmer as conqueror is rejected by the novel. The productive farmer, Antonia Shimerda, is in tune with the land; she represents harmony with, rather than conquest of, the landscape. She responds to the natural beauty of the country and the potential for earning a living from the land. Antonia does manipulate the environment in order to render it productive, but there is a strong emotional connection between the cultivator and the cultivated soil. The trees are her “children” and Antonia’s pride in her home has little to do with economic prosperity. IDENTIFYING THE LAND: FEMININE FEATURES AND LITERARY REPRESENTATION(S) The symbolic link between woman and land takes many forms in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. Perhaps the most overt examples of the identification of woman with and as the land occur in My Antonia and Jazz. The descriptions of Antonia Shimerda externalize her internal connection with the natural environment: her eyes are reminiscent of “the sun shining on brown pools in the wood” and the “rich” colour of her skin and hair heighten the association (17). She is described in earth tones and as the novel progresses her fertility is decisively linked with that of the land.15 A genuine affection for children (not just those she gives birth to) and a conscious affiliation with the countryside (she has had her time in the town and desires no more) characterize Antonia. The earth mother takes an equally remarkable form in Morrison’s Jazz. Joe Trace seeks his mysterious mother in the countryside. He has no memory of any genuine maternal contact. Instinctively Joe turns to the mother earth to find some tangible evidence of his own absent mother. Abandoning hope of a real relationship, Joe is willing to settle for a sign,

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some gesture of recognition: “Maybe those were her fingers moving like that in the bush, not twigs, but . . . he could not see . . .” (37). Unable to distinguish between branch and hand, his mother’s body literally merges with the landscape. The female form and the fecund land are interchangeable in this scene. Antonia is a dominant (but not dominating) presence in her children’s lives. In stark contrast, Joe’s mother is a shadowy presence in his world. She “ran away from [him], but not too far. Just far enough away to annoy everybody because she was not completely gone, and close enough to scare everybody because she creeps about . . .” (37). Known only as Wild, she emerges from, and dissolves into, the landscape in the stories of the community. Joe can only access his mother through the natural environment; she does not (perhaps cannot) fulfill the social roles associated with motherhood. Longing for mother-love, Joe can only experience a connection with the terrain. In both texts mother earth and earth mother are symbolically connected. Wild and Antonia are in tune with the natural realm, but Antonia is clearly a social figure. Wild is disconnected from her son and the community. She is “earth” at the expense of “mother.” Woman as land, man as conqueror is boldly rejected in Sula. The literary practice of equating the female body with a sexually available natural landscape is inverted by Morrison. Mounting her lover “like a Georgia pine . . . ,” Sula envisions “loam, fertile, free of pebbles and twigs” at the centre of Ajax (129, 130). Sula will be the water that keeps his “soil” “rich and moist” (131). The suggestion that it is a symbiotic relationship—“How much water to keep the loam moist? . . . how much loam . . . to keep my water still?”—is belied by the violent labour which requires “a chisel and small tap hammer” to expose the loam (131). Power is wielded by Sula, not her male lover and fertility is located in his passively yielding body. “By comparing Ajax to earth and Sula to rain,” observes Pin-chia Feng, “Morrison consciously reverses a literary convention in which a woman is compared to the fertile field to be nourished and impregnated by her man” (86–7). Sula is not earth; she is element. She does not wait to be acted upon; hers is the force which defines the land (Ajax). Sula stands out as an exception, but the dominant representation of the natural landscape links it with the feminine form. Motherhood or the ability to reproduce is not the only rationale for associating the female body with the land. Production is obviously a shared trait of the two, but so too is the element of seduction. Niel Herbert’s experience of the Forresters’ marsh in A Lost Lady is particularly sensual: There was an almost religious purity about the fresh morning air, the tender grass . . . Niel wondered why he did not often come . . . to see

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the day before men and their activities had spoiled it . . . He would make a bouquet . . . gathered off the cheeks of morning. . . . (70–71)

The location is erotically charged and its sensuality is implicitly linked to the Lady he is on his way to surprise. When he approaches her bedroom window the surprise is Niel’s; he hears Mrs. Forrester and her lover laughing. As long as she remained “unspoiled” by the activities of men, Mrs. Forrester retained the “purity” Niel associates with the marsh. Once she slips from her pedestal, it is “the end of that admiration and loyalty that had been like a bloom on his existence” (72). The discovery leads Niel to decry “lilies that fester” as smelling “far worse than weeds” (72). Seduced by his image of Mrs. Forrester, Niel cannot forgive her for acting on her sensual impulse and engaging in a sexual affair. Niel Herbert plunges into the feminine space of the marsh with little concern for the effects of his intrusion. His act of using his knife to cut “the stiff stems, crowded with red thorns” can be construed as an attack on the roses “only half awake, in the defenselessness of utter beauty;” Niel’s presence is a disruption of the natural order (70–71). The knife can easily be read as a phallic symbol; at the very least, it is a destructive presence in the idyllic locale. The seemingly harmless activity of gathering wild roses thus takes on a malevolent tone, particularly if the flowers are identified with/as woman as the previous passage strongly suggests. Cutting the roses anticipates Niel’s subsequent “cutting off ” of Mrs. Forrester for her transgressions. It is his masculine privilege to punish her for her infidelity, a rather odd position considering the fact that she is not his wife. The text makes clear to Niel, and the reader, that Captain Forrester “knew everything; more than anyone else; all there was to know about Marian Forrester,” but does nothing (99). Unable to act on his own attraction to her, Niel accesses Mrs. Forrester through the marsh identified with her. Forbidden or exotic locales denied to people in a tangible sense can be imaginatively experienced in a variety of ways. Books, magazines and movies open unknown territories to countless armchair explorers. Identifying the female body with (and as) the desired region makes for a more tactile tour. The prostitutes in The Bluest Eye—Poland, China, and the Maginot Line—are named for real world geography neither they nor their customers will ever access. Maginot Line’s name suggests that this “available terrain” is in fact enemy territory. The term refers to “a series of fortifications on the Northeastern frontier of France begun in 1927” or, figuratively, “a defensive barrier or entrenched position that gives a false sense of security” (Webster’s Dictionary). It is ultimately not an impermeable boundary,

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but one that is open to a hostile invasion. The exchange between the women and men is fraught with issues of commerce, power, and social standings. The three working women are outcasts, socially isolated by their profession. They are contemptuous of both their customers and the community. Their attitudes and attempts to protect Pecola (unlike the rest of society, the women offer her kindness and acceptance) are forms of resistance; so too are their refusals to be defined as “common.” Morrison grants the Maginot Line in particular an air of the exotic; her laugh is “like the sound of many rivers,” and her eyes remind Claudia MacTeer “of waterfalls in movies about Hawaii” (52, 78). The erotic encounter takes on an exotic element for the men. They enter foreign climes when they copulate with the prostitutes, but the richness of Maginot Line’s laughter is recognized by Claudia, not a customer. No men are present; the landscape Claudia glimpses in the woman has nothing to do with sexuality as a commodity. Her unusual name, with its suggestion of warfare, can be construed as a warning—Maginot Line is on the defensive when performing as a prostitute. She is neither diminished nor defined by her work; her identity ranges beyond the label of prostitute with its focus on the body. A refusal to capitulate to the assumption that her body is a territory to be conquered or violated manifests itself as a disturbing habit of Seneca’s in Paradise. The victim of molestation as a child and object of unwanted sexual attention as a teenager, Seneca literally remaps herself: The little streets were narrow and straight, but as soon as she made them they flooded . . . The trick was to slice at just the right depth . . . Although she had moved the map from her arms to her thighs, she recognized with pleasure the traces of old roads, avenues. . . . (260)

In a desperate effort to control her own “landscape” Seneca carves one into her skin—the landscape is made flesh, the flesh is made landscape. There is a skill to the operation which requires focus; concentrating on the cartography of the surface, Seneca camouflages the pain. The process recontextualizes the emotional pain, but it also highlights the body as the location of identity. Self-mutilation becomes an exercise in imposing order on a body which has inspired disorder. It is an act of self-definition, albeit a disturbing and disturbed one. In focusing on the physical, however, Seneca fails to address her internal terrain. Associating the female form with the natural landscape is a fairly widespread tactic for defusing the (potentially) threatening physical environment.

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“The female landscape,” observes Moers, “knows no nationality or century” (255).16 Nor is it a literary technique utilized only by male writers; Cather and Morrison create some of the most striking gendered landscapes in literature. From the overt connections of Antonia Shimerda and Joe Trace’s mother to the earth and the suggestive associations of Marian Forrester and the prostitutes to particular portions of geography, the landscape is gendered. Another method of creating a gendered landscape is to write the human body into the physical setting—as opposed to connecting the land with a specific woman. Masculine and feminine features shape many of the natural landscapes in the novels in this study, and there are striking similarities in the methods of Cather and Morrison. Cather’s forays into gendered landscapes are most dramatic (at least visually) in the three novels which incorporate the Southwest. In many ways it is an exotic locale to the Virginia born, Nebraska-raised writer. It emerges as a decidedly maternal space in The Song of the Lark. Thea Kronborg’s sojourn in Arizona is a therapeutic experience in a specifically female environment; she enters a canyon whose walls: . . . for the first two hundred feet . . . were perpendicular cliffs . . . [lower down] the sides were less abrupt, . . . lightly fringed with pinons and dwarf cedars. The effect was that of a gentler canon within a wilder one. The dead city lay at the point where the perpendicular outer wall ceased and the V-shaped inner gorge began. . . . (257)

Thea immerses herself in the Cliff City nestled within Panther Canon. Visually the site recreates the maternal space; body structure and rock formation coalesce. It is within this sheltered space that Thea is finally able to get “out of the stream of meaningless activity and undirected effort” (259). She enters a protective cocoon, rediscovering the shelter and nurturance of the womb. Body and soul instinctively respond to the new environment; Thea absorbs the sensations and sounds which surround her. She seems to enter an altered state—experiencing the location rather than rationally comprehending it. Discovering an intuitive connection with the Indian women who preceded her, Thea has an invaluable revelation that all forms of art are attempts to “make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive, element which is life itself . . .” (263). Panther Canon grants Thea insight into the nature of art and the art of nature. Lessons that cannot be learnt in a music studio strengthen her resolve to be a great artist, but with that resolution comes the recognition that she must return to the larger world to complete her development. The maternal site provides emotional

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and artistic sustenance, but it must ultimately be vacated. It is only a temporary home. Re-entrance into the stream of life beyond the canyon is a necessary rebirth for Thea. The Professor’s House also incorporates a character that retreats from the pressures of contemporary life to an isolated sanctuary. Tom Outland undergoes a similar process of personal discovery in a Cliff City in New Mexico. The orphaned boy locates a maternal space. He too enters a canyon within a canyon. The first “was wide at the water’s edge, . . . [with an] open, roomy character. It was . . . a very deep valley with gently sloping sides, rugged and rocky, but well grassed” (178). The second canyon is “a box canyon, very different in character” (179). While the initial chasm represents the maternal anatomy in a more recognizable way, the second canyon too is a feminine space. Both crevices recreate the sheltering space of the mother; despite the hard material (rock), there is a softness to the area. The second opening lacks the gentle slope, but as Tom looks up, it seems to give birth to “pale little houses of stone . . .” (180). The stone canyon provides the substance and isolation necessary for the construction of the community. Complementing the feminine valley, the original inhabitants of the Cliff City have erected a striking feature—a tower. The masculine presence dramatically enters the feminine landscape. Tom’s sense of wonder at the building’s appearance conflates the architectural with the suggestively sexual. It is “beautifully proportioned . . . swelling out to a larger girth a little above the base, then growing slender again. There was something symmetrical and powerful about the swell of the masonry” (180). The manmade structure stands out sharply against the feminine space of the canyon. Undeniably phallic in description, Tom surmises that it is a watchtower.17 While he concludes, “for a stronghold [the previous inhabitants] needed rock, and for farming, soft earth and a water main,” Tom reveals his own bias (181). Masculine and feminine spaces are equally necessary, but it is the masculine tower—an artificial construct imposed on the natural landscape—which gives order and meaning to the region in Tom’s assessment. Tom’s alignment with what is generally regarded as a masculine ethos has tragic consequences. Just as the tower stands out against the feminine landscape, so too does the “masculine” context dominate Tom’s mindset. Studying Virgil, exploring scientific manipulations of power, and joining the military connect Tom Outland with a culture typically identified as masculine. While history does not record the fate of the Cliff Dwellers, the text reveals that Tom’s alignment with the masculine ethic (nationalism, heroic action, technological development) costs him his life.

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Vulnerability to violation is a genuine concern in Death Comes for the Archbishop’s female landscape. Government efforts to relocate the Navajo Indians are fiercely resisted because of their ties to the land. One of the chiefs, Manuelito, tries to convey the significance of their home to Father Latour. The country is inseparable from their religion and their continued existence: The Canyon de Chelly . . . nourished and protected them; it was their mother. . . . [and] Shiprock, a slender crag . . . [had in the past] moved . . . bearing upon its summit the parents of the Navajo race. . . . (292–3)

Fertile valley and powerful promontory marry, becoming the spiritual parents of the Navajo. Harmony exists between the gendered spaces and their spiritual offspring. The Navajo’s interaction with the land is shaped by filial duty. The familial landscape, seemingly so secure, is in fact under siege. Government troops led by Kit Carson invade what the Navajo believe to be “an inviolate place”—the Canyon de Chelly (291). The near decimation of the people is directly related to the desecration of the maternal space. Spiritual and physical assaults ensue; the paternal space of the Shiprock can afford no protection. With time (and an adjustment in governmental policy) the Canyon is again rich in crops and home to the Navajo; it becomes Eden-like (295). Maternal and paternal landscapes unite once more, offering sustenance and security to their “children.” Mother and father are symbolically incorporated into the landscape of Shalimar, Virginia in Song of Solomon. Solomon’s Leap and Ryna’s Gulch—“a big double-headed rock over the valley” and the “ravine” where “sometimes you can hear this funny sound. . . . People say [is] . . . Solomon’s wife, crying”—do not represent security (323). The father literally abandons twenty children (one he attempts to take with him) whether by flight or some other means of escape. The rock reaches upwards, not down to the human element. The rejected wife psychologically withdraws, descending into madness. The ravine repels rather than invites entrance. Ryna’s Gulch is a haunted and haunting space; the cry of the wind echoes the lament of the woman. The physical space of the natural environment recreates, at least superficially, the anatomical space of the parents. Melvin Dixon interprets the “valley and mountain top [as] contrasting, gender-related spaces . . .” (140). True, but the contrast is not balanced; the paternal landscape ultimately dominates in this novel. Solomon’s Leap towers above Ryna’s Gulch in both a literal and literary sense. It is a symbol of abandonment and, finally, at least one death. In the

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process of burying Jake Solomon on the space named for his father, Pilate Dead is murdered. Just before she is shot “a deep sigh escaped from the sack” containing her father’s remains and a “ginger smell, enveloped” Pilate and Milkman (335). The implication is that Jake is finally at peace; he has come home. The bones are returned to the space of the father—Solomon’s Leap— but the ginger suggests a different locale. Earlier in the novel there was a reference to the scent of ginger on the air—an aroma “from a marketplace in Accra”—and this timely allusion raises the possibility of a different homecoming (185). Perhaps Jake Solomon returns not to the land of the father, but to the (original) motherland of Africa. “Leap” suggests a springboard for flight (or fall). The father has, in effect, left the space identified with him. Solomon’s Leap is the location of the final confrontation between Milkman Dead and Guitar Bains. The pair fail to heed Pilate’s lesson—“I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ’em all”—or hear the gentle voices of nature echoing under their aggressive exchange—“Tar tar tar, said the hills. . . . Am am am am, said the rocks. . . . Life life life life” (336–7). Love, acceptance and life are rejected in favour of revenge, retribution and death.18 Placing his faith in the teachings of his great-grandfather, Milkman leaps, unconcerned about “which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it” (337). Pilate too knows the power of flight. Holding her, Milkman recognizes that “without ever leaving the ground, she could fly” (336). The distinguishing feature of Pilate’s flight is that, unlike Solomon, she does not abandon her connections. Her flight has the potential to be communal; responsibility and mercy replace self-concern and indifference.19 The novel’s open-ended conclusion has been the source of much critical debate, but the central issue seems to be whether or not Milkman engages in a final act of self-indulgence and non-responsibility, or achieves his dream of flight and claims his legacy. Given the novel’s emphasis on responsibility and mercy, and the haunting example of the price women and children pay for the flight of the male (Ryna and Hagar are plunged into madness), it is difficult to read this final scene as a positive outcome. Whichever interpretation is applied, the patriarchal space of Solomon’s Leap is at least partially a place of destruction: Pilate is murdered (perhaps sacrificed) and, despite seeing themselves as brothers, either Milkman or Guitar will die in the arms of the other. A maternal space serves as a site of destruction in Sula. The dominant features of the landscape in this novel are the hillside known as the Bottom and a tunnel being constructed as part of the New River Road. The tunnel

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becomes a chaotic scene as Shadrack’s annual “National Suicide Day” parade disintegrates into a mindless quest for revenge for a dream denied. Representing an empty promise and continued physical suffering—“the teeth unrepaired, the coal credit cut off, the chest pains unattended . . .”—the tunnel is a tangible target for the frustration and anger of the community (161). A feminine space is made vulnerable by patriarchal practices—racist foremen refuse to hire male workers from the Bottom (black) community. The project becomes an emblem of the opportunities withheld and the insults that must remain unanswered. The tunnel promises hope and renewal, but provides only despair and death. As the attack begins, many of the participants find “themselves in a chamber of water. . . . With the first crack and whoosh of water, the clamber to get out was so fierce that [those] trying to help were pulled to their deaths” (162). It is in effect a reversal of the birth process; the water breaking sucks people to their death rather than propelling them into life. The maternal space becomes a place of extermination and a site under siege. The seemingly masculine space of the hill (although “misnamed” the Bottom, it is in fact a projection in the landscape) is similarly a beleaguered area. The novel opens with the demolition of the black community in order to make way for a private golf course. “Progress” is advancing, but not complete: “a steel ball will knock to dust Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology , . . . Men in khaki . . . will pry loose the slats of Reba’s Grill . . .” (3). It too is a terrain under attack and destined to be defeated. Economic vulnerability robs the region of the power to resist its eradication. The hill falls victim to the desires of the (white) valley men. The hillside towering over the valley lends itself to being interpreted as a phallic symbol (albeit an impotent one), but Dixon offers a provocative counter-definition. He suggests that the “phallic hillside and the vaginal tunnel” equation fails to account for the “preponderance of female properties” infused in both regions (122): The hillside is nurturing; it is a veritable breast of the earth. Within a feminine figuration (accompanying the narrative of a nurturing friendship between Nel and Sula) the hillside complements rather than contrasts with the womblike tunnel. (122–3)

It is a fairly compelling analysis considering the emphasis on the businesses owned by women and the dominant role of mothers in the community. Most persuasive, however, are Dixon’s observations about the “nurturing friendship between Nel and Sula;” until the act of betrayal with Jude (and

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the text is rather fuzzy on who betrays whom), it is the alignment of the two girls which colours the countryside. Nel and Sula experience a sexual awakening in an intensely sensual landscape. Summer brings an abundance of fertility to the Bottom. It is a season “limp with the weight of blossomed things” (56). The “beautiful boys who dotted the landscape like jewels” humanize the erotically charged environment (56). Roaming the neighborhood the girls turn their undirected tension and energy not to the captivating boys, but to shared “grass play:” . . . they stroked the blades up and down, up and down. Nel found a thick twig and, . . . pulled away its bark until it was stripped to a smooth, creamy innocence. Sula . . . found one too. When both twigs were undressed Nel . . . poked her twig rhythmically and intensely into the earth. . . . (58)

The game anticipates the behaviours of adulthood. These childish forays into sex end in frustration (foreshadowing the effect of intercourse for Nel and Sula) and are abandoned leaving the pair restless and agitated (59). Theirs is nevertheless an intimate and shared experience; the movements clearly mimic heterosexual intercourse, but the emotional connection is between the female friends, not the pretend lovers. Nel and Sula move together, no words are needed and the dissatisfaction is not with each other, but the futility of their play. It does not alleviate their tension or fulfill their burgeoning needs.20 An intensely feminine landscape does gratify the physical needs of Paul D in Beloved. The countryside seduces him at the same time as it sustains him. He responds to the beauty of the land almost against his will and tries to steel himself to be dispassionate. It is a type of trap, promising what it cannot give; fulfilling his bodily requirements—shelter and food—the land withholds spiritual sustenance. He cannot permit himself the freedom to love the land precisely because he is not a free man. The description of the exchange between Paul D and the natural terrain lends itself to being read as a mother/child and lover/lover relationship. Bountiful and protective, the maternal earth shields him from hardship, but it is also an erotic environment. He “fingers” and “laps” the feminized landscape and struggles not to yield to the temptation to love it (268). The land gives itself to Paul D, but he, by necessity, resists giving himself back to the land. Alexandra Bergson has a very different exchange with the earth in Cather’s O Pioneers !. She is both taken by, and takes, the prairie as a lover. A sympathetic response strengthens into an empathetic one; Alexandra is not just close to the land, she is identified as it. Carl Linstrum recognizes the

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relationship, observing that she belongs to the land (208). Yielding emotionally to the land, Alexandra achieves some of the satisfaction she denies herself physically. The “joyous germination” is both in the soil and the woman (135). A recurring dream of a lover the colour of sunlight with the “smell of ripe cornfields about him” and the strength to carry her “as if she were a sheaf of wheat” is met with anger and self-punishment (in the form of a cold bath) by Alexandra (137). In stifling the dream she is suppressing her own sexuality. The lover she desires is “like no man she knew” or could ever know (137). Her decision to marry Carl is at least partially a recognition of this fact; it is also a gesture towards genuine human connection. He represents companionship, mutual understanding, and security, but passion, passion rests with the land. It is both lover and object of love. The relationship between character and natural terrain is clearly sexualized in O Pioneers! and Beloved. Cather alters the pattern of the male approaching the female landscape as a lover. It is Alexandra Bergson who joins with the masculinized prairie and the bounty of her farm symbolically springs from that union. In yielding she also seems to become the prairie. Alexandra is both pioneer and the virgin soil. Paul D’s exchange with the land is more one-sided; he takes what he needs, but resists giving his heart. Not being a free man limits Paul D’s ability to respond to the seduction of the female landscape. Whether it is the lure of a lover or the magnetism of the mother, Morrison mirrors the feminine form in the environment Paul D finds himself in, but she complicates the traditional model by raising the issue of how autonomy shades responses to the natural world. Feminine and masculine landscape features which mirror anatomy surface repeatedly in the writings of Morrison and Cather. Gulches, canyons, valleys, promontories of rock, and hills add an erotic element to locations. They also permit an exploration of the concepts of masculinity and femininity. The masculine spaces of Shiprock and Solomon’s Leap suggest virility (both are “fathers” to a tribe—the Navajo and twenty-one sons respectively), strength (for both warfare and defense), and authority (Shiprock is an integral part of the Navajo religion and Solomon is the missing ancestor whose “rediscovery” through the song brings order to a confused history). The typically lauded masculine trait of physical power, however, is subtly undermined in Death Comes for the Archbishop and Song of Solomon. Emotive characteristics take precedence over the physical; brute force fades in comparison to the inspirational potential of the masculine features. Shiprock is ultimately an inadequate defense which does nothing (physically) to protect the Navajo. Solomon’s Leap is a place of abandon-

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ment, a space of absence. It clearly has painful ramifications for the women and children left behind—the price of flight is paid for by others. The value of these two landmarks lies not in their physical strength, but in their symbolic and emotional resonance. Shiprock is the spiritual father to the Navajo; its presence in the harsh landscape is a testament to, and a source of, their religious and psychological endurance. Solomon’s Leap is the site where Pilate at last lays her father’s bones to rest and Milkman receives his ancestor’s legacy—it is (at least potentially) a source of comfort and inspiration. Feminine landscapes are equally complicated territories in the stories of Cather and Morrison. Mother earth as the giver and sustainer of life does appear in their texts, but it is accompanied by the ever-present possibility of death. The female land provides Paul D with shelter and food in Beloved, and yet the promise of hope and life it holds out is false. A hunted man, Paul D has to be on guard against the temptation to embrace the possibility of freedom that the environment offers, but cannot produce. Ryna’s Gulch echoes the fertility and sorrow of the abandoned wife, but it also speaks to her own (muted) culpability. Clearly, Solomon is the primary problem in the equation, but Ryna’s all-consuming love for him (replicated in Hagar’s self-annihilating love for Milkman) leaves no room for self-love or a mother’s concern for her children. By indulging her own pain Ryna neglects her children; the space of madness negates the maternal instinct in Song of Solomon. The womb-like space of the tunnel in Sula dramatizes the potential for a life-giving space to become a smothering location. Death is literally caused by a failure to leave the womb. Cather’s use of canyons to represent a maternal site incorporates the idea of spiritual rebirth, a trait Morrison does not associate with Ryna’s Gulch or the tunnel in Sula. Like Morrison, Cather stresses the need for leaving the space of the mother. Thea Kronborg and Tom Outland experience spiritual rebirths in female landscapes, domains haunted by the reminders of the original inhabitants. Each of these characters recognizes the need to leave the nurturing shelter and returns to the larger world strengthened in resolve and focus. The exception to this pattern is Cather’s representation of the Navajo in Death Comes for the Archbishop. The Canyon de Chelly is the scene of the temporary defeat of the Navajo, but it becomes a site of renewal. There is a rebirth of both environment and population in the canyon and it once again emerges as a symbol of fertility. MOTHER SPACE: THE AMBIGUITIES OF WOMB IMAGERY Womb imagery appears in a variety of forms in the fiction of Cather and Morrison—womb as cave or cavern, cave as womb, womb as tomb—and the

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messages conveyed by the various symbols are complex and frequently ambiguous. The maternal space has both reproductive and destructive powers. Morrison utilizes birth imagery literally and figuratively. Pilate Dead inches her way out of an “indifferent cave of flesh . . .” (28). The dead body of her mother is potentially a place of death for the infant, but the life nourished within escapes the mother’s fate in Song of Solomon. Sethe displays a similar resolve in Beloved, refusing to accept that she is a walking grave for her daughter (34). She struggles for survival for both herself and her child. The birth scene in Jazz is quite different; neither mother nor child seems to be an active participant in the process. The baby “clung to the walls of that foamy cave, and the mother was of practically no help” (170). The reproductive power of the mother is centered on the image of a cave of flesh. It is a life-giving space which could become a tomb (for mother and/or child) at any moment. Birth, in this context, is a type of escape into life. Beloved incorporates an escape which strongly resembles a birth. The physical act of being liberated from a confining space is fraught with danger. It is also imbued with transformative potential—convict into free man, fetus into person. Paul D is imprisoned in a ditch which he likens to a grave (106). Literally confined within the earth, Paul D can only view the trench as a possible (and probable) grave. Torrential rains, however, create a new situation, (mother) nature intervenes. The cells begin to flood and the chain connecting the men functions as a lifeline as they move blindly through the mud, fighting to reach the light. Prison ditch becomes birth canal; the threat of flooding becomes the force of freedom. The men emerge from the earthy womb clutching their lifesustaining chains as helpless as newborns. The grave is transformed into a procreative space which, while it cannot sustain life (to linger is to court certain death), propels the living men out into the world. Womb can become tomb when it ceases to be life-supporting, becoming instead a smothering space. In Song of Solomon the cave/womb is literally a death chamber. Pilate and Macon Dead are led to a cave by a figure resembling their father; later in the novel it is revealed that this is the location of the murdered father’s remains. Greed costs the children their parent; paranoia severs their final familial connection. The cave becomes an overt burial ground when Macon battles and kills the white prospector. This cave, associated with the father, not the mother, is a site of loss—of life and the close relationship brother and sister once shared.21 Disagreeing over the gold, the siblings physically battle. The space they entered seeking mutual shelter is transformed into the space of betrayal. It marks the death of a relationship. The cave imagery in Sula is distinctly feminine in character. An impulse to return to the womb is powerfully associated with death through

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the fates of Sula and her uncle Plum. In his final moments, drug-addicted Plum sinks into a blissful state as his mother releases him from his pain by burning him to death. Eva explains it as a way that he could reclaim his manhood (72). From Plum’s perspective it is type of baptism, a “blessing” (47). In a bizarre way, Eva gives her son a peaceful death. He returns to the womb; her fear has been that he will try to return to her womb (71). Drug addiction causes Plum to regress; helpless, he thinks “baby thoughts” and dreams “baby dreams” (71). A retreat to Eva’s womb is equated with a loss of manhood, but the “bright hole of sleep” Plum sinks into is associated with the womb of death (47). The disintegration of the man into a state of infantilization, in Eva’s opinion, is a worse fate than a clear death. The peaceful “baptism” raises the possibility of a new beginning, a continuation. Traditionally, it is a ceremony which recognizes that an individual is embarking on a new (spiritual) life. Morrison’s baptism is ambiguous, but offers a chance for Plum’s “redemption” (if death is not viewed as final). Death as a return to a site of renewal is epitomized by Sula’s experience of release. A restless and rebellious woman, Sula has constantly been at odds with her community. The only sources of comfort she has known are Nel and Shadrack. Dying of a painful illness, she invokes each of these figures. Physically alone, Sula is finally able to “draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, . . .” Sensing the water is near she is convinced it will support her “always” (149). The “baptism” Sula experiences is one of water, not fire. Pain is eradicated through the washing of the “tired flesh” (149). Sula’s “acceptance of death can be interpreted as resignation,” notes Laurie Vickroy, “but also as a desire to renew life” (307). The moment signals an acceptance of the emotional connections Sula has downplayed in her life. Womb imagery represents the space of transition, but it is an oddly communal space. Physically alone, Sula is not completely isolated in her final earthly moments. A peaceful and painless return to the maternal space is Sula’s experience of death. And yet, the word that comforts her—always—was spoken by Shadrack during their brief encounter. It is not the voice of the mother (who is overheard admitting she does not like her daughter), but an echo of a masculine “authority” on death. Shadrack is the only person in Sula’s life who accepts her unconditionally. Nel did, for a time, until she aligned herself with the community. Despite the rift, Sula’s final thought is what she will tell Nel (149). In death the distance between the estranged friends (at least for Sula) is bridged. She approaches it not as an end, but as a new beginning and opportunity for a spiritual reunion. The allure of regressing to a pain-free space is intensified by the symbolic presence of a comforting character.

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A variation of the womb/tomb in Jazz also articulates the attraction of the space that encloses. Rose Dear, the overwhelmed mother of Violet Trace, jumps into “a place so narrow, so dark it was [a] . . . relief to see her stretched in a wooden box” (101). An inability to cope with the repercussions of poverty, racism, and abandonment drives the distraught woman to suicide. Her daughter cannot comprehend the allure of the narrow, wet tunnel; Violet is left wondering what could have drawn her to “the limitlessness beckoning from the well” (101). She is also left with a fear of holes; the legacy of her mother’s graphic rejection of life marks Violet’s identity. It is the narrator of Jazz who recognizes the nature of the seduction. She too desires “a place already made for me, both snug and wide open” (221). “Wild’s chamber of gold,” the narrator concludes, is the space in which she can “close [herself ] in the peace left by the woman” (221). A retreat to the womb, in this context, is an abnegation of responsibility; it is an attempt to simplify life to its most basic state of existence. Death is inevitable. In time, we all “return” to the womb. The distinction is that the living death of avoidance is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a withdrawal into a suspended state that cannot be sustained. The womb both beckons and repulses characters. Jadine Childs’ fear of the womb in Tar Baby reveals a great deal about her personality. The darkness of Eloe creates the sensation of being “in a cave, a grave, the dark womb of the earth . . .” (252). The various aspects of womb imagery—it is a symbol of complex meanings—overpower Jadine. Earlier, while in Paris, Jadine encounters a “vision” in a yellow dress with “something in her eyes so powerful it had burnt away the eyelashes” (45). The majestic figure leaves the store with her “left arm folded over her waist, right hand holding three chalkwhite eggs in the air” (46). Making eye contact with Jadine, she dismisses her with a contemptuous gesture. Lest the symbolism be lost, Morrison includes the woman in yellow and “her three big eggs” in the “pitch-dark room” crowded with women in Eloe (259, 258). Overwhelmed by their presence and gesture of exposing their breasts to her, Jadine insists “I have breasts too,” but “they didn’t believe her. They just held their own higher . . .” (258). The encounter reduces her to tears and she clings to Son for comfort. A refusal to embrace her own darkness and fertility reduces Jadine to the behaviour of a child.22 It is in effect a denial of her own power as a woman. Fear of the maternal/female power surfaces dramatically in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Cather’s description of Father Latour’s response to the womb-like space of Stone Lips is one of the most powerful passages in the novel. Driven by a snowstorm to seek refuge in an unusual rock formation—“two rounded ledges, one directly over the other, with a mouthlike

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opening between them”—the priest finds himself in a disconcerting space (126). In an attempt to familiarize the shelter, Latour identifies it as similar to a roughly Gothic chapel. The tactic is unsuccessful; the location evokes “an extreme distaste” (127). The cave will not comply. Latour cannot defuse the situation by retreating to a more “rational” landscape. The power of the natural setting is stronger than the intellectual framework Latour seeks to impose. Feminized enclosure defeats masculine order in this chapter. In sharp contrast, the Indian guide Jacinto is at ease in, and respectful of, what he reveals is a sacred site used for ceremonies. The atmosphere Latour finds oppressive is a vital component of worship for Jacinto. Deborah Williams perceptively observes that, “in the cave it is Jacinto, not the priest, who tends the altar and the sacred flame” (84). Latour’s discomfort and disdain do not re-define the sacred site. Jacinto fulfills his obligations to the spiritual space despite the priest’s proximity. He switches positions with Latour in another sense; it is Jacinto who offers “enlightenment” to the missionary. A powerful presence vibrates in the cavern; Latour is unable to identify the source. Jacinto solves the mystery by introducing Latour to an ancient voice—the underground river (130). To the priest’s ear it sounds like “a great flood moving with majesty and power,” but he sums it up as “terrible” (130). He does not recognize the voice or connect the womb space with his own religion. Neither sound nor space offers solace to Latour; each is too foreign to provide comfort. Marina Warner’s work on the Virgin Mary grants an insight Latour seemingly lacks. For “nearly two thousand years,” notes Warner, the myth of the Virgin Mary “has coursed through our culture, as spirited and often as imperceptible as an underground stream” (xxv). The Catholic priest misses an opportunity for communion with the feminine aspect of his faith. He once again closes his eyes to the spiritual lessons of the Southwestern landscape. Latour’s discomfort in this female space is palpable; nor does it vanish when he leaves the cave.23 Despite the timely hospitality the shelter affords, he has a sense of repugnance when the memory resurfaces. It is an incident he can neither suppress nor embrace. While the Archbishop’s distress in the female space may be explained by his vow of chastity (or vice versa), the Professor’s desire to escape a feminine sphere is seemingly more complicated in The Professor’s House. Disappointed in the behaviour of his daughter and disturbed by the expectations of his wife, Godfrey St. Peter sinks into reverie. Noticing his amusement his wife asks what is making him smile. He explains it is the thought of Euripides’ escape to “a cave by the sea” (136). He further observes, “I wonder whether it was because he had observed women so closely all his life” (136). Putting

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aside his diplomatic skills, what St Peter is admiring is in effect an abdication of responsibility; arguably this withdrawal is what he has always done— retreating from family life to his study. He interprets the escape from the home as an explicit escape from women, but the cave by the sea is a female space. The refuge he desires belies his rejection of the feminine. St. Peter (imaginatively) seeks to avoid the “smothering” presence of his family by decamping to the isolated space of the cave. It is an implicit rejection of life that paradoxically seeks out a life-giving and female space. The riddle of St. Peter’s desire is perhaps explained by his marital arrangement. Despite being fit and physically attractive, he, like the priest Latour, is now celibate. Seemingly the choice is Lillian’s—she suggests that there is more dignity “at your age, [in having] a room of your own”—but the estrangement is more complex than her physical detachment from him (24). The text documents St. Peter’s emotional abandonment of Lillian. He withholds his thoughts and feelings from his wife long before she (at least symbolically) severs sexual ties. To add insult to injury, St. Peter has granted personal access to a privileged student—Tom Outland. Tom’s growing importance in St. Peter’s professional and personal life effectively displaces Lillian. She becomes the outsider as Tom (a rival for her husband’s companionship, if not affection) becomes the Professor’s intimate friend. The allusions to Anatole France’s Le Mannequin d’Osier raise the issue of marital betrayal. In the tale, a professor is betrayed by his wife and favorite student. The injured husband ignores his wife’s very existence, forcing her to flee the oppressive home. In Cather’s story, the husband has allowed the student to supplant the wife. St. Peter fancies himself as the aggrieved party, but the narrative does not sustain his view. Despite the emotional estrangement, St. Peter does not embrace the separate bedroom arrangement. He acknowledges it is more convenient but hopes “I’m not so old as to be personally repulsive?” (24) Whether his response is motivated by vanity or desire, St. Peter needs Lillian to be accessible—accessible on his terms. Desire and revulsion coalesce in the symbolic feminine space. Variations of womb imagery abound in Cather’s novels, but one of the most striking moments occurs when Jim visits Antonia’s family farm. While the two adults leave the cave the children linger below; as they emerge it is “a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight” (218). The fruit-cave mirrors the fertility of Antonia; she is the creative force behind the well-stocked storage space and the abundance of vibrant children. Jim astutely identifies her as “a rich mine of life” for it is Antonia who provides her family with nourishment and shelter, encouragement and fortification (227). She builds a nest for her brood in the harsh landscape. A childhood

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moment of allowing a vulnerable grasshopper to shelter in her hair becomes a life-practice for the adult Antonia. She embodies the “majesty and power” that so disconcerted Archbishop Latour. Antonia continues to be a “sheltering” space for her children after their births. The vitality of the family is inextricably linked with Antonia’s energy. A natural “nest” can be another version of the comforting space of the womb. The nesting instinct is a trait Antonia Shimerda displays in childhood. At several points in the novel she and Jim “made a nest in the long red grass” of the prairie or “burrowed down in the straw and curled up close together” (19, 35). In part she is seeking a sheltering, open space in response to her stifling home life, but Antonia is not alone when she nests; Jim’s family home is idyllic compared to that of Antonia, but he too desires the nest. The allure of the womb space is not entirely about escape. It is also a place of discovery. Susan J. Rosowski offers a succinct assessment of the tactic; Cather “describes geographical and imaginative expanses from carefully defined vantage points, usually nestled within the earth” (150). The vastness of the countryside is accessible without being overwhelming. Antonia and Jim test their boundaries while maintaining the security of a “home base.” Natural nests permit them to experience the finite and the infinite. The final variation of womb imagery this chapter will address is the naturally occurring “room.” Jim Burden has a “pleasant dressing-room . . . among the dogwood bushes” (148–9). It is a place of play and lazy indulgence which he is reluctant to leave. For Jim escape to the room by the river is a pleasant pastime with no serious implications. It is not a site of self-revelation or rebirth; its value is pure entertainment. Thea Kronborg’s bathing room fulfills a much more dramatic role in The Song of the Lark. Behind a “chattering screen” of cottonwood seedlings, she bathes each day (258). The natural shelter and the timeless stream give Thea’s bathing ritual a “ceremonial gravity” (in a sense she is baptized by nature and/or the Indian women she has identified with during her retreat). Thea receives her revelation about the nature of art in this protective and thought-provoking natural space (263). For Thea and Jim there is genuine pleasure in the immersion in nature; both are “refreshed” by the interaction. Denver discovers an invaluable nurturing site in Morrison’s Beloved. The young girl seeks the comfort and companionship she cannot find in her home in the woods. Initially a playhouse, the boxwood room evolves dramatically from a playroom to a refuge where her imagination feeds itself (28–29). The bower fulfills the role of the “absent” mother; Sethe is unable to recognize and/or gratify her daughter’s needs. The desire for the mother is redirected to the natural world.

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Denver’s naturally occurring room begins as a playhouse (like Jim Burden’s), progresses to a place of imagination (like Thea Kronborg’s) and climaxes in the space of salvation. The quest for a personal sanctuary in a tumultuous world takes Denver out of her house until Beloved enters (reenters) it. Once Beloved is introduced into the family home, Denver abandons her boxwood room. It, like the shelters of Jim and Thea, is ultimately only a temporary refuge. Denver too comes to the recognition that she must join the community. While the transition into the larger human landscape does necessitate the abandonment of the sheltering, isolated space, it does not negate the instinctive yearning for such a space. The frequent creation of womblike spaces within the places we inhabit is an attempt to satisfy this primal need.

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Home, Hearth, and Harpies: Discovering a Space of One’s Own in the Domestic Sphere

Moving from the sheltering spaces of nature—the naturally occurring womb-rooms of Chapter Three—to the personal places we call home, the relocation can, paradoxically, invigorate and stifle. Naturalizing the domestic sphere is one method of redefining the home employed by Cather and Morrison. Both authors move freely and frequently between the sheltering space of the house and the expansive space of nature. Home is a complex place; it confines, constricts, contains, comforts. The movement away from identifying woman with nature can lead to the claustrophobic (and contradictory) conclusion that woman equals home. The frequent assumption is that it is a site of stasis. Contrasts between open territory and enclosed places in American fiction often favour the former. Adventure occurs in the wild. Home is the place characters return to between exploits. The identification of woman with the home carries with it a great deal of ideological and emotional baggage. Vastness, movement, danger versus intimacy, stability, security; these separate spheres are generally divided along gender lines. Moers’ perceptive work on female landscapes provides a strong argument against such divisions in literature. “Certain lands have been good for women,” observes Moers, in particular “open lands, harsh and upswelling, high-lying and undulating, vegetated with crimped heather or wind-swept grasses, cut with ravines and declivities and twisting lanes” (262). She proposes (quite rightly) that “the brilliant landscape writing that women have devoted to open country should give pause to the next critic who wants to pronounce all literary women housebound, and the next psychologist with a theory about ‘inner space’” (262). 103

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Recognizing the multiple spaces and landscapes female writers occupy and recreate in their fiction is crucial to literary criticism. “Housebound” clearly has negative connotations—suffocation, not sustenance—and the home is a space some feminists regrettably identify as disempowering. Moers’ pioneering study confronts a set of restrictive assumptions about “female territory” with conviction and great insight; she expands the frame of reference for women’s fiction quite dramatically. Unfortunately, Moers also, if only by implication, sustains the “either/or” approach to the contrasting spaces of open territory and enclosed places. As she herself acknowledges, in the quest to extend the regions accessible to women, “no simple answers will emerge.” It is, however, a tactical error to automatically label the home a site of disempowerment. The rush to debunk the “feminine mystique” (a term Betty Friedan employs to describe the fates of “housewife-mothers who never had the chance to be anything else . . .” [37]) has obscured the possibility of choosing (and enjoying) the role of caregiver. Acknowledging the significance of the house is particularly important when reading a Cather or Morrison novel. Significantly, the most readily identified domestic space garners little attention in the works this study addresses. The kitchen is frequently identified by social theorists and writers alike as the heart of the home. A communal space, it represents all that is ideal in family life: nourishment, nurturance, security for both body and spirit. Cather and Morrison do offer glorified depictions of the family kitchen, but it is not the dominant space in either writer’s fiction. Jim Burden of My Antonia identifies his kitchen as “snugly underground;” it is “the heart and centre” of the dwelling (66). Claudia MacTeer also emphasizes the desirability of this particular room in The Bluest Eye; her Christmas wish is to experience the “security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen . . .” (22). Each child recognizes the emotional value of the kitchen; the major distinction is that for Jim it is a daily reality, whereas Claudia can only capture it through an unfulfilled wish. He can step into the comforting space at any time. She can only long for a space which exists outside her family home. Claudia does, however, experience another “homey” kitchen vicariously when she, her sister and Pecola visit Mrs. Breedlove at work. It is a transforming space. Initially, Claudia is struck by its positive effects. Ensconced in the home of her white employers, Mrs. Breedlove “looked nicer” than Claudia can recall (107). Order, cleanliness and comfort characterize the room, but it is also a space in which a grown woman is called “Polly” (not her real name) by a small child while her own children address her as Mrs. Breedlove. Pecola’s nervousness shatters the peace of the kitchen,

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splattering the “white porcelain, white woodwork, polished cabinets, and brilliant copperware” with blueberry pie (107–8). In the ensuing chaos the mother consoles the “little pink-and-yellow girl,” while hurling anger and abuse at her own burnt daughter (109). The kitchen is not a welcoming place for the three black girls; not yet able to fill the role of “Polly,” they are an anomaly in this domestic space. Race, and the power structures lurking behind (and in) racism are key factors in the experience of domestic space. The young, white boy Jim has greater autonomy in his grandparents’ home than Claudia or Pecola could ever hope to have in the homes of their parents. Claudia locates a comforting space in her grandmother’s house, but Pecola has no such space. Mrs. Breedlove abdicates responsibility for personal domesticity (she virtually abandons her own family) in favour of the status of valued domestic. In embracing this role, she effectively opts out of her own life. Functioning on behalf of the Fishers, Mrs. Breedlove is able to intimidate people who “humiliated her” when she was not working (128). The power is contingent on her place in the Fisher home; a place summed up in the praise that she is the “ideal servant” (128). Indeed she is: willing to abandon her own identity, sacrifice her family, and bask in second-hand glory all to keep her position. Mrs. Breedlove is too “contented” to recognize that the Fishers’ kitchen is a site of oppression. Baby Suggs has no such illusion in Beloved. One of the first spaces this former slave addresses in her new home is the kitchen. Rejecting the plantation model, she turns the outside kitchen into a storage space and moves the kitchen inside her home. Part of the allure of 124, for those in need of rest and solace, is the fact that Baby Suggs is able to create a domestic space—a communal one—of her own. The symbolic (and architectural) subversion of the system of slavery is tragically transitory. The shed becomes the site of Sethe’s desperate and deadly attempt to “protect” her children from slavecatchers. The brutality of the plantation reasserts itself. The plantation layout of Sapphira and the Slave Girl casually introduces the racial division of space. The kitchen is still “separated from the dwelling by thirty feet” but the owner’s daughter enters through the back door, the one the “servant’s used when they carried hot food from the kitchen to the dining-room . . .” (12). The “servants” in question are slaves; the spatial design is for the comfort of the owners, not for practical convenience. Divisions of labour are geographically reinforced. Sapphira is the mistress of the property, but her “place” is not in the kitchen. She “manages” while “they” serve. Her daughter’s willingness to enter by the backdoor gestures towards a

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more liberal viewpoint; it also anticipates the (seemingly) egalitarian kitchen at the novel’s conclusion. The child-narrator describes her family’s kitchen as the “pleasantest” room (286). From her perspective, things are “easy” here; it is a communal space in which all the “servants sat round the kitchen fireplace” telling stories (287). While the abolition of slavery (as well as a concern for the practicalities of running a home) has altered the conditions, race and class linger as spatial markers. Mrs. Blake is involved in the kitchen activities (the narrator’s mother is conspicuously absent), but Till and Nancy are called to the “second table” albeit to “eat the same dinner as the family, served by the same maid” (286). The kitchen still functions as a geographic reminder of an individual’s “place.” While the kitchen itself does not figure prominently in the fiction of Cather or Morrison, private space is favourably portrayed. Characters are situated in a variety of rooms, thereby expanding the definition of “domestic” space without negating its emotional value. The emphasis shifts from the individual occupying a space equated with his/her social status to spaces of personal protection. The instinctive yearning for a sheltering, isolated space is reflected in the attempts to personalize the places we inhabit; identity requires a “space of one’s own.” Self-definition, in part, requires self-positioning. FROM BROOMSTICKS TO BEDKNOBS: RE-EXAMINING DOMESTIC SPACES Perhaps the most intimate personal space in a home is the bedroom. Private and protected, it is a place for reverie and self-revelation in Cather’s writing. It is also a place of personal vulnerability. Jim Burden wakes in a tiny room with a “warm wind” blowing through the window while his grandmother keeps watch in My Antonia (8). He is under the attentive and loving gaze of a protector. The diminutive space comforts, rather than smothers, the boy. A comfortable cocoon, it is the first in a series of “nests” Jim will seek out in Nebraska. It contains all the essential elements: warmth, security, coziness. This protective enclosure, or womb-room, affords both a barrier to the natural environment which has left Jim feeling vulnerable to erasure and an invitation to explore it—the warm breeze and the view through the window (8). In a vast, impersonal landscape, his bedroom operates as an anchor for Jim; its solidity also reaffirms his identity. Sleeping spaces serve to reinforce the vulnerable status of Nancy in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Connected to the house, not by familial, but rather economic ties, the slave has no real space of her own. Falling from

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favour, she is ordered to sleep outside her owner’s bedroom door (61). Nancy is not granted a “snug” room. She does not even have a bed. In her mother’s cabin (Nancy identifies it with her mother, but it, like Till, is the property of the Colberts) she also sleeps on the floor. The difference is that “there she felt snug” (62). It is a space in which she hears the “homelike noises” and her mother can provide “an extra quilt” (62). Warm and comfortable, Nancy sleeps peacefully in her mother’s cabin. Exposed to the drafts of the long hall and the whims of Sapphira, Nancy experiences uncomfortable cold and incomprehensible cruelty in her makeshift bedroom. The precariousness of Nancy’s physical location is intensified by the arrival of the would-be rapist Martin Colbert. She is acutely aware of her isolated (and therefore “accessible”) position: “He kin jist slip into my bed . . . if I happens to fall asleep” (217). Sleep becomes a dangerous state, not a restful respite for the young slavegirl. Denied an identity of her own—“property” cannot be “granted” humanity—Nancy cannot access a private space of her own.1 Captain Forrester can lay claim to an entire house in A Lost Lady. Despite his enhanced status, there is a vulnerability to the man’s personal domain. His bedroom is reduced to a mere alcove which was once his wife’s dressing area; each night the former mountain of a man is placed in a “narrow iron bed” and isolated behind “heavy curtains” (47). Physically diminished by his accident, Captain Forrester’s private space is an accurate indicator of his status—its reduction reflects his peripheral place in his wife’s life. Tucked into a coffin-like bed, the man inhabits a room reminiscent of a tomb. There is an element of choice in his relocation; a practical response to the developments in his life. The drawn curtains simultaneously shut him in and shield him from the reality (but not the knowledge) of his wife’s infidelities. They also sever the visual connection between husband and wife, mirroring their physical disconnection. The alcove is both a protective and deceptive space; it inhibits rather than invites further exploration. While physical necessity accounts for some of Captain Forrester’s motivation for self-denial, Alexandra Bergson has no such compulsion in O Pioneers!. Able to linger in bed only on Sundays, she is visited by a sensual fantasy “an illusion of being . . . carried . . . by some one very strong” (137). Her bedroom is transformed into an erotically charged space, but, despite the privacy, Alexandra is so disconcerted that she is driven to leave the room, “angry with herself ” (137). Forced by necessity to be practical, she can neither indulge her sensuality nor embrace her bedroom as an intimate place for self-exploration. Alexandra in effect denies her own sensual power

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by suppressing her fantasies. She redirects her energies into the expansion of the farm and its productivity, but in the process she diminishes both her emotional growth and her own creativity. Denial of her feelings is a behaviour trait Thea Kronborg shares with Alexandra Bergson, but the two differ dramatically in terms of the value they place on creativity. The development of her identity as an artist is contingent upon Thea’s growth in sheltering spaces in The Song of the Lark. A pivotal point in her life—on several levels—is the acquisition of her own room; it permits a withdrawal from the turmoil that is her family. More than simply privacy, Thea gains an imaginative space with her bedroom. The creativity and intellectual growth that are hampered by the daily domestic routine are given free rein in this private realm. Compact as a boat’s cabin, Thea’s bedroom has an expansive view through the double window which reaches the floor. Solitude and silence open her to the possibilities of life; Thea has the sensation of life rushing in through her window. However, as the narrative voice assures the reader, “life rushes from within, not from without” (123). It is not the room per se, but its protective properties which inspire Thea. The lessons she cultivates take her beyond the confines of the four walls. The sanctuary that is Thea’s room offers a nurturing environment.2 Its generative powers, however, are ultimately limited in nature. It cannot be permanent; a cocoon by definition is temporary. The complete inability of her family to comprehend Thea’s frustrations and anxieties as an artist transforms the family home into a site of conflict. Initially, her “sunny cave” functions as a buffer for Thea, permitting her to lead a “double-life”—she is both a part of the family and apart from the family (193, 50). When the inevitable confrontation occurs, however, not even the sanctity of her private room can protect Thea. The “hostility” in the home transforms her “refuge.” While recognizing that the room’s “services were over,” Thea is reluctant to quit her “little shell.” Indeed, she has the sensation of “being pulled out too soon” (207). There is a strong suggestion of a birth process in Thea’s emotional expulsion from the family home; it is not regret at leaving her relatives that disturbs Thea (she is virtually estranged from them), but the fear inspired by the loss of her womb-room. Despite the sense of betrayal, the violent separation proves to be a necessary phase in Thea’s artistic growth; what has been a positive space is in danger of becoming a constricting and self-defeating snare. The view from her window is insufficient; she must seek out alternative sources of inspiration in order to thrive.

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ROOM WITH A VIEW PREFERRED: MAXIMIZING THE POWER OF THE SHELTER A key attribute of Cather’s sheltering spaces is the view they afford. Cozy and contained, they must nonetheless avoid the pitfalls of complete detachment. “Not only should the room be insulated and isolated from the world; more important, it must have an open and expansive view,” astutely concludes Briggs (166). Protection and invigorating contact are the ideal qualities of a sheltering space. One of the redeeming features of Godfrey St. Peter’s potentially claustrophobic study in The Professor’s House is in fact the window; from it, in the distance, he can see Lake Michigan. The boundary between the space of the attic room and the extensive natural terrain is destabilized by the professor’s gaze. He diminishes the distance by accessing the exterior world through his imagination and memory. The lake becomes an extension of the professor’s creative space. The imaginative and inspirational value of a view is poignantly conveyed by a young nun in Death Comes For the Archbishop. Literally cloistered from the world beyond her walls, the nun travels beyond her physical reality through a literary act. Taking Father Latour to a window the young woman explains that after the Mother reads the letters from her missionary brother, she can look out and envision New Mexico. It is an experience which makes her heart beat faster. She introduces the missionary to her space (new territory for him!) and method of exploration. Alcove window and letter combine to stimulate a journey in the mind’s eye; the cloistered nun vicariously experiences the priest’s spiritual adventure. He in turn is exposed to an alternate approach to experience. Physical isolation does not (entirely) impede discovery. Firsthand recognition of the personal benefits of observing the larger world is granted to Jim Burden and Thea Kronborg. They are characters in the process of becoming, children evolving into adults. They watch with an eye to entering. Both Jim and Thea display an eagerness to plunge into life; they have outgrown their nests. While Thea’s artistic drive to seek out new sources of stimulation is the more striking, Jim too is a restless spirit in a small, conservative town. The desire to discover—whether it is musical or scholarly knowledge—is a shared trait of Thea and Jim. Avoiding personal knowledge motivates Alexandra Bergson’s repudiation of her dreams. Alexandra’s visions focus on a stranger; her glance is inward, but so disturbing to the practical and business-minded woman that she is driven to banish rather than embrace it. The bedroom affords a rare

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glimpse of a passionate encounter, but Alexandra rejects the self-knowledge it represents. Nature—a kind of Corn God figure—inspires a natural response—sexual desire. Alexandra’s constricted life cannot accommodate the fantasy, so she closes her eyes to the prospect of a complex existence. While she does embrace the dream vicariously—by imaginatively embracing the land—Alexandra’s choice of husband inspires gentle love and companionship rather than erotic passion. A similar exercise in self-denial characterizes the aging and weakening Captain Forrester. While aware of his wife’s need for a lover, the Captain does not dwell on it. He shuts his wife’s infidelities from his consciousness just as she draws the heavy curtains which block him from her line of vision. The Captain and Alexandra are each diminished by the act of self-censorship. In each case the bedroom is a scene of avoidance: Alexandra chooses to escape from, not to, fantasy, while the Captain opts for evading a confrontation. Cather’s message is clear: a balance between internal and external visions must be achieved if the individual is to truly thrive. A refusal to look beyond the parameters of a small, enclosed room marks the experiences of several of Morrison’s characters. It is never a positive act. Sethe reduces her world to a single room in Beloved; she is indifferent to what is happening outside. Isolated and insulated, Sethe desires nothing beyond her daughters Beloved and Denver. Sethe’s experience of the world—a world shaped by the brutalities of slavery—has not encouraged further exploration. Limiting the occupants and emphasizing the boundaries of exterior and interior is an attempt at self-protection. Sethe seeks to construct barricades between a hostile environment and the fragile beings she loves. Unfortunately, the barriers Sethe erects prior to Beloved’s return undermine her efforts to sustain a sheltering space for her remaining children. The sons flee the hostile house and Denver cannot identify her mother with security. In a sad twist, Denver herself is driven to seek a sanctuary within the house. Fear of her mother creates a need for a protective space; the only place beyond Sethe’s reach, in Denver’s mind is her grandmother’s bedroom. This “keeping room,” at least from the perspective of the young girl, affords the safety her mother negates in the rest of the house. Needing protection from her mother, Denver can only find a potentially maternal space (Baby Suggs mothered all, but could save none) which is in fact sterile. It is not a room with a life-sustaining or life-inspiring view. It is most notable for what it does not have: colour. Fearful for her fragile life, Denver turns to an essentially lifeless space. It is the room in which her grandmother awaited death, asking only for scraps of colour. The room is an emblem of

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absence—absence of colour, of faith, of a mother’s love and protection. Its occupants are damaged and the keeping room fails to heal them. Its only redeeming value for Denver is that it is the vantage point from which she watches for another attack. Oddly enough, it is Sethe who has the potential to ameliorate this place of fear and defeat. Paul D returns to the house and discovers Sethe in Baby Suggs’ bed, staring at the window, void of expression. Attempting to assuage her fears about losing Beloved a second time, Paul D’s assurance that she is her own “best thing” is the spark which transforms the room into a positive site (271). Baby Suggs lost sight of her dream of healthy self-love in her retreat to the bedroom. Denver watched with eyes alert only to danger, not possibility. Sethe’s tentative attempt at self-recognition is the key to the transformation. The keeping room becomes a space of self-acceptance and connections (with herself and Paul D). The bedroom initially appears to be a social space with an expansive view in Sula. Eva Peace gradually retreats to her bedroom. She is, however, more enthroned than isolated by the move and continues to be a major presence in the house. She knows all and sees all; watching from her balcony, Eva sends for children to “raise” (37). Although physically withdrawn from her family, she still watches with a “distant eye” and receives frequent visitors (41). Eva creates both a personal refuge and a communal centre; she participates in relationships on her own terms and in her own space. The violent death of her daughter Hannah, however, alters both Eva and her room permanently. Witnessing her daughter’s accidental burning, Eva throws herself out of the window, but her sacrifice is futile. Hannah dies, Eva lives, and the window is permanently closed. The decision not to repair the window marks a change in Eva’s perspective. On a literal level, she cannot keep her eye on the world (or at least the portion of it framed by her casement). In rejecting vision Eva makes herself vulnerable. She does not see Sula’s manipulations coming. The granddaughter is able to gain control of the house and force the once mighty matriarch into a nursing home. The transfer in ownership is not reflected in the appearance of the bedroom. The window remains boarded-up even after Sula claims the room as her own. Eva’s viewless bedroom becomes a death chamber for her granddaughter. Having driven everyone away, Sula assumes a fetal position and awaits death oddly reassured by the boarded-up window with its “sturdy termination” and “unassailable finality” (148). Sula at last achieves what she has always claimed she desired—complete isolation—and yet her final conscious thought seems to belie her assertion. While Sula does die alone, her emotional isolation is not as complete as she has tried to convince herself it is—

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her final words reflect an enduring connection with both Nel and Shadrack. Whereas Eva maintained a tentative grasp on life despite her semi-isolation, Sula (unsuccessfully) seeks a total negation of life and complete isolation. PRO-CREATIVE QUARTERS: THE SPECIALIZED SPACE OF THE STUDY Separation from the familial or communal circle is not, in and of itself, a negative act. In fact it is a necessary stage in the development of an artist. Withdrawal into a sheltering space is an integral part of creativity; as Virginia Woolf so astutely asserted, a writer must have “a room of one’s own.” The key is to devise a place which enhances the artistic life without denying life itself—recognition of the world beyond the womb-room. Godfrey St. Peter initially enjoys just such a privileged place in The Professor’s House. During the evolution of the Spanish Adventurers in North America, the Professor’s study is a vital element in the artistic process: notes taken elsewhere are “woven into their proper place . . .” (16). His study provides the Professor with a protective and procreative space in which his scholarly works are figuratively born; as Louie observes, “Your children were born here. Not your daughters—. . . your splendid Spanish-adventurer sons!” (144). Indeed, the study has not been a nurturing space for the daughters. The artistic enterprise is accomplished at the expense of St. Peter’s social roles. The Professor essentially leads a life of marital escape with the attic room functioning as a retreat where he can isolate himself from the domestic drama. Writing requires protection from potential distractions. In theory St. Peter’s study provides him with the necessary privacy and peace to complete his scholarly works; in practice it permits him to withdraw from his family and lead a double life, much like Thea Kronborg. Unlike the young, single girl, St. Peter has personal and social ties (as a husband he must acknowledge private and public expectations) in the family home. Neglecting his responsibilities has negative repercussions for St. Peter’s entire family. The spatial layout of the new home counteracts the Professor’s practice of isolating himself.3 In this dwelling his study is on the main floor, and disengagement from family life, specifically Lillian, can no longer be as absolute. Whereas he was literally raised above the family, St. Peter will now, at least spatially, be located within the realm of the family. The blurring of boundaries has in fact already begun. While the household had respected the sanctity of the Professor’s workroom in the past—there is

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the example of a young Kathleen waiting an entire morning with a beesting rather than disturb her father—St. Peter is now visited by Kathleen, Rosamond and Louie. The formerly distanced domestic drama freely intrudes in the intellectual realm precisely at the point when St. Peter is in most need of a sanctuary. He is observed at a time of crisis: all of his relationships have been blighted by greed. Academic integrity is falling victim to commercialism and the key people in his life are abusing the memory, money and name of the man he loved. The Professor’s adamant refusal to relinquish his study may be read as a retreat or as an entrenchment; in either case it is not successful. The ostensible reason for remaining in the old house is that he cannot work in another study. However, he confesses the desk functions as a “hole one could creep into” (141). Work becomes, or perhaps remains a justification for distancing himself from his family. The attic room, once a site of creativity, now becomes a “shadowy crypt” (94). It is a remnant of the past and a changed space. Womb is metamorphosed into an artistic tomb as the study is no longer a place of creativity: the Professor struggles with the relatively simple task of editing Tom Outland’s diary. He spends two months on a job which, in the past, would have taken a week. Distracted by poignant memories, St. Peter’s creative energies elude him. The room almost becomes an actual tomb; only the timely intervention of the seamstress Augusta prevents St. Peter’s demise. It is not entirely clear whether she rescues him from death or condemns him to life. He is, however, distinctly altered by his experience, letting something “very precious” go (258). One can only speculate as to what St. Peter relinquishes; regardless, it is significant that he feels sufficiently grounded to face the return of his family. The attic womb-room forces St. Peter to undergo a painful, but necessary rebirth. It is once again a pro-creative space. The man who emerges is better equipped to assume his social roles—husband, father, soon-to-be grandfather—albeit at the expense of his individual desires.4 A similar compulsion to escape the demands of social roles characterizes Ruth Dead’s reliance on a study in Song of Solomon. Unlike Cather, Morrison does not grant her character an authoritative claim to the private space. Rejected by her husband and alienated from the community, Ruth seeks solace in an aesthetically pleasing place. The outdoors seems to enter the room; the evergreen tree creates a “damp greenness” inside (13). Ruth’s reliance on the private space is recognition of what Laurie Vickroy identifies as “a means of self-assertion and defense against the claims of others [through] solitary space [which] enables privacy and self-examination” (305). The room was

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her father’s study; it is a paternal space which has been domesticated—the inclusion of a sewing machine and rocker speak to “non-intellectual” pastimes. The strong presence of the evergreen injects a natural element into a distinctly unnatural house—more than being a constructed building it is the site of a bizarre family dynamic. The tree also serves to obstruct vision. This room is the site of an activity which must not be observed; it is a secretive space. Peace, tranquility, and a specifically maternal creativity are located in Ruth’s sanctuary; they are not fostered anywhere else in the dwelling. The act of breastfeeding her son takes on a heightened significance; Ruth drifts into fantasy, fancying herself as the “miller’s daughter” spinning gold (14). Breast milk becomes a “thread of light” (14). Ruth quenches her own creative thirst through her son; breastfeeding is no longer a process of giving the child sustenance, but an attempt to assert identity. The fantasy she indulges in is borrowed rather than self-created (much like the Miller’s daughter’s power), just as the space occupied during the act is borrowed. Freddie the janitor’s peeping tom performance violates the sanctity of the room and the exchange between mother and child. His propensity for gossiping exposes a private act to the light of public opinion; discovery brings shame and fear to Ruth and a rechristening to her son. Whereas the Professor experienced only inconvenience when his study was invaded by “outsiders,” Ruth must endure the suspicious wrath of her husband (he does not learn why his son is renamed Milkman, but assumes it is his wife’s fault) and the loss of her personal sanctuary. Ruth’s claim to the private space has only been tentative; masculine “power” (no one questions Freddie’s unscrupulous behaviour) defeats feminine “creativity.” A self-described small woman, Ruth Dead’s circumscribed creativity reflects her circumscribed life. She enters a borrowed space and distorts a maternal act in the pursuit of selfgratification.5 A study is in fact a privileged space. It implies a degree of prosperity both in terms of space—room to spare for a spare room—and intellectual freedom. The Professor can claim a study as a prerequisite for his work; as Joslin observes, “given his role as economic provider, such a study for a scholarly man would have to be tolerated by Godfrey’s family” (173). It fulfills a practical purpose: the study enables St. Peter to pursue an academic career. Retreat into solitude is not indulgence in this context; it is a disciplined exercise. Ruth Dead has no such authority and her need for a private space is easily undermined. She cannot “justify” her withdrawal from the domestic circle. Ruth does not merit a secluded sanctuary in the eyes of her family.

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EMBRACING SPACE: SURVIVAL SITES A desire for a safe retreat is a common human trait; the need for a protective and (potentially) nurturing space is extremely compelling. Those denied the luxury of a private room must accommodate their needs to the reality of their surroundings; sheltering spaces, by necessity, take a variety of forms in Morrison’s fiction. Nel Wright seeks a comforting place after discovering her husband and best friend in an affair in Sula. Nel’s requirements are minimalistic in nature—a “small and bright” place—but meant to maximize the psychological effects of the specialized space (107). She instinctively looks for a nest-like retreat, an enclosed space which functions as both a container (for her being and her grief ) and a barrier to the harsh realities confronting her. The toddler Michael Street searches for an even more confined space in Tar Baby. He seeks a soft hiding place. Unable to comprehend or escape his mother’s mercurial and frequently violent behaviour, the child hides in a bathroom cabinet. Barely able to articulate his needs, the toddler is driven by a protective instinct. Unlike the adult Nel, Michael is drawn to a dark, enclosed space, but it too is situated in the bathroom. Despite the difference in coping mechanisms and powers of reasoning, both characters desire womb-like spaces. Nel and Michael discover a place which can contain their pain and defuse, albeit temporarily, the negative circumstances of their lives. The bathroom retreats are not exactly positive spaces, but they do represent a self-protective gesture. They are therefore necessary spaces for existence. The very real threat of extinction redefines space in several of Morrison’s novels; Beloved and Song of Solomon offer examples of literal survival spaces. Hiding places utilized by escaped slaves vary in terms of creativity and desperation, but share the common, crucial aim of self-preservation by remaining undetected. Spaces seemingly hostile to existence become survival sites.6 The slave-catcher in Beloved observes, runaway slaves can be found “beneath floorboards, in a pantry . . . a chimney, a press, a hayloft . . .” (148). Small, unlikely spots barely big enough to contain a human being are sought; the fugitive willingly embraces temporary confinement in order to avoid permanent captivity or death.7 The legacy of slavery sets into motion the violent circumstances which force Macon and Pilate Dead to flee their farm in Song of Solomon. In order to evade their persecutors, the children daringly hide in the house of their father’s murderer. The house is so big that the resourceful Circe can hide them in unused rooms. Despite the relative spaciousness and security of their hiding place, the children can only endure two weeks of confinement. The

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secret hide-away does, however, serve its purpose—no one pursues the children when they leave. MOTHERSPACE: THE SHELTER OF THE CAVE ROOM Small, intimate rooms or spaces within rooms frequently function as protective barriers in Morrison’s writing. There is a comfort in the confinement, a reassurance in the restriction; such spaces evoke images of the womb and are sought out almost instinctively. Jazz incorporates a powerful example of the mother’s identity blurring with that of the space she (seemingly) occupies. Joe Trace’s search for his mother leads him to a burrow with a “domestic smell” (183). Joe’s attempt to discover his mother leads to an exploration of the place she appears to call home. He finds, not his mother, but a space which mirrors her body. It is a site of contradictions: accessible yet inaccessible, tangible yet intangible. The domesticated, natural space of her cave home does little to satisfy Joe’s longing; he remains fascinated with “deep holes” (223). And yet, the journey into the mother’s room is clearly described as a type of birth process. He leaves the space of the mother subtly altered. While he never finds his mother in person the substitution of the motherplace is, in part, a coping mechanism for Joe Trace. Spiritual sustenance is the primary benefit for the characters Cather situates in cave-rooms. Temporary withdrawal into sheltering spaces grants emotional, intellectual and artistic rebirth to several of her fictional figures. Exposure to the restorative effects of Panther Canyon permits Thea Kronborg to re-access the room of her adolescence and the imaginative space that it entailed. She selects a cave which satisfies her dream of a high cliff with a nest. Whereas her old room provided only temporary respites from the turmoil of domestic life, Thea’s new cave-room empowers her to withdraw completely from the demands of civilization. Isolation becomes insulation. Peace and tranquility, so scarce in her early life, engulf Thea. The city of caves draws her in while, by its very inaccessibility, it keeps “intruders” at bay. Panther Canyon is a sheltering, nurturing space for Thea; it serves to revitalize her much weakened spirit. The therapeutic powers of the cave city are equally crucial to Thea’s specific development as an artist. Initially, Panther Canyon encourages her to refrain from thinking; the healing process is more sensation than idea (259). Opening herself to the emotional experience of the physical landscape, an erasure of personality occurs as Thea “dissolves” into her new environment becoming a “mere receptacle” (259). She does not simply hear the rhythm of the world, she becomes it. Spiritual connection with the land evolves during

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Thea’s quasi-sensual, quasi-mystical sojourn in Panther Canyon. In recognizing the sensations of the location, she is able to access a part of herself which is crucial to her growth as a singer. In the past the natural environment of Moonstone allowed Thea to escape the demands of family life and the network of social obligations connected with townlife. Panther Canyon likewise encourages Thea to liberate herself from the narrow-minded assumptions of Moonstone. Perhaps more significantly, the ritualistic atmosphere of the cave city inspires an epiphanic moment. The revelation represents the culmination of Thea’s struggle to articulate the drive behind the creative process. Only by stepping outside the mundane places of her life can Thea recognize the life force that is art. More than mere refuge, the elevated architecture of Panther Canyon functions as a source of renewal and inspiration for the emerging artist that is Thea Kronborg. Spiritually fortified by the experiences of Panther Canyon, Thea returns to civilization; her withdrawal from society has been a temporary retreat rather than a permanent rejection. In fact, Thea has spent her days among the ruins, but returned each night to the Ottenburg ranch. As she resumes the struggles of an artistic life, Thea draws solace not only from the lessons of the cave city in Arizona, but also from the attic room of Moonstone. She internalizes and periodically recreates the sheltering spaces of her youth in times of turmoil in her adult life. The bathroom in particular functions as a “refuge” and the bathing process becomes almost ritualistic reproducing the liberating spirit of Panther Canyon (359). Water as a life source and symbol of the continuity of life connects Thea with the original inhabitants of the land; more than simply lengthening her past, the Cliff Dwellers provide Thea with an ancestry of artisans. Panther Canyon serves as an imaginative anchor for Thea. Security and contentment are the predominant features of Thea’s imaginative spaces, but there is also an underlying sense of community. The sheltering places of her youth enable Thea to develop as an individual and as an artist. Significantly, this development does not occur in isolation; Thea walks a fine line between being part of, and apart from, humanity. The tremendous attraction to, and admiration of, the humanized landscape of the Cliff City that Tom Outland experiences in The Professor’s House is, paradoxically, empowering and disempowering. The price of attempting to preserve the Mesa is high; it leads to the betrayal of a genuine friendship. Love of the land ultimately speaks louder to Tom than the bonds of affection he shares with Rodney Blake. Human relations are virtually severed as Tom turns from his companion to the Cliff City. A summer of solitude elevates

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Tom’s emotional connection to the landscape from mere adventure to a spiritual experience. He begins each day with the sensation of having “found everything” (227). Tom discovers a source of vitality in the ruins of the Cliff Dwellers. The healing process seemingly expunges the negative experiences which motivated his withdrawal from society. Tom does not, however, embrace a “womb-room.” He maintains an emotional detachment; the sources he studies are not limited to the natural surroundings. Tom memorizes “passages of Virgil” and the result is the picture “on the page” and the one behind it: “blue and purple rocks . . . little clustered houses . . .” (228). The encounter with the mesa is, in large part, an intellectual exercise.8 He sympathizes with the Cliff Dwellers; Thea empathizes with her artistic “ancestors.” Tom relies on an “outside” instructor; Thea intuitively responds to the knowledge the Cliff City offers. With time, Tom Outland does appear to desire a degree of harmony with the landscape. He abandons his previous efforts to document the secrets of the mesa through the artifacts of the Cliff Dwellers. Tom becomes less of a scientist and more of a mystic, opening himself to unspoken lessons. He is content to imbibe the “religious emotion” of the place (226). There is also an air of practical preparation to Tom’s activities—he studies, cleans up the mess that the German had made—suggesting an awareness that he must leave the mesa. Perhaps, even further, his actions are a recognition that what was once a site of activity and creation (specifically the artistry and architectural genius of the original inhabitants) is now a place of stasis and death. The history of the Cliff Dwellers is not the history of Tom Outland, however strong his admiration may be. The caves shelter the artifacts of the past, but prevent Tom from truly participating in life. Returning to society is a recognition of this fact; his self-imposed exile from humankind is a period of rejuvenation rather than a quest for a permanent hermitage. Tom Outland opens himself to the lessons of the mesa and the people who collectively created a civilization in a barren landscape. He does not, however, entirely learn the lesson—human connection is absent from Tom’s legacy. In fact, the gas he creates and the wealth it generates serve to alienate his friends after his death in the war. His decision to join the war is equally troubling; perhaps embracing death is Tom’s response to the personal price exacted by social obligations. Whatever his motivations, he turns his back on his fiancée and surrogate family much as he did to Rodney Blake. Tom Outland’s legacy is destructive on a level he could never have envisioned. Godfrey St. Peter has a parallel summer of self-awareness, and the natural landscape—both the actual setting of Hamilton and the Blue Mesa with its association with Tom Outland—plays a vital role in the

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introspective process. The sheltering caves of the Cliff Dwellers whose rock rims resemble “the sloping roof of an attic” become symbolically linked with the Professor’s third floor room “under the slope of the mansard roof ” (186, 7). The idealized space that St. Peter refers to as “Outland Country” is an amalgamation of the admirable attributes of his friend and of the restorative powers Tom discovers in the Cliff City. The memory of Tom is preserved as a “felicitous space,” a term Fryer borrows from Gaston Bachelard. Felicitous space, Fryer concludes, is “the space we love, the space that concentrates being within limits that protect. Felicitous space is a house of secret rooms, ‘abodes for an unforgettable past’ . . .” (Prairie Schooner, 185). Tom Outland represents just such a felicitous space for the Professor. Feeling besieged, he attempts to maintain his equilibrium by retreating to a room in his mind. Outland Country becomes the anchor St. Peter tries to cling to; sadly it is precisely this gesture towards protecting his memory of Tom that increasingly alienates him from his family. Tom Outland becomes an ideal, perfected in death much like the fly preserved in amber. He becomes the measurement by which St. Peter gauges all his relationships; the living quite simply cannot compete. The potentially restorative powers of the mesa are distorted by the Professor in his refusal to incorporate them in a progressive vision. In seeking to remain in an idealized place in his mind, St. Peter seriously restricts his own life. The “house of secret rooms” initially possesses many of the positive attributes associated with the concept of home. It is a nurturing, life-sustaining, creative site, but this sheltering space shifts from protective to constricting when the Professor immerses himself in this artificial environment to the exclusion of life. He indulges in isolation rather than his previous temporary respites; the withdrawal comes close to being permanent and the room ceases to be a “felicitous space.” Just as the attic room ceases to be productive, the imaginative room identified as Outland Country becomes life-denying. HOMEWARD BOUND: DEFINING PLACES “Woman’s place is in the home” tends to echo in the mind, in life, in literature in a booming, authoritative, masculine (but not necessarily male) voice speaking from an ageless and irrefutable position. Elizabeth Janeway’s Man’s World Woman’s Place: A Study in Social Mythology does a remarkable job exposing both the myth-making mechanism and the practical ramifications of the social myth. The notion of separate spheres hinges upon the premise that if they are not divinely, then they are at least historically, ordained. Observes Janeway:

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Janeway’s historically accurate representation of the evolution of the home as a single-family dwelling effectively exposes the fallibility of the “it has always been this way” line of reasoning. Despite evidence to the contrary, the myth continues to linger; the social biases reflected in, and sustained by, the separate sphere principle are not easily defused. The multiple definitions of home proffered by linguists, historians, sociologists, and writers of both non-fiction and fiction imply a movement away from this restrictive division, and yet the boundaries demarcated by home continue to follow gender lines. The opening pages of this section examined the tactic of naturalizing domesticated space as a coping-mechanism; the remainder of this chapter will explore the larger structure—the house as a whole. Cather and Morrison raise key issues surrounding the notions of house, home and family, alternately challenging and reinforcing expectations. Ultimately, however, the two authors subvert the standard definitions; each offers counter-definitions which cannot be contained within “masculine” or “feminine” spheres. Literature and American literature in particular (but by no means exclusively) devotes a great deal of attention and narrative space to houses. Urgo suggests that this phenomenon is merely a reflection of the culture: “American culture, like Western culture in general, is packed full of references to houses: The House of the Seven Gables, Little House on the Prairie, The House of Mirth, the ‘big house,’ House Beautiful, This Old House, the doghouse, International House of Pancakes and of course the White House, to name a few random examples” (27). One commonality between these “random examples” is the emotional implications—whether positive or negative—of their names: an almost intangible quality that extends beyond the actual structures themselves. Urgo’s choices resonate as landmarks in the American landscape. Recognition occurs on both intellectual and emotional levels; comprehension of the symbolism is both reasoned and instinctive. Moving from a cultural to a historical perspective, Chandler interprets the “prominent place” of houses in American novels as a direct reflection of the nation’s evolution. She proposes that “in a country whose history has been focused for so long on the business of settlement and development, the

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issue of how to stake out territory, clear it, cultivate it, and build on it has been of major economic, political, and psychological consequences” (1). Arguably this statement would be true of all countries at some point in time, but such an argument falls outside the parameters of my particular project. Of greater importance is Chandler’s assertion that the “issue of how to stake out territory” has “psychological consequences;” the “American Dream” is after all to own a home—for most Americans the “frontier spirit” can only be fulfilled through open houses and mortgage negotiations. The conflicting, but equally compelling drive to escape the home with its burden of “civilization” is addressed by both Chandler and Urgo. Migration and settlement—the tension between freedom of movement and owning property—are key elements in American culture, history and literature. Chapter Five will discuss in detail the nomadic urge often identified with the American character. The reality for the vast number of citizens, however, is that staking out territory is largely limited to decor selections and backyard landscaping. Despite my rather flippant tone, the importance of an individual’s house in Western culture is undeniable. The home has an intense emotional resonance, an irreplaceable imaginative value, and strong social ramifications. It is “personal space” concretized. Body as house and house as body are recurring concepts in theories of space. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar note that “women themselves have often . . . been described or imagined as houses” (88). They are both the container and the contained. Our first homes are literally located within the mother. “The house is an image of the body,” observes Dolores Hayden, but makes no comment about the sex of the body (40). Drawing upon the work of Freud, Chandler emphasizes the visual correspondence between house and both male and female bodies: Freud points out that universally, in dreams, ‘the one typical . . . representation of the human figure as a whole is a house’; he also claims . . . that ‘windows, doors and gates stood for openings in the body and that facades of houses were either smooth or provided with balconies and projections to hold on to.’ Those with smooth walls he recognizes as male; those with balconies and projections, female. (11–12)

Porteous similarly suggests that because “the correspondence between bodily orifices and the doors and windows of houses is very close” such associations are logical (70). While Porteous refrains from identifying one sex as dominant in the body/house equation, his subsequent observation that “violation occurs as rape or breaking-and-entering” is rather revealing (70). Clearly

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men are not immune to the crime of rape, but statistically women are immensely more vulnerable to this specific form of violence. The link between the female form and the structural space is perhaps most succinctly expressed in the phrase “the angel in the house.” House and angel are interconnected. The one locates the other, while the other elevates a mere building into a home through her ministrations. Expectations raised by this literary reference are targets for both Cather and Morrison (a point which will be elaborated upon later in this chapter). In an unusual variation in Cather’s Death Comes For the Archbishop, Bishop Latour’s ambition is to build a cathedral; his impression is that it could be a “continuation of himself and his purpose, a physical body full of his aspirations after he had passed from the scene” (175). The church is in the priest and the priest is in the church; the physical structure will house the spirit (and body—it becomes his burial place) of the Bishop after his death just as his physical structure houses the spirit of the (unbuilt) cathedral while he lives. While Cather’s use of the body/house equation takes a respectful (if not reverential) tone, Morrison effectively deflates the metaphor in Song of Solomon. Hagar and Ruth Dead confront each other over Milkman; their battle takes a lofty approach until the unseen Pilate interjects a heavy dose of reality into the encounter: “‘He is my home’ . . . [began Hagar] ‘And I am his,’ said Ruth. ‘And he wouldn’t give a pile of swan shit for either one of you.’ . . . ‘He ain’t a house, he’s a man’ . . .” (137–8). The practical Pilate rejects the artificially elevated representation of her nephew in favour of brutal reality. The “fact” of Milkman—self-absorbed and callously indifferent— is not measured in the “fiction”—a connection so deep it creates a home—either Hagar or Ruth creates. Dismantling the analogy is a technique for forcing the deluded women to acknowledge the truth. Pilate is advocating clarity of vision. She rejects both the equation of people with houses and the desirability of the “conventional” home. MYTHICAL SPACE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOME A home is much more than mere brickwork or aluminum siding even when it is not expressly identified with the human body. It has a powerful emotional resonance that stretches far beyond the physical boundaries of the structure. It is a “human” space. Conceding that a house is “a geometrical object,” Bachelard is emphatic that “transposition to the human plane takes place immediately whenever a house is considered as space for cheer and intimacy, space that is supposed to condense and defend intimacy” (48). In fact all “really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home” in

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Bachelard’s estimation (5). It is the human element which transforms the “geometrical object.” Hayden similarly defines the concept of home as incorporating two elements: “the physical space and the nurturing that takes place there . . .” (63). Home speaks to both a building and an experience; terms like “cheer,” “intimacy,” and “nurturing” highlight the ameliorative value of the home. Home is a place of connection—intimacy and nurturing are not done in isolation. It is precisely this thread that Arnold Weinstein teases out in his assessment of home as the “immediate setting that is personalized, lived in, and ‘made,’ but also and no less crucially the larger human nexus, the family that one lives in, that one both inherits and ‘makes’” (5). Personal attachment is of paramount importance in Youngbear-Tibbetts’ interpretation of home: “‘Home,’ in the most replete sense of the word, is not about the confines of place and community; rather, it is a created place, secured not by nativity, entitlement, or endowment but by the continual and careful creation and recreation of ties to place” (36). Home is as much a process as it is a place; human bonds create and sustain the intense emotional power of the home. Willa Cather, at first glance, appears to follow the model of the home as a site of cheer, intimacy and nurturing. The spiritual pilgrim, Bishop Latour, discovers a contemplative site in Death Comes For The Archbishop—a Navajo house which encourages reflection on the past and contemplation of the future (229). The dwelling affords shelter for both body and spirit. It is a distinctly maternal space much like a ship on an ocean. It is a place strangely reminiscent of a prior maternal space Latour has encountered—the “Stone Lips” cave. Earlier in his travels, Latour was repulsed by the sound of a powerful and majestic flow of water, but now seems at ease with water (ocean) imagery (130, 229). The disconcerting sound of the (imagined) underground river is seemingly defused by domestication. Both spaces evoke maternal (womb) imagery, but the cave inspires only terror while the house encourages reflection and self-awareness. An intimate, sheltering space, the hogan is in effect a hybrid site; it is both static (a constructed place) and moving (the sensation of being on an ocean voyage). Almost a contradiction in terms, it is simultaneously artificial (a structure imposed on the landscape) and natural (the “heart of the world” is being reclaimed by the sand which enters through cracks [229]). The hogan permits a degree of isolation—privacy for contemplation—but the encroachment of the natural elements suggests that the Bishop is still a participant in the voyage of life. It is ultimately a borrowed space with an intensely vulnerable status. The Navajo are a conquered people; their spiritual peace is threatened

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by religious “imperialism” (Latour’s job!), and, of more immediate concern, their physical safety is largely contingent on the attitudes and policies of the white settlers and American government. The image of a ship’s cabin and a personal refuge coalesce in My Antonia. Jim Burden recalls his family’s home as a place of safety and warmth much like a small boat (44). It is a sentiment implicitly shared by Mr. Shimerda—he does not articulate it but those observing him sense his contentment—and explicitly expressed through Antonia Shimerda’s whispered “Good-bye, dear house” which the Widow Steavens interprets as a recognition that the home had been her refuge (57, 199). The Burden home is in fact a place of cheer, intimacy, and nurturing, particularly when compared with the Shimerda hovel. Home is indeed where the heart is for Jim Burden, but in point of fact it is merely a place in his memory. My Antonia is a nostalgic return to an admirable and desirable domestic space. And yet, at the time Jim creates his manuscript he is essentially homeless—the New York apartment is clearly his wife’s domain. The narrator of the “Introduction” reveals that Jim travels a great deal but confesses the other impediment to their meeting is Jim’s wife (1). The home Jim is now connected to is not hospitable to his friends; nor presumably to him—she has a life of her own and he copes with “disappointments” (2). Jim Burden is the end of the Burden line; he fails to establish both a family and a home. The illusory nature of home, however, is most dramatically conveyed in O Pioneers!. Frank Shabata’s previously comforting home—the place he was “soothed” when he frenzied—is destroyed by betrayal and violence (177). The sight of “the black, open door” repels him; no longer a welcoming portal, the aperture resembles the grave more than it does the entrance to a domestic abode (177). It is a threshold Frank cannot cross physically or imaginatively: he is aware he has committed murder but cannot connect that reality with his wife (178). His jealous rage finally consumes Frank; having accused his young wife of countless infidelities he is at last “vindicated.” Fleeing the scene of the crime(s), Frank’s only thoughts are of being comforted by Marie and how if she had “been at home, he would have turned and gone back to her . . .” (180). Home is literally equated with his wife. The act of murder kills both wife and home for Frank. The shotgun blast effectively severs all ties between the husband and wife, but their incompatibility had already begun the estrangement. Youngbear-Tibbetts contends that a home can only be achieved through a sustained and active process of connection and reconnection. Frank Shabata identified his homeplace with his wife; his complete failure to treat their relationship as a process

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rather than a fact contributes heavily to the loss of his home. While he was soothed by Marie and the home, she was merely the receptacle for his insecurities. It was not a space of love or sanctuary for Marie. She sought these qualities, not in the house, but in the orchard, not in her marriage, but through an affair. DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH: RACE AND THE REALITY OF HOME What happens to the concept (and reality) of home when oppression is factored into the equation? The notion of separate spheres, it has become increasingly clear, does not apply to all women. Historically, black and white women in America have had markedly different experiences of “home.” Issues of ownership, of autonomous space, and definitions of domestic households are complicated by the ramifications of slavery, economic vulnerability, racism and other forms of discrimination, but the “careful creation and recreation of ties to place” is a powerful means of countering these negative influences. Expanding the definition of “private,” proposes Rose, creates a space in which it can be “a resource for women—not a burden;” “‘private’ could refer to black community spaces beyond the reach of white people . . .” (Feminism and Geography, 126). Divisions between private homes and communal places are minimized by personal connections and interactions. Domesticity can be a subversive act. A nurturing and protective space reestablishes the self-worth threatened by a hostile world. Establishing a space of resistance is a vital survival tactic. bell hooks specifically highlights the importance of homeplace in the African-American community. Home has multiple purposes in hooks’ assessment; it fulfills both personal and public needs. It is a space in which “black people could affirm one another and by so doing heal many of the wounds inflicted by racist domination” (42). The home functions as a site of collective regeneration.9 To this end it also has a “radical political dimension:” . . . one’s homeplace was the one site where one could resist. Black women resisted by making homes where all black people could strive to be subjects, not objects, where we could be affirmed in our minds and hearts despite poverty, hardship, and deprivation. . . . (42)

Creating some type of home is crucial to physical and psychological survival. In order to do so, the victim of oppression must frequently look beyond the traditional definition of what constitutes a home.

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The home is a central symbol in the fiction of Toni Morrison. She utilizes various structures to expose (and in several instances explode) the power dynamics hidden behind the domestic dwelling. The perversion of the ideal of “home sweet home” is chillingly conveyed in Beloved. Despite being a fairly benevolent place during the master’s life, the plantation Sweet Home degenerates into an explicitly brutal and cruel site of slavery upon his death. Hogan notes, however, that “even at Sweet Home, the garden ideal of the plantation home—an Edenic hell, so to speak—the slaves are not fully invested with a sense of self . . .” (173). Slavery is slavery even when watered down by “kindness;” “property” is not entitled to a home of its own. As one of its survivors, Paul D, observes, “it wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home” (14). The name of the slavehold signals the perversion of the natural order that is slavery; the attempt to camouflage the reality behind the “homey” name is futile. Cather’s representation of homelife and slavery is markedly different. In Sapphira and the Slave Girl—a text about an owner’s machinations to destroy an innocent girl—an excessively sanitized version of the slave holding emerges from the slaves themselves. Till’s relocation to the Mill Farm (after Sapphira purchases her) leads to homesickness for Mrs. Matchem (housekeeper cum surrogate mother) and the countryside (72). There is no hint of violence or cruelty in her backward glance; no shadow of her own mother’s horrific death. Nancy, Till’s daughter, shares this strategy of sanitizing a site of oppression and cruelty: “it was still hers: the home folks and the home place and the precious feeling of belonging here” (197). The brutal truth is that she does “belong” here; the threat of assault the previous evening illustrates the precariousness of her situation. Flight is her only defense, but Nancy’s escape is hindered by her desire to go home (237). Freedom, with its concomitant loss of a home, overwhelms Nancy; she is willing to settle for a diminished home rather than venture out in search of a new one. The impossibility of achieving a genuine home under slavery is painfully clear in Beloved. So too are the difficulties of creating and sustaining a homeplace once removed from slavery; Sethe’s efforts are thwarted by the very house itself. “124 WAS SPITEFUL” (3). Her daughter comes to view the house as a living entity and a moody one at that—weeping, sighing, trembling, and prone to fits (29). Nor is this an isolated occurrence; as Baby Suggs asserts, all the houses are packed to the “rafters with some dead Negro’s grief ” (5). The legacy of slavery lingers and the haunted houses are a direct contradiction to the “home sweet home” paradigm. The inclusion of a familiar school primer in The Bluest Eye is a provocative tool for challenging the notion of home. In simplistic and straightforward

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terms, the primer evokes a recognizable and comfortable scene: house, family and happiness are conflated. Morrison quickly erodes the myth that such a reality is universal. The reader is plunged into an alternate realm of disorder and disconnection. The immediate focus of the novel is on the house. The subsequent disintegration of the primer anticipates the fate of Pecola Breedlove and her family: “Hereisthehouseitisgreenandwhiteithasareddooritisveryprettyhereisthefamilymotherfatherdickandjaneliveinthegreenanwhitehousetheyareveryhappy . . .” (4). Distorted and disorienting, the language of the primer dissolves into chaos just as the Breedloves do; the utter ineffectualness of the model is reinforced through Morrison’s use of the fragmentary excerpts to introduce the Breedlove (and only the Breedlove) chapters.10 Dismantling the myth of home as a single family, picturesque house is not a rejection of the emotional value of home on Morrison’s part. She tampers with the packaging, but retains the message: home is an empowering place, a site of nurturing, and a refuge in which identity is formed and fostered. Both the inability to create a home of one’s own, and the need to recognize counterdefinitions of what constitutes a “good” home are crucial elements in understanding the significance of the home in Morrison’s fiction. Absence can reveal a great deal. “Toni Morrison’s writing, especially in Beloved, undermines . . . any notion that everyone once had a place called home . . . a place not only where they belonged but which belonged to them, and where they could afford to locate their identities,” concludes Doreen Massey (166). Morrison addresses the issue of the home in a variety of forms in her novels. Redefining the concept of a “good” home requires re-examining personal priorities. Illness and injury are an inconvenience to the adults in the MacTeer home in The Bluest Eye, but looking back through the eyes of an adult Claudia wonders, if it was as painful as she recalls (12). Deprivation due to poverty certainly shaped her childhood, but so too did love. It is a love she could “smell” and “taste” throughout the house. Night time coughs summon hands which “repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. . . . somebody . . . who does not want me to die” (12). Externally, and on the most superficial levels, Claudia’s family home has nothing in common with the “very pretty” “green and white” house of the happy family in the school primer (3) and yet her “old, cold, and green” house is a place of safety and nurturing (albeit in a rough and tumble way) [10]. Despite the cracked windows, the MacTeer home is a veritable haven when compared with the Breedlove situation. It is largely a question of perspective; only with the distance of time can Claudia appreciate what she did have (a life-sustaining love) and overlook what was missing (creature comforts).

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It is a lesson Ruth Dead also grasps in Song of Solomon. Entering her sister-in-law’s home—a two-room house with no electricity or running water—Ruth recognizes that the house, which was a refuge in her greatest time of need, still resembles “an inn, a safe harbor” (135). Little more than a shack, Pilate’s home has a peace and majesty that Ruth’s own (comparatively) palatial house cannot claim. To the unquestioning eye it is the Macon Dead household which is (materially) superior, but the text exposes the personal price the public image exacts: the family is emotionally stunted and essentially estranged from each other and their community. More mausoleum than mansion, the former home of Dr. Foster is indeed a Dead house. The act of discovering a genuine home—that is, a place of comfort, nurturance, and protection—in a hostile environment requires a great deal of creativity and tenacity. As a young slave girl Sethe instinctively discerns the emotional power of the notion of home in Beloved; she achieves a sense of belonging at Sweet Home by picking “some pretty growing thing and [taking] it with her” (22). Sethe attempts to naturalize the unnatural space by incorporating familiar elements from the physical landscape. The effort to “place” herself within another woman’s kitchen takes the form of claiming her own territory through personal touches. “Home” for Sethe is by necessity a vague and small-reaching space at this point; once she escapes slavery her expectations of home expand markedly. Sethe seeks a place of safety for her children and hopes for “a little space . . . some way to hold off eventfulness”—peace and rest—for herself (18).11 Paul D’s suggestion that she move house “as though a house was a little thing—. . . you could walk off from . . .” horrifies Sethe (23). She has purchased her home with her tears and blood (although technically it is owned by a white abolitionist family) and the sacrifice further sanctifies the emotional value of the dwelling. It is also intimately connected with her identity; the haunted house embodies Sethe’s own haunted spirit as much as it houses the lost and angry spirit that is her murdered child. Sethe’s history and the history of her people are painfully preserved in her home. Richard Misner seeks a homeplace beyond the legacy of pain in Paradise. The concept of home he advocates reaches beyond America with its legacy of slavery and racism. In response to another character’s assertion that home is no small thing, Richard articulates his vision of a true home: “Not some place you claimed, snatched . . . stole . . . but your own home . . . where . . . your own people were born and lived and died” (213). He seeks a place which would lengthen the history of his people and thereby strengthen their collective (and individual) identity (213). His auditor, Pat Best, accuses him of “preaching” at her, but the Reverend Misner denies the accusation.

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He claims to be talking to her and yet his vision, while ostensibly describing an earthly home, is more ephemeral than terrestrial. Misner offers a captivating, but naive alternative to the American dream. He advocates a reconnection with their African “roots,” operating on the assumption that the land is available simply because it is desired. Misner’s utopia hinges upon kinship (no mention of the current inhabitants’sentiments about the relocating Americans!), but Pat only feels detachment not connection (209). Her identity is not reflected in the concept of Africa as the true home; distance and disinterest mark Pat Best’s response to Richard Misner’s definition of home. It does not pique her curiosity nor inspire her creativity.12 “I’M HOME”: IDENTIFICATION THROUGH HOMEPLACE The imaginative value of the home, however it is defined, is an integral part of identity. One’s home can function as a creative, social or political outlet. A reflection of self-worth, the home frequently functions as a text within a text; by “reading” the house we can extrapolate information about its inhabitants. Scruggs contends that “in Morrison’s novels the house becomes an increasingly complex measure of individual well being . . .” (97). Both Morrison and Cather employ this textual device, emphasizing the intricate connection between identity and place. In its most direct form this technique explicitly links character and dwelling physically, as is the case with Mrs. Harling of My Antonia who is “short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house” (96). Visually, the physical structure and the human body merge; the boundary between the two (at least imaginatively) is fluid. A similar immersion of identity occurs in A Lost Lady. The Forrester place is noteworthy because of its inhabitants; they make “it seem much larger and finer than it was” (4). The house becomes a landmark not because of its own merits, but by reflecting the glory of its owners. It does not simply mirror the majesty of the Forresters; it is infused with their personal charms. In fact, as the Forresters slip in social standing, the mystique of their home is shattered. Converging townswomen discover “there was nothing remarkable about the place at all !” (118). Toni Morrison creates a negative example of the process of identifying an individual with the domestic space he or she inhabits in The Bluest Eye. The Breedloves live in the “anonymous misery” of a storefront which “foists itself on the eye . . . in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy . . . residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it” (39, 33). The ugliness of the family is reflected in the structure that houses them; neither they

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nor the building are in harmony with the community.13 Despite its best efforts, society cannot ignore their existence; there is an insistence on being acknowledged. The passage actually describes the storefront after the destruction and dispersal of the Breedlove family. The building has been refashioned into a base of operations for a gypsy family, a Hungarian bakery, and a pizza parlor, and yet it continues to embody the disturbing spirit of the Breedloves. More than a symbol of urban decay or economic deprivation, the abandoned storefront is infused with an air of tragedy. The brooding atmosphere so discomforts residents that they must avert their eyes. It inspires an emotional shutting down; the structure serves as a container for what the community cannot or will not face. Containment also takes a structural form in Cather’s The Song of the Lark and Morrison’s Jazz. Each of these novels has a character determined to shut life out of her home; Mrs. Archie and Alice Manfred construct barricades out of buildings. Mrs. Archie’s custom is to shut all doors and windows in an attempt to keep the dust out. Putting the shades down prevents the carpets from fading. In Mrs. Archie’s mind “neighbours were less likely to drop in if the house was closed up” (29). Part of her motivation is stinginess—reduce the wear and tear on her possessions—but there is also a strong anti-social streak in Mrs. Archie. More than simply not seeking human contact, she actively dissuades social interaction. It is a behaviour and personality trait shared by her “counterpart” in Jazz. Alice Manfred clenches her hand in her apron pocket for fear that she will lose control. “Better to close the windows and shutters,” Alice theorized, “than risk a . . . yelping that might not know where or how to stop” (59). Frightened by the racial discrimination around her and her own submerged rage, Alice Manfred seeks to close her soul as she closes her home. Mrs. Archie and Alice Manfred convey clear messages to their respective communities through the fortresses they call home: Intruders not welcome! While Alice Manfred does betray a greater concern for social propriety, both women engage in isolationism; their homes are designed to express a personal statement, not participate in social conversation (requires a degree of interaction which interests neither woman). The pair performs what might be labeled a deconstruction of identity through the home; the self-containment of their houses reflects their attempts to shut out life itself. The space they seek is a negative space, a space of denial, a buffer between themselves and the external world. The home as an instrument of social communication does, however, figure elsewhere in the writings of Cather and Morrison. Louie Marsellus of

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The Professor’s House is in the process of constructing an ambitious country house he has opted to name Outland. The elaborate and ostentatious details reflect the owner’s desire to be “out of scale” while the gesture of naming the mansion after the man whose inventions (and death) have permitted the wealth behind the project is simultaneously magnanimous and outrageous (62). There is somehow a false note to the house; an air of trying to convey too much, too emphatically. It is not so much a case of being out of scale as it is being out of touch with the audience. The act of building an elaborate structure and identifying it by an emotionally charged name is after all a public performance. The private need for reassurance that Louie betrays oddly belies the grand gesture of his country house. It also makes a potentially distasteful character somehow endearing in his vulnerability. A similar disharmony between the ostensible social message conveyed by a home and the behaviours of its occupants is present in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Lured into Geraldine’s excessively proper home by her brutal son, Pecola enters a space filled with lace doilies, “a big red-and-gold Bible” and a “color picture of Jesus Christ” hanging “with the prettiest paper flowers fastened on the frame” (89). It is a home devoid of love. Geraldine has instilled her own hatred for her race in her son while refusing to fulfill any of his needs that were not physical—“Geraldine did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts . . .” (87, 86). Maternal affection is conspicuously absent in this setting. Callous indifference and racial segregation rule Geraldine’s roost. The result is a home intent on the appearance of decency; details of behaviour are irrelevant in this context. Pecola, the victim, is chased from the home with the epithet “You nasty little black bitch” ringing in her ears (92). As she leaves she notices “Jesus looking down at her with sad and unsurprised eyes . . .” (92–93). Geraldine may have succeeded in domesticating the picture of Jesus, but she has failed to infuse her home with the spirit of religion or charity. The ostentatiously displayed Bible and portrait are merely for show, just as the external trappings of propriety (lace doilies!) are mere masks for the emotional torments the house witnesses. There is a huge disparity between the Christian “décor” Geraldine leans towards and the hatred she foments within her home. A fusion of life philosophy and personal place is achieved by several of Cather’s and Morrison’s characters. Crazy Ivar of O Pioneers ! builds his home in the clay bank; if not for sunlight reflecting upon his windows his home would not be discernible. Ivar’s little cave house is “neat, orderly and uncluttered,” but its greatest effect is the way in which “his Bible seemed truer to him there” (28, 25). Having literally immersed himself in the land, Ivar is

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open to “the rapturous song” of nature (25). The simplicity of his physical surroundings enhances the depth of Ivar’s spiritual studies. Unfettered by materialistic concerns he is free to commune with nature and God; he approaches each with respect and awe. A kindred tenacity of spirit is evidenced by the founders of the Cliff City Tom Outland discovers in The Professor’s House. Faced with an inhospitable environment, the original inhabitants manage to humanize the mesa. While the architects are no longer living, and their fate is not recorded in history, they are nonetheless written into the landscape through the architecture which outlasts them. The ruins speak of, and for, the vanished tribe. Methodical and patient, the builders paid close attention to construction— “lintels were carefully fitted”—and decoration—there are frescoes of geometrical patterns (190). Pride, craftsmanship, and artistry characterize the results of their labour; the people have been silenced by time and some unknown foe, but their products stand as testimonials to their approach to life. The ruins serve as a monument of a people determined to shape their natural environment in an aesthetically pleasing and thoughtful fashion. The attention to detail and enhancement of the natural materials suggest a methodical and sensitive approach to both life and the landscape. The grandeur of the ancient ruins is largely absent in Morrison’s architecture, but the harmony with the natural world is very much present in Song of Solomon. Pilate Dead does not literally build the house she shares with her daughter and granddaughter, but the home is clearly a reflection of the identity she constructed. Conventionality and propriety have no place in Pilate’s dwelling; nor do electricity or curtains. It is a humble, but inviting abode capable of achieving “comfort without one article of comfort in it” (301). Its primary features are multiple windows. The house is infused with sunshine and the smell of pine trees effectively blurring the boundary between outdoors and indoors. The home is a shelter from the elements, not a barrier to the natural world. Rigid divisions do not appeal to Pilate. There is an openness and fluidity to Pilate’s home that are frequently absent in a constructed place; the suffocating rigidity and decorum of her brother’s house are deftly avoided by Pilate. Although the home is characterized by peace, energy, and singing it is not an entirely positive or life-sustaining space. The windows do signal a personal flaw in the owner. In looking outwards, with her compassion for the conditions of her neighbours, Pilate fails to see Hagar’s needs. She in fact gives Hagar the mirror which prompts her desperate shopping spree. Pilate is immune to externally imposed standards of beauty and is therefore unable to help Hagar. The great love and openness that are Pilate’s strengths fail to counteract her granddaughter’s

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weaknesses. Ultimately, Pilate’s home is as life denying for Hagar as Macon Dead’s is for his wife and daughters—their personalities are distorted by, not reflected in, the family home.14 The disruption of familial connections (male and female) weakens all subsequent family groupings. Conflicting and competing expressions of identity mark the interior of the embezzler’s mansion-cum-Convent in Paradise. While the structure was built to the outlaw’s specifications it also bears the touch of the subsequent owners. Philosophies of life collide in the decor of the dwelling: ostentatious bathroom fixtures are replaced by the nuns with functional but plain taps. The embezzler’s taste took an excessively erotic direction; the sexual and sensual style is clearly disturbing to the nuns. They seemingly attack the decadent decor with all the fire, brimstone, and chisels they can muster and yet “female-torso candleholders,” “nursing cherubim,” “nipple-tipped doorknobs,” linger and the nuns have packed away the “brass male genitals” (72). The nuns can neither completely eradicate the previously carnal approach to life from the convent, nor can they deny the value of the materials the embezzler utilized. As jarring as the sensual and spiritual approaches are, they nonetheless coexist in the mansion.15 In point of fact, neither philosophy prevails; the house is ultimately home to a group of distinctively non-nunlike women determined to share a male-less space. The den of masculine iniquity, temporarily transformed into a convent school, is finally a feminine space of community—a development which inspires the townsmen to label it a coven. Convent and coven share aural echoes and, more disturbing to the men, are associated with female independence. The shifting values and vulnerability of the mansion-convent-coven are seemingly absent from the Trace home in Jazz. The couple take great pride in their place; having “cleaned up everybody’s mess” they know “how to keep them nice” (127). The struggle to achieve their dwelling leads Joe and Violet to recognize the true value of a place of their own. The interior layout of the apartment aptly reflects the philosophy of life the pair shares: “it suits the habits of the body” rather than the rules of “Modern Homemaker” (12). Designed for comfort and social interaction, the home consciously rejects the false note of the interior decorator. The floor plan values the needs of the living over an artificial aesthetic. The practicality and stability evidenced in the interior arrangement is, however, threatened by a haunting presence in the couple’s relationship. It is signaled by the picture of Dorcas Manfred on the mantle. Although deceased, Joe’s mistress continues to shatter the tranquility of the family home. Just as the affair altered their relationship, the picture transforms the apartment—it is “the only living presence in the house” (11–12). The act of

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transgressing the marriage vows has a spatial effect; only by reconnecting emotionally are Violet and Joe able to repair the damage done to their physical shelter. Self-expression through architecture serves a therapeutic function in Beloved. Baby Suggs redesigns her personal space to reflect her newly discovered autonomy. For the first time in her life, Baby Suggs is able to act on her own desires and ideas. The fact that the home is actually owned by the Bodwins is seemingly of little concern.16 She dramatically alters the structure and symbolism of the dwelling. The outside kitchen is transformed into a workshed and the back door is boarded up so that anyone entering 124 has to come by Baby Suggs. The new layout of 124 is an explicit and radical statement of identity. The woman who knew nothing about herself creates a clear blueprint of her chosen identity. She will no longer use the backdoor, her kitchen will be part of her home, not a hidden and distanced site of forced labour, and she will be the focal point of the establishment. The altered architecture of 124 is a testament to Baby Suggs’ long-delayed freedom and humanity.17 Freedom takes a variety of architectural forms in Sula. The dramatically different homes of Helene Wright, Eva Peace, and Shadrack offer insights into their proprietors’ personalities. Born to a prostitute behind the red shutters of the Sundown House, Helene determined that her home had to be a world away. Rescued by Mr. Wright—Wiley Wright—she is safely ensconced in a brick house with “real lace curtains” (17). A bastion of propriety, the Wright house is a place where imagination is driven underground and obedience inculcated. Helene’s love is reserved for her house; her daughter and husband are targets for manipulation (18). Correction and improvement are Helene Wright’s catchwords, and her daughter Nel is painfully aware of her mother’s philosophy of life. Sitting on the porch Nel is struck by the silence created by Helene’s “incredibly orderly house, feeling the neatness pointing at her back . . .” (51). Social propriety is a formidable weapon in Helene’s hands. The house functions as both a means of self-defense (it is indeed a world away from the whorehouse) and a site of containment and cure (the tainted blood of her Creole mother must be purged from both Helene and her daughter). Dignity and decorum at any cost appear to be Helene’s approach to life, and the result is a lovely, but distinctly lifeless home. The contrast between the Wright and Peace households is quite striking. The matriarch of the Peace family is a vibrant, but disturbing character. Whereas Helene is controlled and contained by her worship of propriety, Eva is liberated by her complete disdain of social expectations. Her dwelling is a

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“house of many rooms . . . built over a period of five years to the specifications of its owner, who kept adding things . . .” (30). A formless form, the house follows a blueprint which only makes sense to Eva. It follows a willful rather than organic pattern. The layout reveals a complete disregard for boundaries—both structural and psychological—rooms and passageways are transgressed and the lives of others are vulnerable to the caprices of the “creator and sovereign” Eva (30). Disorder and chaos reign in this home, and the sexual escapades of Hannah Peace further solidify the marginal social position of the establishment.18 On the surface Eva and Helene construct extremely disparate homes and yet their behaviours are quite similar.19 Both women desire to control others; an impulse symbolized by their regulation of their personal environments. The houses are startlingly different in appearance, but the underlying drives and end results are of a comparable nature. Sula, like Nel, is at odds with her environment; she escapes the disorder by retreating to the attic and her fantasies. Eager to escape their equally oppressive homes, Sula and Nel retreat to (and meet in) a world of their imagination. Helene Wright and Eva Peace create dwellings that damage their occupants, but are nonetheless concrete proclamations of their personalities—character and structure are easily identifiable. Harmony between external persona and internal space is not true of the third noteworthy home in Sula. Shadrack, the town lunatic and founder of the “National Suicide Day” parade, actually possesses the most desirable house in the novel. His is an intensely private space; Sula is the only character to enter his domain. She is surprised by what she encounters: neatness, order, and restfulness. Sula has difficulty connecting the cozy cabin by the river with the public Shad who exposes himself and drinks in public. There is both peace and order, a sense of things being in their right place in the cottage which is markedly absent from Shad’s public life and the Peace and Wright households. The shell-shocked soldier achieves what the women cannot: dignity and autonomy that heals (restfulness) rather than damages. Although the shack is even further removed from propriety than Eva’s chaotic household, it is a humane and comfortable home. The lunatic’s “asylum” is a sheltering space of comfort. Eva Peace’s house flaunts its (and her) marginal position. Helene Wright utilizes her home to counteract the efforts of white society to marginalize her based upon her race. Shadrack manages to transform an isolated space into a sociable place, but no one else knows it. Unfortunately, only Sula crosses his threshold (and only once); her death leaves him “beginning to miss the presence of other people” and the knowledge that she will not

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visit again robs him of his former “military habits of cleanliness in his shack” (155, 156). Shadrack’s home drifts into the disorder the public assumes he has always occupied. Self-identity and social definitions are not necessarily complementary. The desires of the former frequently conflict with the demands of the latter. Social hierarchy is reinforced through geographic lines, and geography all too often follows gender, racial and economic lines. Self-definition is complicated, even frustrated, by externally imposed definitions. “Knowing one’s place” is a heavily loaded phrase and emotionally explosive practice. Spatial relations reflect social relations, for, as Chandler observes: Upper, middle, and lower stories, basements and attics, niches and hallways . . . allow us to situate events and people in spatial relations that dramatically express their relative importance. The houses we live in form our sense of space. (12)

“Relative importance” hinges upon spatial position in Chandler’s analysis. We form not only “our sense of space,” but our sense of identity in the houses we occupy—a lesson both Cather and Morrison incorporate in their fiction. THE LOGISTICS OF SPACE: SOCIAL HIERARCHY CONCRETIZED In life, as in real estate, location is crucial. A Lost Lady incorporates “two distinct social strata . . . homesteaders and hand-workers . . . and the bankers and gentlemen ranchers . . .” (3). Within these two strata there are further distinctions; Niel recognizes that his home on the prairie links him with “people of no consequence” (21). He is redeemed from social obscurity by virtue of being Judge Pommeroy’s nephew. Otherwise Niel, like his family home, would be relegated to the periphery of town life. The distinction between the places open to people of “consequence” and the inconsequential is perhaps more chillingly conveyed in My Antonia. Surveying the prospects of the new immigrants (the Shimerdas), Grandmother Burden regrets their having to stay in the cave “no better than a badger hole” “if they’re nice people” (16). Her compassion is contingent upon the family being “nice;” the implication is that the hovel is appropriate for a “type” of individual. The value judgement is on both person and property. The prospect of others deciding your worth based upon your address has a particular resonance in Morrison’s writings. Geographic and social

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marginalization exacts a high toll on several of her characters, a fact horrifyingly illustrated in Paradise. The women of the Convent occupy such a peripheral position that the attacking men have the impression that the mansion is floating “disconnected from God’s earth” (18). Rejecting, or being rejected by God’s earth, the women have stepped out of human space and human status. The disconnection and the isolated location of the building permit the atrocity. Having severed social ties, the women are strangely excluded from reasonable social expectations—security in their home, immunity from the murderous wrath of the mob. Marginalization is a justification for murder in the eyes of the threatened men. Living on the fringe takes a slightly different, but no less murderous form in Beloved. The physical and social isolation of 124 leaves it vulnerable to invasion. Slave-catchers are able to surprise the household because of its geography and its alienation from the community. Despite being the property of white owners, 124 is a world away from the white community. It is a place where those with money will not live. As Rigney notes, Baby Suggs’ house is “on the edge of community, the periphery of town, the margins of social existence” (57). An “alternate” community did once embrace 124—it was a thriving social space for a group of people in need of safe haven—but petty jealousies and breakdowns in communication obstruct its connection with the black community. 124 is left to stand on its own and the results are tragic. Life on the fringe is intensely vulnerable. It is a distorted and distorting space where a mother’s “love” takes the form of infanticide. Physical isolation leads to a disparate, but equally devastating emotional detachment in The Bluest Eye. Mrs. Breedlove rejects her own daughter in favour of the child of her employers. She wholeheartedly buys into the social hierarchy based upon racial lines. It is a lesson drilled into the MacTeer sisters through the geography they must traverse to meet Pecola at her mother’s place of employment. As the girls walk through the neighborhoods, the houses become more substantial and better cared for but the “lakefront houses were the loveliest . . . [near] Lake Shore Park . . . [where] Black people were not allowed . . . Right before [it] was the large white house . . . We circled the proud house and went to the back” (105–106). It is a terrain with clear areas of inclusion and exclusion. The quality of houses, and presumably lifestyles, improve the farther away from their own house and neighborhood the girls travel. The walk reinforces their “place” on the map; they are not welcome in the park and the appropriate entrance for them is around back.20 Social expectations based upon race and gender (the girls must not only enter at the rear, but by the kitchen door) are concretized through residential zoning.

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EXORCISING THE ANGEL: EXPLODING A STEREOTYPE The house is frequently identified as a “man’s castle” and more often than not it is occupied by an “angel” whose activities transform it into a “home.” The first phrase invokes masculine authority, autonomy, and possession, whereas “angel in the house” implies an authority contingent on someone else (an agent of the owner of the house), an identity entwined with the domestic space (“in,” not of the house), and being possessed as opposed to possessing. Imaginatively (and generally practically), the man of the house occupies a very different position from the woman of the house. The conflicting attitudes of the occupants of the Forrester place provide an effective illustration. Captain Forrester derives pleasure from looking at the dwelling: “a man’s house is his castle, his look seemed to say” (60). In sharp contrast, his wife avoids looking at the house, confessing “I can’t stand this house a moment longer” (63).21 The disparity in their responses affords a keen insight into their sense of domestic space. He finds his home to be a sanctuary after a long engagement with the world of business. She interprets the house as a prison preventing active engagement with the social world she longs to enter. The “angel” wants to test her “wings” and, in the process, she becomes what could be construed as an anti-angel. Anti-angels in the house appear in Cather’s A Lost Lady and The Song of the Lark and Morrison’s Beloved and Jazz; each is a symbol of the potentially lifesmothering effect of the home. Mrs. Forrester is the epitome of gracious hospitality in A Lost Lady. She gives her visitors the impression that “whatever Mrs. Forrester chose to do was ‘lady-like’ because she did it. They could not imagine her in any dress or situation in which she would not be charming” (5–6). Appearance, action and attitude all confirm Mrs. Forrester as a lady in the eyes of her admirers. Unfortunately, the same criteria are used by her detractors: appearance, action, and attitude are utilized to condemn Mrs. Forrester as a non-lady. Her status is explicitly linked with the superior reputation of her home; overwhelmed by her husband’s illness and financial difficulties, Mrs. Forrester “drudged in the kitchen, slept, half-dressed,” and “kept herself going on black coffee and brandy” (118). The mystery of the house is lost when the townswomen descend upon it in the name of “charity.” House and occupants are exposed to the judgement of the public—both are mercilessly denigrated. Niel Herbert temporarily “rescues” her from the attentions of the good women of Sweet Water (he sends them packing and her for much needed sleep), but ultimately he cannot “save” Mrs. Forrester from herself, or his own lofty expectations. The final incident is remarkably low-key, but prompts the withdrawal of Niel’s adoration. He observes Ivy Peters hug her “his hands

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meeting over her breast. She did not move, did not look up, but went on rolling out pastry” (145). Witness to an intimate and domestic encounter, Niel is horrified by Mrs. Forrester’s placid acceptance of the detestable Ivy Peter’s attentions. An earlier assignation with Frank Ellinger has presumably been forgiven, but accepting the attentions of Ivy—Niel’s arch “rival”—marks an end for Niel. He views the act as a betrayal of both his sensibilities and the sensibilities of an era. Her failure to sacrifice herself to his principle costs Mrs. Forrester Niel’s compassion; her reliance on Ivy Peters earns her Niel’s condemnation—he rejects her as a “common woman” (146). The “violence” done to Niel’s sense of propriety and obligation destroys his vision of Marian Forrester as the angel in the house. It is a vision which allows no room for the living woman. Niel is unable to accommodate Marian’s sexuality in his image of her; she refuses to be contained within his symbolism. Indeed the text does not provide a direct statement from Marian Forrester about Niel’s stance of rescuing her. “Rarely does the reader have direct access to what she is thinking or how she sees the world in which she moves,” observes Mary K. Stillwell (190). Her behaviour suggests either indifference to Niel’s perspective or absolute ignorance of his romantic ideals; in any event, Marian Forrester elects to enter life on the best terms she can construct. In so doing, she unequivocally steps out of Niel’s angelic symbolism. The “ideal” seeks (but fails) to smother the real; the competing and conflicting images cannot co-exist. One must be eradicated if the other is to survive. Fracturing of identity as a result of incompatible social demands and personal impulses takes a spatial form in Jazz. Violet Trace, like Marian Forrester, undergoes a transformation through violence. In Violet’s case the violence is both symbolic and physical. Interrupting the funeral of her husband’s dead mistress, Violet’s attempted knife attack on Dorcas’ corpse inspires a re-christening: “Violent” (75). While this incident garners the most attention, Violet’s “public craziness” long precedes the affair. She attempts to bridge her “private cracks”—the “dark fissures” which can cause her to stumble if her focus lapses (22). Recognizing that her navigational efforts are not always successful, Violet increasingly retreats into the safe space of silence. She is constantly aware, however, that there are two Violets competing for control. Violence lurks just beneath her surface in the form of that Violet, the one who knows where the knife is, the time and location of the funeral, and still retains a physical power. Daily duties require Violet to stifle that Violet; she is a social threat. She is also the repository of the power and independence the presentable Violet is denied: shame and disgust are foreign to that Violet (94). Neither

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Violet is complete by herself; a defusing of the extremes and a subsequent fusing of their strengths is necessary. The final pages of the novel reveal a single Violet reconnected with her husband, the city, and by implication, with herself. The violence has liberated the diminished domestic figure and the domesticity has tamed the self-destructive agitator. Violet is last seen at peace and at play; both demon and angel have been exorcised.22 Violence on a larger scale is required to eradicate Cather’s housewife harpy in The Song of the Lark and Morrison’s avenging angel in Beloved. Situated firmly within the domestic sphere, Mrs. Archie and Beloved function as agents of destruction rather than ministering to the physical or emotional needs of their households. The doctor’s wife is particularly adept at adding to her husband’s discomfort: food and heat are scarce in her house (29). Her behaviors are designed to drive her husband from the home; nor is it a space Mrs. Archie desires to occupy herself—once he leaves she locks up the house and flees to any form of entertainment she can find. Mrs. Archie creates a life-smothering environment. Content to live a diminished existence she imposes excessively restrictive standards on her long-suffering spouse. She is equally adept at keeping her neighbors at bay. The novel offers only one glimpse of Mrs. Archie interacting with Thea (a brief exchange about strawberry picking)—her isolation is close to complete. Excess takes a dramatically different form in Beloved. The twisted mother-daughter relationship of Sethe and Beloved is almost cannibalistic. Physical alterations in appearance signal the disturbed nature of the connection. Beloved grows while Sethe shrinks; Sethe sits “like a chastised child while Beloved ate-up her life . . . grew taller on it” (250). The mother-child relationship is initially distorted by slavery. The death of a child is more attractive to the mother than her being rendered a mere object. Upon the return of Beloved the roles are inverted and it is Beloved who views Sethe as an object to be consumed. Beloved feeds off of Sethe, devouring the life of the mother who took hers years ago. The desire for vengeance and need for atonement converge in a deadly and disturbing connection that can only end in destruction. Timely intervention by the community rescues Sethe from being completely annihilated. There is, however, a degree of uncertainty about Beloved’s fate; she is “disremembered and unaccounted for” and “erupts into . . . separate parts,” making “it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away” (274). Ultimately it is Beloved who is consumed; her story is submerged in fear— she is both dismembered and disremembered. The avenging angel is eradicated by the community which aligns itself with Sethe, and by her own excessive greed.

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In contrast, Mrs. Archie’s exit from The Song of the Lark is a direct result of her personal behaviour. Reckless cleaning habits have a dramatic resolution: her “fight against dust was her undoing at last . . . she was rubbing the parlour upholstery with gasoline . . . an explosion occurred” (332). Mrs. Archie is literally destroyed by her domestic role. Determined to secure a home through marriage she is subsequently driven by her desire to escape the marital home. Her credo, “if dust did not get in, it did not have to be got out,” finally is a death sentence; Mrs. Archie “cleans” herself right out of existence (30).23 While Mrs. Archie and Beloved place limitations on their own lives— each has a grasping and spiteful nature—it is their respective domestic roles which truly restrict their existences. The house becomes both a prison and an insane asylum and as such is a powder keg of personal unrest. Each of these characters has an identity contingent on someone else; Mrs. Archie is the doctor’s wife, Beloved is Sethe’s daughter. Neither figure achieves true autonomy; Mrs. Archie indulges in miserly activities behind her husband’s back, while the reborn Beloved grows only in size and not in knowledge or experience. The distorting effects of their domestic confinement literally disfigure Mrs. Archie and Beloved. The consequences of domesticity are subtly different for Mrs. Forrester and Violet Trace, the other anti-angels-in-the-house Cather and Morrison create. The demands of home and husband nearly rob Mrs. Forrester of her zest for life, while Violet’s sanity is threatened by her fractured identity. Despite their circumstances, each woman is able to negotiate a more comfortable living environment, albeit at a personal price. While Mrs. Archie and Beloved remain anchored to their homes—the former escapes only briefly and the latter’s tenuous grasp on the world demands the relative solidity of 124—Mrs. Forrester and Violet are able to venture out into the larger world. Ranging beyond the “domestic sphere” is crucial to the survival of Marion Forrester and Violet Trace. The potentially destructive power of the home is dramatically, and at times graphically, illustrated in The Song of the Lark, Beloved, A Lost Lady, and Jazz. SPATIAL POSSESSION: OWNERSHIP VERSUS BELONGING Cather and Morrison do kill off the “angel in the house,” but not the notion of the home as a desirable and positive place. Exposing its vulnerabilities— specifically the potentially smothering insularity—the two authors implicitly advocate a redefinition highlighting the nurturing and life-affirming qualities of domestic space. One of the key concepts each writer addresses is the

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question of whether or not the home is, or need be, a gendered space. Men own houses, women create homes, or so the social myth goes. The issue of ownership surfaces frequently in the descriptions of their fictional homes; Cather and Morrison play with and within traditional expectations. Legal possession of a property contrasts sharply with spiritual connection to that property. The key as a particular symbol of power is incorporated into The Song of the Lark and Song of Solomon. Fred Ottenburg, in Thea Kronborg’s mind, possesses the keys to desirable places and jingles them in his pocket (248). Wealth and family connections allow Fred to access the many places Thea is shut out from because of her poverty and limited social circle. The jingling keys are an undeniable part of Fred’s attractiveness. The seductive quality of ownership is similarly present in Macon Dead’s reliance on his keys: holding the keys to his houses calms him. Macon draws comfort from the tangible symbols of his economic power; he fondles his keys and not his wife (17). In both cases the keys suggest financial largesse and sexual virility. There is, however, an element of self-delusion in the symbol: Macon is merely a slumlord and lives in a house he can never truly possess (his father-in-law’s). Similarly, Fred has only the appearance of autonomy: his money is inherited and he is married to a detestable woman. True ownership of the home, Cather and Morrison imply, stems from something beyond legal or economic facts. It is a decision and continuing effort to “own” the obligations implicit in the term home. Taking responsibility for the nurturing and protection of its occupants elevates a house into a home and a tenant into an owner. Macon Dead, a man obsessed with possessions and property, is in effect dispossessed. Structure and contents serve as constant reminders to Macon that he is in someone else’s house. It is his failure to concern himself with his family’s emotional and psychological needs which truly alienates Macon from the dwelling. He never attempts to create a home; he is simply interested in amassing property. Such concerns are absent from his sister’s life; Pilate’s home reflects her free-spirited approach to life. She lives in a small house which “seemed to be rising from rather than settling into the ground” (27). There are no creature comforts like electricity or running water, but there is music, harmony and freedom—freedom from convention and the restrictions of being housebound (“rising” implies the possibility of movement, specifically flight). The unconventionality of both home and occupants offer Macon a peace and contentment absent from his own house. He will surreptitiously look through the window, but resists the urge to enter. Pilate’s home speaks an invitation to all. Macon’s house issues a warning to those

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who would trespass. The tenuous connection between Pilate Dead and a society based upon the ownership of property offers an implicit social commentary; her doctrine of mercy and love, while not perfect, nonetheless eclipses Macon’s drive to accumulate possessions and money. It is a lesson Thea Kronborg intuitively grasps in The Song of the Lark. A sojourn in Panther Canyon opens the young singer to the knowledge of ancient artisans. Listening to the voice of the landscape is crucial to Thea’s experience; so too is a respect for the absent architects: she recognizes that she is a mere guest and must act as such. It is a distinction lost on Fred Ottenburg, as is clear in his statement to Thea that his father is the owner of a canyon “full of Cliff Dweller ruins . . . a big worthless ranch” (250). Mr. Ottenburg may own the property rights, but the dismissal of the ranch as “worthless” indicates that he fails to possess the ruins. Thea Kronborg and Pilate Dead step beyond social mores; their identities are not contingent upon property, and their definitions of ownership differ from those of the male characters with whom they are associated. Thea does, however, seem to slip into a traditional mindset when she refers to her family home as her father’s house. Devising a technique for inducing sleep, Thea returns to the past in her mind’s eye. She describes entering her father’s house; she moves through the domestic space hearing him stirring. The sensation that the “sprawling old house . . . gathered them . . . like a hen, and . . . settled down over its brood” comforts Thea (393–4). The father is invoked three times in the brief passage while the mother (apparently) garners no attention. It is intriguing that Thea disassociates the home from her mother. The notable absence invites speculation: is it motivated by her guilt over failing to return to her mother (one of her early supporters of her career) when she was gravely ill? Or perhaps a reflection of her own decision not to embrace the roles of wife and mother? The text provides no concrete answers, but closer examination of the passage does point to the presence of the mother. Visible signs of her mother’s labour and love are included in Thea’s imaginative journey; Mrs. Kronborg is the “hen” settling down over her brood. The structure may be identified as the father’s, but the spirit that infuses the home is decidedly maternal. The issue of ownership is complicated by both gender and race in Beloved. 124 is unquestionably a feminine space. In fact, for much of the story it is a maleless abode—the absent father Halle never materializes, the sons Howard and Buglar have fled the supernatural disruption of the domestic order, and Stamp Paid and Paul D have been ousted by Beloved. Despite this absence, 124, as Hogan notes, “is not Baby Suggs’s home or Sethe’s

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place: it is 124” (170). The missing number is an indicator of missing autonomy. Neither woman could “possess” the home without the express permission of the legal owner, Edward Bodwin, a white abolitionist. Although he has not seen it for thirty years, there is a lingering emotional resonance to the house for Bodwin; he recognizes that the value is in the land but he has a “sweeter” and “deeper” feeling about the house (259). In his memory it is a place where “women died” and he “buried precious things he wanted to protect” (259). 124 has not been a place of female empowerment; nor has it been a life-affirming space. And yet the potential for 124 to be precisely that—a life-generating place—is suggested by Baby Suggs’ initial successes (preaching, opening her home to those in need) and Sethe’s determined survival. Paul D’s insistence to Sethe that she is her own “best thing” gestures towards her true path to autonomy—a recognition of her own value and a willingness to bury precious things (273). Sethe must claim responsibility for herself; relinquishing the crippling pain of the past is a step towards this goal. Paul D and his reintroduction into 124 is a necessary element of Sethe’s recovery. ALTERNATIVE REALITIES: OPENING UP THE DEFINITIONS OF HOME AND FAMILY Popular theory holds that a woman’s (and most frequently a mother’s) touch is needed to transform a house into a home. Cather and Morrison challenge the veracity of this belief through a variety of methods. The “angel in the house” has already been addressed, but in addition expanded definitions of what constitutes a good home and who can comprise a loving family emerge in their fiction. The Bluest Eye contains two examples of homes which would generally be deemed respectable and comfortable: Geraldine’s orderly abode and the meticulous Fisher residence. Geraldine builds a fortress of propriety: a task Mrs. Breedlove fails to accomplish. She instead assumes the role of valued servant, basking in the domestic harmony of the Fisher house. Pleasing her employers exacts a high price from Mrs. Breedlove. Increasingly, her home, children and husband are neglected; her main contribution to her own family is to bend them “toward respectability” (127, 128). The process only teaches them fear. In choosing to devote herself to her employer’s home Mrs. Breedlove abdicates responsibility for her own family’s home. Under the guise of respectability—her children must call her Mrs. Breedlove—she is able to detach herself emotionally; it is a tactic also employed by Geraldine- propriety keeps both husband and son at a “respectable” distance. Each of these

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women creates a life-smothering environment; simply giving birth is an inadequate method of nurturing a family. The touch of Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove transforms their dwellings into oppressive spaces; their refusal to ensure the emotional well being of their families undermines their ownership of their homes. It is a conscious decision on Mrs. Breedlove’s part, but appears to be more of a side effect of Geraldine’s personality. The result is nonetheless the same: they “head” families that exist only in name. Male households, Cather suggests in My Antonia and The Professor’s House, are one alternative to the traditional definition of the home and family. Peter and Pavel, the Russian immigrants who befriend Antonia’s family maintain a “very comfortable [house] for two men who were ‘batching’” (25). Neatness and comfort are the primary characteristics of the home. Harmony between the men is apparent in the peaceful and diminutive dwelling. So too is an accord with nature as they leave doors and windows open “letting in flies and sunshine alike” (25). The boundaries between outer and inner spaces are not rigidly maintained in this household, mirroring the flexibility in the definition of family required to accommodate the homosexual partnership of Peter and Pavel.24 An analogous blurring of the boundaries between indoors and outdoors reveals a great deal about Alexandra Bergson’s character in O Pioneers!. Her house seems to be unfinished, but her garden and farm have an “order and fine arrangement” (56). Alexandra’s is not a “typical” establishment. It lacks the domestic niceties one might ordinarily expect of a female owner; quite simply her interests lie elsewhere. The order and symmetry absent from the home are very much present in the outdoors. O’Brien reads this tactic of “making the domestic realm coterminous with the world” as Cather “collapsing the traditional nineteenth century distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private,’ male and female space” (434). The outdoors is Alexandra’s home; her indoor home is not devoid of comfort even if it is uneven. She achieves the best of both “worlds.” The rather unorthodox trio of Tom Outland, Roddy Blake, and Henry Atkins set up house on the edge of the mesa in The Professor’s House. Henry functions as cook and housekeeper for Tom and Roddy. The trio “made a happy family” in Tom’s opinion (176). The three men manage to create a mutually nurturing and affectionate family dynamic. It is a homosocial relationship—a life without women—rather than a homosexual connection.25 Like Pavel and Peter, their home is situated close to nature—the river can be heard from the cabin—and the peace of their relationship is implicitly linked with the harmony they share with the natural landscape. Unfortunately, it is only a temporary state. Henry’s death by a rattlesnake bite marks the beginning

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of the disintegration of the family. The subsequent falling out of Roddy and Tom over the sale of the artifacts signals the end. The pair fails to continue to take responsibility for each other; the emotional bond that made them a family is dissolved. My Antonia and The Professor’s House incorporate examples of singlesex households which achieve (if only temporarily) both internal and external harmony. The surrounding communities are extremely tolerant of the living arrangements of the men. It is an intensely different situation in Morrison’s Paradise. The female community inhabiting the convent draws the wrath of the male leaders of the closest town. While all three establishments occupy isolated positions there is greater interaction between the women of the convent and the townspeople of Ruby than there is between Cather’s male characters and their surrounding communities. The women are viewed as sinister sirens; Tom and Roddy are partners in adventure, while Mavis, Gigi, Seneca, Pallas, and Connie are viewed as cohorts in misadventure having rejected men and God. The townsmen are disturbed by the fact that these odd women interfere with their families. Fear and anger motivate the attack on the convent; resorting to shotguns to reassert their masculine presence is a transparent (and deadly) response on the part of the townsmen. As the single female witness to the plotting concludes, the crime is being a female household by choice— “not a convent but a coven” (276). In “protecting” their families the men are engaging in an imperialistic practice—they claim female (virgin would be a stretch, which is part of the “problem”) territory in the name of male superiority. A female community, however dysfunctional, is a threat to the order and respectability the mainstream community has fought so hard to create. There is no room for diversity in this social setting; that which is “abnormal” must be eradicated.26 Nor are the men entirely paranoid for, as the newcomer Pallas recognizes, the house is “permeated with a blessed malelessness, like a protected domain, free of hunters . . .” (177). The tragedy is that all too soon the hunters will invade, armed and angry. The feminine space becomes a killing zone. It is both the individual women and what they represent—female autonomy—that the men seek to obliterate. Feminine power is revered in Cather’s Death Comes For the Archbishop; that is, once it is contained within domestic or religious frameworks. Father Latour’s assignment to New Mexico challenges his equilibrium on many levels, but particularly striking is his attempt to come to terms with female energy. The hand shaped rooms of the Episcopal residence, made by Indian women offer the comfort of handmade things (33). It is literally a “feminine

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touch” which humanizes the building; intimacy is derived from the distant yet ever-present feminine presence. The link between the nature of the external structure and the internal sensation is explicitly expressed in Latour’s experience in the “motherhouse” of a remote Mexican settlement called Agua Secreta, Hidden Water. The weary priest is physically and spiritually nourished in the domestic space. Barren and simplistic, there is s peace about the dwelling which is associated with the serving girl (25). Latour is awash in peace. The tranquility of the home is identified with the girl, despite the fact that she is merely a servant in her father’s house. It is virtually a maternal space. It is in the place of the virtuous mother, however, that Latour truly undergoes a spiritual awakening. Unable to sleep one night, Latour discovers his “prayers were empty words . . .” (211). Compelled to go to the church he encounters an old Mexican woman, Sada, huddled in the doorway of the sacristy. Seizing an opportunity to escape her sadistic and nonreligious masters Sada has found the church locked. Latour leads her to the Lady Chapel where the devout, but downtrodden woman teaches the doubting Bishop an invaluable lesson. Praying beside her, he has a new appreciation for, and awareness of, the Virgin Mary (216–7). Her simple and enduring faith rejuvenates the world-weary bishop; it is the subject who inspires the master. In the moment Latour comes to the realization that the church is “Sada’s house” and he was a mere servant (217). He does not translate the insight into meaningful action. Latour fails to assist Sada and, in time, will replace the adobe church with a Gothic (masculine) Cathedral. The image of Mary has been ever present in the Bishop’s life (through his friend Father Vaillant’s devotion to the Virgin Mary), but it is only through Sada that he truly recognizes the icon’s spiritual power. Latour at last acknowledges the majestic and powerful flood that had so frightened him in the maternal space of Stone Lips (130). Domesticating the unbridled female energy represented by the subterranean river—both in the mother Mary and the motherhouse of Agua Secreta—permits Latour a degree of comfort and control, but he must ultimately accept that it is a power beyond his own abilities. Mary provides the consolation that Latour cannot (or will not); fearful of the political fallout the Bishop determined not to provoke the Smiths, Protestants who antagonized the Catholics. Latour withholds earthly (and to a large extent spiritual—Sada seeks out the church and not vice versa) liberation; his power is circumscribed and his faith is hampered by the daily detritus of life. The Bishop focuses his attention on the larger picture and abdicates responsibility for the lowly parishioner.

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Responsibility and connection are the main catchwords in the definitions of home which emerge in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. A willingness to recognize and at least attempt to fulfill the emotional and physical needs of others characterizes the positive examples of homelife these writers provide. Responsibility is achieved through connection; connection with nature and community—that in the individual home and the larger social nexus. The effort to balance the domestic and natural is one method of defusing the potentially imprisoning effects of the home. Linking the work of Thoreau and “women writers who find their homes to be prisons,” Chandler proposes that it is “the perversities of a civilized life whose artificial structures are no longer grounded in the balances of nature but in an artificial hierarchy of capitalistic values” which makes a home a prison (33). The push to own objects alienates the individual from the natural world and in the process robs her of her subjectivity. Cather and Morrison bridge the gap between the constructed and the natural through a blurring of the boundaries which theoretically separate them. The naturalization of domestic places and the domestication of natural spaces are particularly effective techniques of challenging the “either/or” model of space. Greater fluidity, Cather and Morrison reveal, exists between inner/outer, private/public, feminine/masculine spaces than the paradigm acknowledges. They extend this notion of permeability to the definitions of what constitutes a home and who composes a family. Subverting the standard definitions, each author offers a vision which expands the concept of “domestic” space. While neither Cather nor Morrison fits the label of “housebound” literary women, their writings do recognize the potentially destructive power of the home. Home can be a place of disconnection, they concede, but in its ideal form it is a place of connection. In order to be, and remain, a life-affirming space the home requires continual involvement. Characters are often grounded in, but need not be ground down, by the home. A balance between nurturance and liberty is crucial to the experience of domestic life. There is a delicacy, a vulnerability to the home; it is a space in need of constant attention and effort. Cather in particular emphasizes its fragile status; her work acknowledges the potential drawbacks while highlighting the crucial role of the domestic realm in the formulation of identity. The importance of the view Cather’s sheltering spaces afford is a reflection of her distinction between insulation and isolation. Interaction with the larger society enhances and is enhanced by the nurturing processes associated with “home.” Morrison, like Cather, steps outside the traditional model of gendered spheres, challenging its assumptions.

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While both authors predominantly associate the home with female figures, there is a particularly strong “maleless” quality to Morrison’s domestic establishments. In a 1977 interview with Mel Watkins, Morrison articulated her sense of the domestic setting: “it’s a feminine concept—things happening in a room, a house. That’s where we live, in houses. Men don’t live in houses, they really don’t” (46). She identifies the home as a feminine space, maintaining at least one half of the gendered space paradigm. Her fiction, for the most part, supports Morrison’s theory; readers witness numerous female characters in the houses of their mothers or grandmothers, while most of the male characters flee (or never find) these maternal places. There are, however, two texts which, albeit briefly, diverge from Morrison’s theory. The conclusion of Beloved incorporates the reunion of Paul D and Sethe in a newly peaceful house. Remembering the words of Sixo describing his lover as a friend who finds order when he is disordered, Paul D is at last able to connect with Sethe (272–3). In the process he is able to help her connect with her own best thing—herself; Paul D’s individual needs mingle with those of Sethe. A similar spiritual connection occurs between Sula and Shadrack in his surprisingly peaceful and comfortable home in Sula. On the surface their brief encounter is insignificant—the only word spoken is always, a term which encompasses so much while seemingly saying so little—but in the final moments of her life Sula recalls the word (but not the speaker) (149). Shad’s word comforts her; like Paul D he accepts responsibility for Sula’s emotional well being. Each man provides a much needed home for the emotionally wounded women. Home is a site of both physical and spiritual connection. Discovering a space of one’s own is a crucial step in the process of formulating an identity.

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“This Way to the Egress”: Exiting Thoughts on the Cartography of Connection

Finding your “home” in the world, as Chapter Four revealed, is an essential part of developing identity. In its ideal state, this specialized space mediates between the demands of society and personal concepts of self. Emotional attachments and reciprocal responsibility are the primary characteristics of a “good” home in a Cather or Morrison text. A home creates a unique buffer for an individual: it simultaneously makes them a part of, and keeps them apart from, a collective identity. Membership in a community, whether a family or larger nexus of connections, is a complicated series of interactions. It can be a positive experience which reaffirms self-definition, or a confrontation stemming from conflicting value systems. The representation of the community in the fiction of Willa Cather and Toni Morrison diverges dramatically. Cather’s neighborhoods tend to crush the individual while Morrison’s “villages” have the power to nurture and comfort. One writer apparently regards the community as the enemy, while the other embraces it as an ally. Behaviour or codes of conduct are crucial elements in the assessment of the community. Collective values are a powerful (and positive) social force in Morrison’s fiction. She proposes, in “City Limits, Village Values: Concepts of the Neighborhood in Black Fiction,” that the disparate interpretations of the community’s role are racially determined: . . . community values (I call them village values) are uppermost in the minds of Black writers, and it may be this feeling for village values as opposed to Gopher Prairie despair that causes so much misadventure in

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Between the Angle and the Curve white criticism of Black writers: such critics tend not to trust or respect a hero who prefers the village and its tribal values to heroic loneliness and alienation. When a character defies a village law or shows contempt for its values, it may be seen as a triumph to white readers, while Blacks may see it as an outrage. (38)

The confines of this study do not permit a conclusive statement about the applicability of Morrison’s assessment to fiction in general. It is, however, true (at least at first glance) of her own novels and those of Cather. The danger for Cather’s characters lies in being ensnared in the grip of the community. In sharp contrast, the peril in a Morrison story is being out of touch with the community. Diametrically opposed responses to the influence of the community, asserts Morrison, have led to critical misinterpretations. Through both her fiction and theoretical writings, she has made a strong case for a re-evaluation of the “village.” The black communities Morrison describes establish communal values independent of those associated with white communities. They can be read as sites of rebellion—collective rebellion. Survival for those who are economically and politically vulnerable is found in a group setting. Allegiance to the village does not necessarily translate into conformity; the communal identity is elastic enough to accommodate fringe characters (bootleggers, whores, and madmen). In a sense, Morrison is redressing an injustice which is the offshoot of another attempt to “right” a literary “wrong.” The reference to Gopher Prairie—the central location of Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street—raises a phase in American fiction which consciously rejected the small town or village previously romanticized in print. Writers who protested the oversimplification of the contrasting spaces of country and city exposed the negative qualities lost in the idealized depictions of the former location. In the process, the positive attributes of village life were often overlooked. The “revolt from the village”—a movement labeled by Carl Van Doren in 1921—was a rejection of the “myth of the small town.”1 It was crystallized in two themes: “the buried life and the attack on conformity,” concludes Anthony Channell Hilfer (29). Small-town respectability became synonymous with repression and stagnation in the minds of many writers (and readers). Hilfer identifies a set of “traditional” antitheses connected with the ideas of the city and country: “the cold impersonality of the city contrasted with the ‘togetherness’ of the town; the vice of the city with the innocence of the town; the complexity of the city with the simplicity of the town” (5). The characterizations clearly favour the country, but neither space is captured in

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the series of labels. Reality was not reflected in the value-laden comparison. A need for an imaginative anchor (Hilfer calls it a “mental escape”) in a time of rapid change (urbanization, industrialization) lies behind the glorification of the village. Based upon the equation articulated in Hilfer’s summary, Toni Morrison could be read as participating in the “revolt from the village” movement. She does not adopt the tactic of idealizing a country or rural setting at the expense of the city or urban environment. The possibility for community exists in both locations. The determining factor is not the space itself, but the presence or absence of the “ancestor.” Morrison casts a perceptive and brutally honest eye over each locale. It is a trait shared by Willa Cather; her representations of the country and city also move beyond surface impressions. Cather’s criticism of mainstream society is, however, more overt than Morrison’s; Cather’s characters are often pitted against a hostile segment of society in a struggle for individual survival. CASTING THE VILLAIN: COMMUNITY AS OPPRESSOR Hostile group versus individual, this paradigm dominates in Cather’s fiction. The mainstream community is depicted as petty, narrow-minded, and suffocating. More than emotional discomfort, difference can have dire consequences when it is viewed as deviation. Ivar, the social outcast and protector of nature in O Pioneers!, in particular recognizes the danger of being viewed as different by such a group; conformity is expected, “if a man is different . . . they put him in the asylum” (63). The threat of being institutionalized by the self-righteous citizens is ever present. Tolerance and compassion are absent from the prairie settlement. Ivar escapes prosecution because he is under Alexandra’s protection; her economic power creates a space of survival, a sanctuary for both of them. To be different in a community desiring homogeneity is to be vulnerable. The threat of persecution takes a distinct, but no less insidious form in A Lost Lady. Unlike the thriving and expanding farming community of O Pioneers!, Sweet Water is a defeated and dissipated town with a bleak future. Those who can are cutting their losses and getting out of town; those who remain, particularly the women, are portrayed as self-satisfied and judgmental. Rejecting the petty propensity for gossip, Niel Herbert finds himself emotionally and intellectually alienated from his fellow town members. He is like a foreigner in their midst; cool detachment and a conviction of his own moral superiority best characterize Niel’s relationship to the people of Sweet Water. Isolation becomes a defense against becoming what he abhors.

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A similar distrust of the values of the community and youthful arrogance mark Jim Burden’s experience in My Antonia. Equating the flimsy houses with flimsy lives, Jim surmises that life behind those doors was “made up of evasions and negations” (140). With no outlet for his energies, the angry young man can only view his oppressive environment with contempt. It is a place, in his eyes, of inauthenticity housing a group content with mere existence rather than a full and stimulating life. Respectability is aligned with hypocrisy in Jim’s estimation. The sentiment is shared by Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark; she is another youthful character who feels hemmed in by, and alienated from, her hometown. Moonstone is populated by Thea’s adversaries whose values and goals were “meaningless to her” and vice versa (209). Rather than merely misunderstanding Thea’s gift and ambition, the people of Moonstone (including her brothers and sister) thwart her early artistic endeavors. The compulsion to make her fit, and honour, social expectations is antithetical to Thea’s musical development. Although it is the starting place of her love of music, Moonstone must be escaped if Thea’s dream is to survive. Thea’s relocation to Chicago is inspired by both improved educational opportunities and the equally compelling desire to break free from an oppressive atmosphere. The change expands her musical experiences, but Chicago differs very little from Moonstone and the “Stupid Faces” Thea encounters here also cause her “low spirits” (227, 228). The context is different, but the characters remain the same. Thea continues to be an individual at odds with her surrounding community. Striving for artistic excellence, she cannot accept the smug complacency of the public or the musicians who cater to their tastes. Cather clearly contends that the refusal of the individual to cave to social pressures is in fact a triumph. Her characters stand in victorious opposition to the negative expectations of the community; weakness and failure take the form of social conceit and intolerance. In sharp contrast, the individual at odds with his or her community is not foregrounded in Morrison’s novels. It is the absence of a communal connection which is a threat to identity and survival in her fiction. Identity and place, Bjork compellingly concludes, “are found in the community and in the communal experience [in Morrison’s work] and not in the transcendence of society or in the search for a single, private self ” (vii). The hero is, not in defiance of, but in alliance with the village. Individuality is achieved within the community. An association with the group is not translated into a group identity; there is room for personal manoeuvring. While the negative attributes of the community Cather identifies—pettiness, narrow-minded conformity—are not entirely

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absent in Morrison’s depiction they are overshadowed by positive benefits— nurturance, protection. RE-CASTING THE COMMUNITY: AMELIORATING THE VILLAIN Despite the isolating effect of her navel-less stomach, Pilate Dead is a firm adherent of village values in Song of Solomon. Ostracism does not destroy her concern for her community; she willingly helps those in need. Pilate’s final thoughts reveal her solicitude for others: the only regret she voices is not having the opportunity to know and love more people. Milkman is slow to appreciate his aunt’s lesson of love and connection, but does ultimately recognize the sustaining power of the village. In a town populated by people who resemble a youthful Pilate, he at last feels a connection—“some cord or pulse . . . they shared” (293). Alignment with the community enables Milkman to access the knowledge necessary for the completion of his quest. Self-identification hinges upon group identification. The unifying quality of the village is rather distorted in Sula. The people of Medallion label and reject Sula, but do not persecute her. Sula’s life is an overt renunciation of the communal identity. With her unexpected return, she becomes a rallying point for the village; her “evil” gives them “leave to protect and love one another . . . to cherish their husbands and wives, protect their children, . . . [to] band together against the devil in their midst” (117–118). Sula’s negative position functions as a catalyst. A transformation of the personal interactions of the group is directly related to their judgment of the self-ostracized individual’s behaviour—their “goodness” is contingent on her wickedness (a reversion to their previous behaviours follows Sula’s death). Rather than sustaining Sula, the community seems to be sustained by her.2 While Sula avoids contact with her neighbors, she does nonetheless return to her hometown when wearied by her travels and love affairs. Some intangible and unacknowledged attraction lures her back, despite Sula’s vocal contempt for the village values. The power of the community to nourish the individual is treated literally in both Paradise and Beloved. The communal Oven of Paradise ensures that all who desire it (and belong to the group) have access to a warm meal. Having been chased from their homes and rejected by other black communities on the basis of their skin, the people of Haven provide their own physical and emotional sustenance. More than a mere cooking device, the Oven becomes a communal site; citizens meet “to gossip, complain, roar with laughter . . .” (15). The collective identity is reinforced by the (public) intimacy symbolized by the

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Oven. It is a verbal and intellectual space of interaction no less necessary than the body-sustaining food it provides. Isolation and desperation drive Denver to seek outside help in Beloved; motivated by a basic need for food, the young girl ventures out of her house and into the community. Collective responsibility and curiosity mobilize the neighbors. Past conflicts pale in comparison to pressing needs. Donations of food arrive once word of the family’s plight spreads through the settlement. Denver is rescued in yet another sense; Lady Jones’ softly spoken “baby” marks her introduction into the world beyond her home (248). The emotionally neglected Denver is embraced by the female speech community that not only provides sustenance for her body, but powerful and positive memories of her family’s past strengths and accomplishments. Denver’s journey of connection creates the necessary conditions for her mother’s survival. She is a bridge which Sharon P. Holland and Michael Awkward read as representing “the tenuous coming together of the community inside 124 and the community outside . . .” (49). Denver alerts the neighbors to the trouble within 124. In so doing, she grants them the opportunity to do what they refused to do in the past: rescue the vulnerable. Protective and encouraging, the women “trip [trouble] up” (249). Sethe is saved through collective intervention as “thirty neighborhood women . . . searched for . . . the key . . . the sound . . . Building voice upon voice until they found it . . .” (261). Harmony is literally restored. The timely intercession reintroduces the peace and healing powers of Baby Suggs’ Clearing into Sethe’s life. Re-entry in the community is marked by the moment; Sethe is “reborn” on the wave of the women’s collective voice. The reconnection is tentative— Paul D must convince Sethe she is her own best thing—but it is a crucial first step. RETURN TO THE VILLAGE: COMMUNITIES OF CHOICE IN CATHER’S FICTION As a defense from, and defiance of, the oppressive mainstream community, people often seek out communities of choice. Discovering like-minded, supportive allies creates a space in which the individual can receive support and encouragement—vital factors in coping with the larger society. Marilyn Friedman asserts that “for mature self-identity, we should . . . recognize a legitimate role for communities of choice, supplementing, if not displacing, the communities and attachments that are merely found” (92). Werner Sollors identifies similar categories, distinguishing between ancestral or ethnic communities of descent and communities of consent—new families, new

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cultures (6). They need not be mutually exclusive, but are frequently in opposition. The particular value of the community of choice suggests Friedman, is that it provides “a context in which to relocate and renegotiate the various constituents of our identities . . .” (95). It is a testing ground; a space in which identity is challenged and asserted. The community of choice is distinguished from the “found” community by virtue of its emphasis on acceptance and nurturance. The potential of the community to nourish the individual is rarely acknowledged in the Cather texts in this study. It is the arbiter of respectability (and more often than not, mediocrity) which must be resisted if the artist or intellectual is to flourish. A closer look at the role of the community, however, provides a more subtle statement about its status in Cather’s fiction. Alexandra Bergson laughingly speaks of starting “an asylum” in O Pioneers! (64). The desire for a space in which they can maintain their old way customs unites Alexandra, Ivar, Mrs. Lee, and such kindred spirits. Out of step with their neighbors, the trio looks to each other for support and understanding. Progress and the encroachment of more “civilized” behaviours isolate the small group from the larger community. Feeling threatened by external forces, the individuals seek a connection with others who share similar customs and values. Communities within communities likewise sustain Thea Kronborg and Antonia Shimerda. Thea aligns herself with an odd, but loving group of outcasts and loners in The Song of the Lark. Her music instructor Wunsch, Spanish Johnny, and the rest of the Mexican community literally provide the music of Thea’s early life; Ray Kennedy and Doctor Archie are the financial (and motivational) sources of her subsequent development. The seeds of Thea’s artistry are planted in Moonstone despite its mainstream emphasis on conformity and propriety. Thea and her cohorts carve out a sanctuary of sorts. They create a safe space in which Thea can protect her blossoming talent from the cynicism and ignorance of the majority. It is one of the sources which sustains Thea and fuels her determination to succeed. Kindred spirits permit Antonia Shimerda to draw inspiration from her own and other cultural histories. During her adolescence it is her friendship with the other immigrant girls and Jim Burden which supports Antonia during difficult times. Surrounded by a community based upon unfamiliar customs and values, the “outsiders” embrace a familiar space—an imaginative home of their memories. Despite being from different European countries, the young women are connected by the shared experience of the loss and rediscovery of home. As the mother of a large and lively family, Antonia succeeds in creating her own community: an oasis of love and mutual respect on

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the harsh prairie. It is a space which reflects the combined values of her father’s Bohemian garden—a place of natural beauty, harmony, and “beautiful talk”—and the “nice ways” Antonia learnt in the town and from the Burdens (150, 221). A cultural oasis is Niel Herbert’s goal in A Lost Lady. Despite a disparity in their ages, Niel aligns himself with Captain Forrester and his wife; indeed the young man is embracing all the “dreamers . . . who were unpractical to the point of magnificence . . .” (89). Niel consciously distances himself from his peers who are destroying both the land and the pioneer dream (90). Intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically, Niel is out of step with his generation. The alliance with the Forresters is an exercise in self-preservation. He seeks out sympathetic spirits as an act of survival. In defining the Forresters, Niel is engaging in self-definition: their glory is his glory. Godfrey St. Peter also engages in isolationism in The Professor’s House. During two of his family’s summer absences, St. Peter discovers his own “ideal” communities. The first is a bachelor-like existence periodically shared by Tom Outland; they talked, watched the sunset and read together. The pair share intellectual companionship; they achieve a degree of kinship which St. Peter does not experience (or seek out) with his actual kin. After Tom’s death the Professor spends a summer in the company of a less corporeal cohort: the “earth child” he was as a young boy. The regression almost becomes a rejection of his humanity; the boy “was earth, and would return to earth” (241). The Professor moves from a male-centred union of two to a self-centred existence. Re-connecting with the solitary persona of his youth, St. Peter emotionally and imaginatively separates himself from his physically distant family.3 The two “communities” are diametrically opposed: family requires connection and responsibility, whereas youthful solitude permits detachment and self-indulgence. St. Peter’s isolation is, however, short lived. The timely intervention of the seamstress Augusta, Lisa Marie Lucenti observes, reintroduces “St. Peter’s social or communal memory, recalling him to family, religion, and community” (258). Despite the conviction that his life is coming to an end, and the brush with death, the novel leaves St. Peter resigned to face the return of his family and his future. He is on the brink of rejoining the family group, having acknowledged the life-denying nature of his solitary and bygone circle of one. Augusta saves the Professor from death, but it should be noted that she finds him on the floor. The attempt to reach the door may have been mere instinct rather than choice, but St. Peter does not embrace the escape of death.4 Coming to terms with the ineffectualness of an idealized community is likewise a painful and drawn-out process for Niel Herbert. In his youthful

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arrogance he condemns Marian Forrester because she would not “immolate herself . . . and die with the pioneer period to which she belonged . . .” (145). The truth of the matter is that she no more “belongs” to the pioneer period than Niel does; Marian Forrester is a vital woman with a thirst for life. Niel permits himself a career and life beyond Sweet Water, but would deny Mrs. Forrester the same privilege. “Niel’s ideal community, centred on the captain,” observes J. Gerard Dollar, “is very much a ‘brotherhood,’ with no place for the feminine energy, sexuality, and passion that is so much a part of Marian’s nature” (193). The young man’s vision cannot accommodate the woman he sees (despite his attraction to her); he therefore closes his eyes to her existence. “Forgiveness” of Marian is achieved only after her death. The fact that her second husband sends funds in her name to care for Captain Forrester’s grave seems to soften Niel. He concludes: she was “well cared for, to the very end” and expresses gratitude for her husband’s efforts (150). The true comfort for him might be the knowledge that the Captain was well cared for, to the very end (and beyond). There is a disturbing quality to Niel’s attitude, given the fact that he himself abandoned Mrs. Forrester. When provided with an opportunity to send help her way (in the form of Mr. Ogden), Niel did nothing. Feeling betrayed, he justifies his own act of betrayal. When the ideal collides with the real, Niel retreats to the world beyond Sweetwater. Despite the various separations, however, the ties between Niel and his idealized community of the Forresters are never completely severed. Death allows Niel to freeze the memory while he himself still participates in life. Community is ameliorated in Cather’s fiction through the inclusion of communities of choice. Connection on an imaginative, emotional, artistic, and/or spiritual level creates bonds, not bondage. Insulation against potentially hostile external forces is the primary benefit of the community of choice. There is a danger, however, of insulation becoming isolation; a fate, Cather implies, which must be avoided. Alexandra Bergson recounts the experience of Carrie Jensen in O Pioneers!. Despondency from her isolated existence leads to a suicide attempt; a trip to relatives in Iowa restores Carrie’s peace of mind. She is content to “live and work in a world that’s so big and interesting” (84). Like Carrie, Alexandra discovers that “it’s what goes on in the world that reconciles me” (84). Love of the land and satisfaction in her accomplishments are insufficient for Alexandra; she needs to know about the larger world even if she never directly experiences it. It is a recognition that her world is not the world. Embracing a group of kindred spirits is not a rejection of society. It is a tactic for coping with conflicting demands. Awareness of a separate life force invigorates the essentially isolated pioneer.

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Vicarious participation is also a part of Antonia Cuzak’s married life in My Antonia: her husband and sons travel to the city while she remains on the family farm. She, however, has already had her youthful adventures in town; remaining at home is Antonia’s choice. Lacking her husband’s thirst for city life, Antonia nonetheless recognizes its pull. She encourages his adventures, but is content to remain on her farm. It should not be misconstrued as an isolated place for, as the children eagerly inform Jim Burden, it is a site of celebration each school year. Antonia’s home is both a cocoon for her personal community and an interactive space for her social community. A SPACE BESIEGED: THE VULNERABILITY OF THE COMMUNITY OF CHOICE There is an intensity and a vulnerability to the community within a community in Cather’s novels. External forces and the pressures of time, to varying degrees, threaten the existence of the intimate enclaves of Niel Herbert, Godfrey St. Peter, Alexandra Bergson, and Antonia Shimerda-Cuzak. Perhaps the most striking example of a group under siege, however, is the plight of the Indians in Death Comes for the Archbishop. They are a people determined to maintain their beliefs and customs in the face of religious imperialism and the more secular American expansionism. The battle is extremely lopsided. Unfortunately, the tribe is dwindling as a consequence of diseases brought by Europeans. The outcome is virtually predetermined: the introduction of the white community is literally toxic to the Indian community and policies of settlement favour the white immigrants over the Indians. Nor are the two groups spiritually or intellectually compatible, as is made clear in Latour’s response to the sacred space of Stone Lips: he is uncomfortable with, and dismissive of, native beliefs and customs. While the community the Bishop represents is also vulnerable to secular pressures and isolation—pockets of faith dot the landscape (Agua Secreta for one), but corruption within the church has thwarted previous efforts at unity—under his guidance the community of faith increases its numbers and domain. Adapting to the new environment requires some compromise on the part of the religious community. The core teachings and customs of the Roman Catholic Church are maintained, but Father Latour required his household to speak Spanish or English. It is a symbol of their willingness to assimilate—at least linguistically. The only exception to this rule is in times of illness or tragedy at home. Comfort is derived from the mother tongue. Favoring the language of the land (or more accurately of the conquerors of the country) is a recognition of the church’s connection to a new

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speech community. Latour’s reversion to French during his illness is therefore particularly alarming to his companions. It gestures towards an imaginative return to his original speech community and a detachment from his actual environment. Latour is in effect withdrawing from his life in New Mexico; the only way he can reaccess France is through its language. Immersing himself in his native dialect signals a return to his previous home—the first step to returning to his final home. The process of disconnecting from his actual community to one of his memory indicates that Latour is preparing to meet his death. Deciphering the language of a dead community provides an extraordinary learning experience for Thea Kronborg and Tom Outland. During her solitary experience in Panther Canyon, Thea intuitively connects with the vanished Indian women who peopled the dwellings before her. The unique landscape inspires an epiphany about art and her own identity as an artist. In moments of literal isolation a spiritual communion occurs. She discovers the obligation of connection and the responsibility of a shared artistic force in the home of a long dead group. The Cliff Dwellers introduce “older and higher obligations” into Thea’s life (266). Tangible artifacts invoke an intangible presence. Self-awareness comes to Thea through an alignment with a community of artisans. Tom Outland embarks on a similar journey of discovery in the ruins of an extinct civilization. There are, however, key differences between their experiences: initially Tom is in the company of Roddy Blake and Henry Atkins, and the three actively engage in cataloguing the secrets of the cliff city for personal glory, if not profit. Self-sufficient and close-knit, the community of three achieves an admirable intimacy. They are united in friendship and by a shared goal: mastering the mysterious ruins. The signs of “human labour” stir Tom, but self-interest speaks louder (173). Connection to the previous inhabitants is fragile. Admiration and speculation collide and the consequences are painfully destructive. Unfortunately, despite their determination not to exploit the setting, Tom and Roddy are the instruments of destruction for the ancient site. The “village [that] had never been sacked by an enemy” is betrayed by its admirers (186). Commercialism and exploitation are the result of the men’s efforts to document the mesa’s secrets. While Thea is content with intuitively experiencing the lessons of the ancient people, Tom and Roddy are driven to impose the reason and order of science on their discovery. The men are irrevocably separated by Roddy’s sale of the artifacts in Tom’s absence, but Tom too hoped to be compensated for his efforts. Glossing over his own motivations, Tom sacrifices his friendship with Roddy. Community—of the men and with the historical place—is destroyed by greed.

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Disillusioned by the whole process, Tom rejects Roddy as a traitor, but he himself is not as pure as the morally superior position he assumes. There is a degree of emotional connection in Thea’s sojourn in Panther Canyon that is distinctly absent from Tom’s and Roddy’s interaction with their unique environment. After the break-up Tom does achieve an emotional connection with the place: “it had formerly been mixed up with other motives; but now . . . they were gone . . .” (227). He implies that his newfound affection for the site is pure. It is rather telling that while he does not seek out his record of the excavation, Tom does not completely immerse himself in the humanized landscape. He continues to live in the cabin and uses the cliff city to study the Aeneid—his attachment is more to the place than to his predecessors. The text, however, is not entirely out of place in the cliff city; a focus on the founding of a city-state is a shared trait of the two influences on Tom. Stouck identifies “a vision . . . of community [on the mesa] similar to the . . . idea of the polis, the small city-state where individual actions counted, where daily tasks brought people together, where life had an element of ceremony” (Murphy 208). Mesa and ancient city-state merge in Tom’s experience. Tom ultimately remains detached from the community who had inhabited the place. He achieves sympathy and admiration, but not Thea’s empathy and sense of obligation. Whereas Thea internalizes the lessons of the Indian artists, Tom seeks an external source of knowledge.5 She embraces a continuation of the life force that lingers in the ruins. He fails to personalize the aesthetic message of the Indians. During one of his visits, Father Duchêne surmises that mills and looms were part of their accomplishments. The art of war declines as the cultural arts and skills improve. A few short years later the priest needs only a four-day visit to influence Tom in joining the war in Europe. The decision can be interpreted as honouring his duty to his country, but in the process Tom abandons his obligations to his personal community (lover and friends) and the (possible) legacy of the Indians (artistry over brutality). The good-bye is in fact permanent; death is the final stage of disconnection for Tom. ABSENCE AND ISOLATION: THE CORRUPTION OF THE COMMUNITY The absence or perversion of the community in Morrison’s fiction is extremely destructive; it is literally fatal in Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Song of Solomon. A safety net is lost when the community fails to sustain its unity; danger enters through the resulting breach. Excess and envy drive a wedge

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between Baby Suggs and her neighbours. The party to celebrate Sethe’s escape with her children turns into a feast, angering the other residents. Antagonized by the “reckless” display of bounty, they anticipate a fall (137). Resentment in the air masks something “dark and coming” and Baby Suggs cannot detect it “because the other odor hid it” (138). Warning of the approach of the slave catchers does not reach 124; neither neighbour nor nature clarifies the uncertain sense of foreboding. The intense vulnerability has horrifying consequences in Beloved. Baby Suggs’ family is nearly destroyed as a result of their alienation from the community. Security and the strength of numbers are lost through the separation. Failure of the group to protect the individual is painfully portrayed through the fate of Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye. A victim of both incest and racial prejudice, the young girl descends into madness, yearning only “for the blue eyes of a little white girl” (the monstrosity of the desire is reinforced by the title with its Cyclopean emphasis on the bluest eye) (204). The neighbours avert their eyes instinctively, and later guiltily, from Pecola’s desperate ugliness and tragic madness. She becomes the repository of their fears and embarrassments. They feel “wholesome” after they clean themselves on her; excluding Pecola “strengthens” the position of the community (205). Only as an adult can Claudia appreciate that it is a fantasy, and all are culpable for Pecola’s condition. Madness welcomes and comforts the lonely child in a way her society never did. Separation from the village is connected with Pecola’s disconnection from reality. Hagar’s rejection of her own beauty in pursuit of an impossible, white standard of attractiveness in Song of Solomon is also an offshoot of her limited social ties. Lacking the strength of her grandmother or the simple, easy-going nature of her mother, Hagar is adrift. She desperately requires an anchor in the form of female mentors who could “give her the strength life demanded of her . . .” (307). She is in painful need of a firm social foundation, but the only one who recognizes the missing role models is the man who cannot afford social ties—Guitar Bains. Hagar would benefit from community; her family unit provides inadequate preparation for life. The isolated position of the trio only exacerbates the vulnerability of its weakest member. Isolationism takes an extreme form in Paradise. The nine founding families of the community are known as eight-rock—“a deep deep level in the coal mines” (193). They are proud of their deep roots. Self-love is positive when it stems from a healthy self-image. In the case of the 8-rock, however, it is based upon rejection. Shunned by other black communities, the group discovers that “the sign of racial purity they had taken for granted had become a stain” (194). Self-definition is an act of defiance in this context.

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The experience of exclusion or the “Disallowing” is the basis of the group’s cohesion; it continues to shape their reactions to non-8-rock people. Richard Misner’s protestation that he is an outsider, not the enemy, elicits a telling response from Pat Best: in this community the terms are interchangeable (212). Exclusion is a self-protective gesture on the part of the community. It springs from unforgotten slights and wounded pride. Hatred of others, in fact, escalates into murderous action. Following the attack on the convent the 8-rock themselves are splintered with brother literally turning against brother. Isolationism leads to the implosion of the community. Misguided alliances blight the lives of several characters in Song of Solomon and Tar Baby. Self-destruction is linked with a rejection of the black community in favour of white society. Macon Dead abandons his once cherished sister and stifles his family in the pursuit of respectability and money. His first thought on seeing Pilate after many years of separation is not of her welfare, but his own social position. In Macon’s eyes she is a shameful connection. His concern is that she will besmirch his reputation; he is terrified that the “white men in the bank” would discover the “raggedy bootlegger was his sister” (20). Propriety and property are interconnected and Macon refuses to risk either in favour of familial ties. He unapologetically aligns himself with the white business community. The allegiance leaves Macon and his entire family detached from the black community without truly gaining them access to white social circles. Connection with a social group is thwarted by the ambiguous status of the Dead family. They are left in a state of limbo and move uncomfortably in both the white and black communities. Isolated by virtue of their skin and relatively privileged financial positions, none of Macon’s offspring are granted a complete life while in the family home. Denied the room to grow, each member of the Macon Dead family is in a state of arrested development. Dis-ease with their own cultural group almost takes the form of psychic disease for Alma Estee and Jadine Childs in Tar Baby. Eager to emulate the visions she encounters in magazines, Alma Estee dons “a wig the color of dried blood . . . her midnight skin mocked and destroyed by the pile of synthetic” hair (299). The wig is a hideous symbol of her rejection of her racial identity. She accepts that beauty lies outside her community, that it can only be found in the images of white-skinned models. Alma Estee is a slave to fashion. The red wig is a fitting choice. It is a visual representation of an unnatural relationship—master/slave. The young girl fails to recognize the jarring and disoriented image she has embodied. At best she has achieved a unique (if perverted) fashion statement; at worst Alma Estee has sacrificed a genuine identity in the pursuit of a false and ultimately unattainable persona.

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Jadine Childs, with her “raw silk thighs the color of natural honey” (another mark of the “master”) and fashion career, has seemingly reached the pinnacle of success as defined by Alma Estee (272). The personal price for the prize is high. Jadine too has sacrificed her natural identity for a fashionable facade. Therese’s warning to Son, that Jadine “has forgotten her ancient properties” is perceptive (305). Jadine’s own experience with the women in Eloe confirms Therese’s assessment. The presence of the women disconcerts Jadine. They exist not in the realm of nightmare, but in her waking consciousness. This intrusive community of women with their heightened level of fertility threatens Jadine. She is clearly the outsider; her failure to embrace her “ancient properties” transforms a (potentially) supportive female community into a room of furies. Although more sophisticated than Alma Estee, Jadine also falls into a trap. She too accepts the magazine image of carefully controlled sexuality/beauty while denying her own unique feelings. Each woman steps outside her community to determine her identity; neither woman is completely successful. THE POWER OF THE COMMUNITY: CREATIVE CONNECTIONS There is power in community; membership raises the possibility of protection and life-sustaining support. When the connection is disingenuous, the community can maim or warp the individual who has been seduced into a false alignment by an unattainable desire. Morrison depicts both the negative and positive attributes of the community, but rejects the individual defying the village. She poignantly captures the damaging effects of abandoning village values and associations. Vulnerability—emotional, psychological, and physical—exposes the lone figure to potentially lethal forces. Cather offers a slightly different take on the scenario. Society is viewed with suspicion by the artistic, intellectual, or sensitive character. Propriety and social respectability are synonymous with conformity and obedience. Defiance is a self-protective gesture. Cather’s artists do not, however, develop in isolation. They forge alliances with intimate groups of kindred spirits. Frequently the creative lineage outweighs the biological line as the individual creates communities of choice. In many ways it is a matter of choosing a protective space within a constrictive place. bell hooks, in “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” writes of a survival in a “culture of domination” as depending on the ability to “conceptualize alternatives” (205, 206). Cather’s artists are clearly on the fringe of their societies. Such a location enables them to see beyond the confines of mainstream society, but it is also fraught with

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emotional and psychological dangers. The margin, hooks warns, is “not a ‘safe’ place. One is always at risk. One needs a community of resistance” (206). In locating and fostering such communities the individual and group “make radical creative space which affirms and sustains . . . subjectivity . . .” (209). The margin becomes a space of self-empowerment. hooks’ analysis, while explicitly dealing with the Black experience in a society dominated by white culture, is nevertheless applicable to Cather’s fiction. The communities within communities I have identified occupy marginal positions, as do Morrison’s villages. Her communities are not mainstream communities; they are located in “occupied” territory. The subversive geography of Song of Solomon acknowledges this unavoidable fact; the town map records Mains Avenue but the “only colored doctor in the city had lived and died on that street . . .” leading to the popular label of Doctor Street (4). The name “acquired a quasi-official status” when men who were being drafted gave it as their address. City legislators quickly issued notices that the street in question was Mains Avenue, not Doctor Street. The black community acquiesces and the street is thereafter known as “Not Doctor Street” (4). Humour and an insistence on personal connection mitigate the power of the dominant (white) community to define and confine the Southside residents. They negotiate a space of resistance, of possibility, of connection. Converting an externally defined geography, the inhabitants create a personalized space. SACRED SPACES AS SITES OF RESISTANCE Investing space with emotional significance has the potential to transform the secular into the sacred. Sacred sites function as powerful places of resistance and creativity in the fiction of both Cather and Morrison. “Sacred space,” Relph proposes, “is that of archaic religious experience; it is continuously differentiated and replete with symbols, sacred centres and meaningful objects” (15). Distinct from secular space by virtue of its intensified emotional and symbolic value, it is a space of shared faith, feeling and understanding. Sacred space is a collective and an individual experience. Lefebvre reads such “representational spaces” as having “their source in history—in the history of the people as well as in the history of each individual belonging to that people” (41). There is a strong sense of shared involvement in such spaces; symbols after all gain and sustain meaning through communication and time. Sacred space is therefore a space of connection that conveys a message to, and often through, those who enter it. Sites of regeneration, spiritual spaces have the ability to mediate a link between the individual and/or small group and a larger community—the extended family of humanity.

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Spiritual rebirth and empowerment through affiliation with kindred spirits in particular are associated with a recognition of the ancestors in both Cather’s and Morrison’s writings. Sacred sites allow characters to access existing and extinct guides. They extend and intensify communal connections. In the novels being examined in this study, sacred space can be divided into three loose categories: nature, the humanized natural world, and the spaces occupied by sacred symbols. Each variation reveals the vulnerability of this specialized space; precariousness and preciousness are subtly linked. Unblemished nature harkens back to the Garden of Eden. It is a space exempt from the physical effects of humanity. In its purest state, nature communicates on a level removed from the mundane. It addresses not just the intellect, but the emotion. In the early morning hours, Niel Herbert discovers the previously unrecognized power of a meadow in A Lost Lady. A walk through the natural environment stirs the young man’s aesthetic sensibilities. The experience touches all of Niel’s senses—he sees the beauty, smells the fresh air, hears the call of the bird, and virtually drinks in the vision. Communication occurs on multiple levels. He recognizes that the setting is “unsullied, like a gift handed down from the heroic ages” (70). The fragile and fleeting perfection of nature is vulnerable to the activities of men. One of the activities of men is imposing symbolic meaning on the natural landscape. Although Niel links the scene with the heroic age—masculinity—the sensual tone of the description implies a different connection—femininity. Furthermore, it is the discovery of Marian Forrester’s affair which destroys the morning, and every morning that follows for Niel. The meadow is associated with the woman; her “betrayal” stains the atmosphere of the natural setting. According to Niel, Marian Forrester fails to keep their faith and, as a direct consequence, the symbol—the pristine meadow—is blighted. Meaning is lost in the desecration. The meadow reverts to its mundane status. Nature has a strong spiritual effect on Niel, but it is ultimately a transitory feeling and a fragile space. Niel fails to recognize his own culpability in the process: his act of cutting the “roses, only half awake, in the defenselessness of utter beauty” is a violation of the meadow’s serenity (71). He disturbs the natural order. The unthinking fulfillment of his desire—take the roses he admires—is a reflection of his treatment of Marian Forrester—contain the living woman in the lifeless symbol he deems appropriate. Equally troubling is his reference to the heroic ages; the age Niel admires is that of the railroad men (Captain Forrester in particular). While the railway was romanticized as a “symbol of progress and power and opportunity,” concedes Leo Marx, it was “invariably . . . associated with crude, masculine aggressiveness in contrast

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with the tender, feminine, and submissive attitudes traditionally attached to the landscape” (29). Captain Forrester, as an emblem of the heroic age of industrialization, is now powerless. Marian Forrester, like the fertile countryside, is still vital, but diminished by her continued connection to the past. Vulnerable natural spaces take a very personal form in Morrison’s novels. Perhaps the most “natural” space encountered by people is the human form. The female body in particular has the potential to be a sacred space— the literal space of life and the symbol of the continuing life-force—but its sanctity is assailable in a number of ways. Pecola Breedlove has barely entered puberty when her father violates her in The Bluest Eye. In a disturbing, and disturbed, moment which mingles “tenderness” and “hatred” Cholly forces himself into “the dry harbor of her vagina” (163). Harbor suggests a sheltering, protective space, but the symbolic meaning does not hold. Cholly’s behaviour redefines both the space and Pecola. The act of desecrating his daughter’s most private place leads to her madness. Violation leads to annihilation of the child. Loss of her sacred space robs Pecola of her ability to function in her environment. Preservation, albeit in an intensely damaged form, lies in discovering an alternate reality. Fear of her own natural power similarly hinders Jadine Childs in Tar Baby. While she functions at a much more sophisticated level than Pecola, Jadine too is emotionally and psychically damaged. External experiences and internal confusion separate Jadine from her own physicality. Witnessing a dog in heat being beaten for attracting strays, twelve year-old Jadine determined “never to be broken in the hands of any man” (124). The males indulge their sexual desire while the female is punished for hers; even the child Jadine withdraws her sympathy when the dog stands quietly awaiting another encounter, “embarrassing me in the sunlight” (124). Desire and sexual attraction are traits which leave a woman vulnerable in Jadine’s estimation. As a defense, she creates “a claw . . . to rein in the dogs . . .” (124). Jadine fails to recognize the power in her body—power for pleasure, to procreate. She diminishes her own life by projecting an image of beauty (she is a model) without accessing her own sensuality. Fear creates a barrier between Jadine and a positive image of her body. The objectification of a human being is a crucial part of the system of slavery. It provides a justification for mistreatment: commodities merit different responses from sentient beings. The skipper’s assessment of Jezebel in Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl reveals both his character and the character of slavery: He judged this girl was worth any three of the women,—as much as the best of the men. Anatomically she was remarkable, for an African

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negress: tall, straight, muscular, long in the legs. The skipper had a kind of respect for a well-shaped creature; horse, cow, or woman. (93–4)

Jezebel earns grudging respect on the basis of her body and ability to “take a flogging . . .without buckling” (94). She remains, however, a “creature” whose only value is commercial. While the skipper notices that Jezebel examines her surroundings with “lively curiosity” unlike the passive expressions of her fellow slaves, he is indifferent to her intellectual capabilities (94–5). His buyers seek a labourer; the skipper deals in bodies. Jezebel’s strong personality stands in defiance of the label of slave, but her body becomes the property of another (several owners prior to Sapphira). Jadine Childs and Pecola Breedlove are in desperate need of the lesson of self-love Baby Suggs bestows on her listeners in Beloved. Having survived slavery, she is keenly aware of the effects of a distorted body image. The system of ownership robs the individual of his or her subjectivity. Objectification also distances the slave from his or her physicality. Baby Suggs exhorts her followers to recognize and seize the sacred space that is their bodies: “Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it . . . You got to love it, you!” (85–89). Baby Suggs insists on an acceptance of all the body parts. She gives priority to the heart—it is after all a lesson in love—but is quite clear that self-love cannot be achieved without love of all the separate components. The sex organs do not define the individual, but they are an important aspect of self-definition. “The body is a temple” has become a rather trite phrase, but for a group robbed of their humanity, the concept is crucial to survival. It is a necessary starting point for re-establishing self-worth. Jadine’s inability to recognize her own sexuality and Pecola’s psychic rejection of her body are obstacles to the healthy self-love Baby Suggs advocates. In the act of distancing themselves from their bodies the two characters fail to “grace” them. The sacred space of the body is desecrated by the unnatural and dehumanizing act of negligence. In the negative process an invaluable message is lost. Humanizing the natural landscape is a powerful means of communication and connection. The legacy of the Indian cultures in The Professor’s House and The Song of the Lark extends far beyond the tangible evidences of their lives. Earlier in this chapter these two unique settings were discussed as sites of connection. Affiliation with the founders provides Tom Outland and Thea Kronborg with an expanded community. Each area also serves as a spiritual site; Tom and Thea undergo internal awakenings in the physical environment. Tom Outland’s exploration of the Cliff City leads to an appreciation of it as a “sacred spot” (199). It is the effort to transform the

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mesa which inspires Tom’s sense of “filial piety” (227). The orphaned boy discovers a kinship with the departed inhabitants of this remarkable community. Unfortunately the “miracle” which “preserved [the humanized setting] through the ages” is not replicated in Tom’s personal relationships (220). Death during the war irrevocably severs all of Tom’s intimate ties, but his very eagerness to participate signals a distancing from the Indian tribe who had developed beyond brutal warfare (198).6 He can recognize the value of the landscape and feel moved when in its presence, but Tom fails to internalize the message of the Indians. The influence is transitory and contingent on proximity. Thea Kronborg achieves a much more intense connection with the absent, but not entirely vanished Indians of Panther Canyon. The ancient dwellings and natural setting inspire a feeling of reverence and sense of obligation in Thea. The connection is intuitive rather than intellectual. The communication occurs on a level beyond the rational; it is simultaneously spiritual and physical. Thea connects the non-verbal lessons to her own experience—her musings on art—and her life to the humanized landscape. Although deserted, the region strikes the young woman as populated. The physical experience of Panther Canyon bridges the distance of time and cultural experiences for Thea. The location is a sacred and intensely intimate space for the burgeoning artist. Private and personal, the seemingly solitary setting is nonetheless a communal space. The voice Thea hears is a collective one; it speaks to her through the hallowed surroundings. Nature and community combine to create a sacred site of communication in Beloved. Baby Suggs’ discovery that the only gift she can bring to her people is her heart metamorphosizes a space in the woods. It is her call to recognize their own humanity that leads the emancipated auditors to true freedom in the Clearing “a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of a path known only to deer . . .” (87). A previously meaningless location is invested with spiritual significance; the invitation to dance, laugh, and weep honours the emotional life slavery has denied. In this private and sheltered space Baby Suggs implores her congregation to love themselves. The example of her “great heart” and assertion “that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine” seek to restore both a sense of humanity and spirituality to a people who have been objectified (88). Personal responsibility, Sethe in particular learns, is an integral part of liberty. There are degrees of freedom she discovers: “freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another” (95). Liking herself enough to be concerned about her own existence is a new concept for Sethe.

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She begins to value herself in the Clearing (a lesson lost when Beloved returns, but rediscovered when Paul D resurfaces); it is part of a group lesson. Baby Suggs claims ownership of, or rather accountability for, the entire spiritual community. In the process she guides them to a condition of personal appreciation. The protective and inspiring natural setting is an indispensable element of that spiritual journey. Love sanctifies the natural space. Sethe’s subsequent, unnatural act of distorted love—freeing her children from slavery by attempting to murder them—desecrates the sacred site for Baby Suggs. Heartbroken and convinced she had lied, Baby Suggs retreats to her bedroom and awaits death. Abandoned, the Clearing becomes the location of “big-city revivals . . . complete with food-laden tables, banjos and a tent” (89). The implication is that some intangible, but precious quality is neglected in the movement from the natural to the formal religious experience. Lost is “the smell of leaves . . . thunderous feet and the shouts . . .” (94). The emphasis on the material aspect of the religious meetings is diametrically opposed to Baby Suggs’ message of self-love and mutual responsibility. Defeat is only temporary. The message outlives the messenger. Determined to rescue Sethe from her vengeful daughter, the community of women reinstates the healing power of the sacred site in the final pages of the novel. She has the sensation that the Clearing has returned. Nature’s warmth and the nurturing voices of the women sweep over Sethe leaving her trembling like “the baptized in its wash” (261). Sethe is once again consecrated by love. While it is Paul D who ultimately seeks to convince her that she is her best thing, the foundation of that self-love was laid by Baby Suggs and washed clean by the singing women (273). The legacy of love and self-respect identified with the sacred space of the Clearing endures beyond a single life span. A naturally occurring space gains a ceremonial importance in Death Comes for the Archbishop precisely because it connects the past with the present. Caught in a snowstorm the Bishop’s Indian guide Jacinto reluctantly compromises the secrecy of Stone Lips, a ceremonial place for the Indians. It is without question a sacred space that speaks to the young man. Latour awakens and discovers Jacinto pressed against the rock wall “listening with supersensual ear . . .” (131). Jacinto’s actions honour the sacred and ancient properties housed within the cave. He displays a protective and respectful attitude towards the space of his ancestors. In honouring the site he honours his progenitors and his immediate community. Concern overrides the need for sleep, and the role of caretaker is evident in Jacinto’s vigilance. The cave repulses the Bishop, in stark contrast to the Indian; its natural smells and sounds disconcert the priest.

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The conflicting reactions to Stone Lips are symptomatic of the Indians’ plight: new definitions and customs are being imposed upon them while they look to the rock for support. A trader named Zeb Orchard warns Latour that he may convert the Indians on a superficial level, but their own beliefs will not be erased. Drawing on the collective faith of the community (both living and deceased), the Indian people are fortified by the strength of numbers and the rock of faith. Despite his insights, Orchard dismisses a mysterious object of veneration: as a “queer shaped” rock “worth nothing” to the Europeans (135). He fails to grasp the point: reverence for the natural world and the veneration of the ancestor are the foundations of the Indian religion and way of life. The symbolic value of the rock is priceless in such a context. Orchard sees only the stone and not the significance of the space occupied by the sacred symbol. Bishop Latour is not so quick to reject the emblem’s value—despite his personal misgivings about the Indian faith— recognizing his own religion’s emphasis on the rock as a Christian symbol. The emotional and spiritual resonances of symbols are found in all cultures. Emblems of faith in particular convey complex messages to their interpreters, often through simple devices. The image of Christ on a crucifix is widely recognized, and in that space of recognition an entire system of beliefs and codes of behaviour is concentrated. Morrison’s manipulation of the symbol in Paradise is a dramatic challenge to the men bent on murder. The sacred space of the cross is desecrated in the eyes of the men. They interpret it as a confirmation of the wickedness of the women and by extension of their mission to eradicate evil.7 An alternate reading would suggest that the women have kept the faith—the cross—but rejected the man—Jesus. Convent has become a coven; it is a space that not only excludes physical man, but spiritual man. A confrontational image is created out of the foundation of a traditional token. Morrison’s provocative playing with the sacred symbol shines a light on the process by which such an emblem evolves. The men fail to connect their reverence for the town Oven with the “heretical” action of the women, but the text insists that the reader at least recognize it. The men in effect worship a false god, and in violating the Convent act as avenging gods. The glaring emptiness of the distorted cross speaks to the spiritual lives of the men. They, however, refuse to heed its message. Failing to recognize that they too have supplanted Jesus, the men of Ruby betray the emblem of faith under the guise of self-righteousness. The symbolic spaces associated with death are fraught with intense and seemingly contradictory meanings. Absence is both signified and denied by the presence of gravesites in Cather’s My Antonia and Sapphira and the Slave

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Girl and Morrison’s Beloved and Song of Solomon. Mr. Shimerda’s isolated grave becomes a sacred spot to Jim Burden. It is an emotionally charged place for Jim. Given his personal connection to Antonia’s father, Jim’s emotional response is grounded in logic. It is a location that reminds him of his absent friend and in so doing counteracts that absence. A personal remembrance becomes a public memorial. Jim is convinced that he is not alone in his solicitude and that tired drivers cannot pass the cross “without wishing well to the sleeper” (77). Physical evidence supports part of his theory—the roads “curved a little” allowing drivers to go around it rather than over it—but he also ascribes his own sentiments to the larger community (77). The Old World custom of burying suicides at a crossroad and not in consecrated ground was meant to concretize the isolation of the “sinner.” The place of punishment is, however, ameliorated in Jim’s mind. A grave is literally a symbol of death, but in Jim’s interpretation it becomes a space of spiritual communion. The finality of death is muted—corpse is transformed into sleeper who lingers in the thoughts of well-wishers—and deeper ties than physical interaction are highlighted. It is an oddly positive spot; the cross is both a marker of death (an ending) and life (continued connection). The burial ground is an inspiring place in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. A visit to the Colbert graveyard is connected with the process of storytelling for the child Willa Cather. Accompanying Till to tend the graves, she is rewarded with a tale; stories which “were never mere repetitions, but grew more and more into a complete picture . . .” (292). Out of death grow lifelike depictions. The departed figures transcend time and space. They live on in the words of Till and in the writing of her “protégé.” The act of communication, inspired by the physical presence of the graves and tombstones, mutes the fact of death as a severance of connections. Beloved offers an explicit challenge to the notion of death as a complete termination of earthly ties. Instead of emphasizing the movement from the physical to the spiritual—the body is tied to the earth, but the soul is heaven bound—Morrison interjects the spirit realm into everyday reality. The young woman who enters Sethe’s life identifies herself as Beloved, spelling the name methodically as if the “letters were being formed as she spoke them” (52). A physical memorial is metamorphosized into a living entity. Beloved is literally the tombstone come to life. She is no longer a ghostly presence doing unseen mischief. Beloved steps into her mother’s world and out of the shadowy other place. The attempt to reclaim her physicality is an arduous experience for Beloved and those around her. She becomes an anomaly with a deadly attitude.

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Birth and death are linked in the concept and conception of Beloved. The price of the baby’s headstone for Sethe was ten minutes; ten minutes “rutting among the headstones” (5). Sexual exploitation in exchange for seven letters—Beloved—and Sethe’s uncontrollable need to relieve herself— like “water breaking from a breaking womb”—mark the murdered child’s rebirth as a vengeful and uncomprehending young woman (51).8 Beloved bridges the spirit and physical realms. She is the marker of sacred space, but the return to life has an air of regression to it. Beloved does not, indeed cannot, impart any spiritual insights derived from her journey; as a child housed in a woman’s body her perceptions are limited to her physical impressions. She is a living symbol with a cryptic and distorted meaning. A poignant fusion of the earthly and the spiritual occurs in Song of Solomon. Pilate Dead, the “self-born” daughter of a deceased mother and heir to a murdered father, marks his long delayed grave with her mother’s snuffbox which contains Jake’s handwriting (335). It is a fitting emblem which unites mother (her snuffbox), father (his writing), and daughter (the box contains her name). The living and dead merge in the symbol. Pilate’s lesson of love and mercy is made tangible in the sacred space occupied by her father’s grave and grave-marker. It speaks to the bonds and benefits of personal responsibility and emotional connection. The grave is not a static symbol in Song of Solomon. Pilate is murdered at her father’s burial site, but two birds immediately appear, and one takes the shiny snuffbox from the grave. Witnessing the scene, Milkman Dead recognizes the symbolism—Pilate has always possessed the power of flight. Paradoxically, it is being grounded by his ancestors which permits Milkman to surrender to the air. Jake and Pilate are the young man’s anchor and springboard. Neither individual is confined by the burial site; it is a space of possibility. The life force is not contained by the grave. Connection transcends space and time. Fluidity of space, the power in transgressing boundaries, these are the ultimate messages conveyed through the sacred spaces of Morrison and Cather. Multiple meanings coexist in a single space. INTERACTING WITH THE LANDSCAPE: LOVE OR LARCENY? Responses to the lessons of the landscape provide great insight into character in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. It is essentially a question of choosing to read meaning from, or imposing definitions on, natural spaces; either approach is an indicator of the value system of the individual. The drive to reshape the environment has several motivations that range from a compulsion to impose order on “disorder,” to a need to exert power, to an attempt at

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achieving immortality. Valerian Street builds a “greenhouse as a place of controlled ever-flowering life to greet death in” in Morrison’s Tar Baby (53). It is a space of evasion—evasion of his blighted personal relationships and the resilience of the landscape he has so feverishly sought to master. The arrogance of building a hothouse in the midst of such an environment is staggering. Imposing the structure on the island articulates Valerian’s sense of ownership of the natural space and his contempt for the disorder of nature. Powerless elsewhere, he seeks domination through horticulture. Self-control through geography is a lesson Steward Morgan similarly internalizes in Paradise. Steward’s manipulation of the natural world is much subtler than that of Valerian, but the shared emphasis on proprietary rights creates common ground between the two characters. Riding on his farm, Steward is secure in the knowledge that he can never be lost. Possession anchors Steward. In fact, the painful process of discovering a home of their own marks all of Ruby’s inhabitants. The natural world has not been a space easily accessed in their experience. Identity is firmly rooted in the ownership of land for this previously displaced group. An analogous experience of the absence of home shapes the attitude and behaviour of Macon Dead in Song of Solomon. Surviving the nightmare of witnessing his father’s murder and the theft of the family farm, Macon advises his son that power comes from owning things. The farm is deemed of greater value than a man’s life. Greed leads to exploitation and violence. Security and identity are achieved through the properties Macon amasses; in his estimation they are both a reflection and a source of his personal power. Macon reasserts control and re-establishes order in his life by treating the environment (and community) as a commodity to be manipulated for personal gain. The drive to own property stems from a wound in each of the men. Possessions are used to restore and reinforce identity in the lives of Macon Dead, Stewart Morgan, and Valerian Street. Self-esteem stems from tangible symbols. Pride can lead to viewing the landscape itself as a personal monument. The quest to leave one’s mark on the environment is often linked with a desire for (vicarious) immortality. The founding Fathers of Haven (and later Ruby) build a communal oven in Paradise as a testament to their existence. The structure is a symbol of their mastery; freedom is attained by passing tests created by the natural world (99). A mark imposed upon the environment, the oven speaks of the triumph of the men over their adversaries— both human and natural. It stands against the threatening expansiveness of the skyline as a bold act of defiance. Significantly, as the men attack the convent, the ground beneath the Oven moves, causing a shift to one side. The

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unnatural actions of the men tip the scales in favour of the landscape: the mark of superiority loses ground. An assertion of identity (if not mastery) through a visible feature of the environment appeals to Jude Greene in Sula. He yearns to be a part of the creative force behind something real. The job would gratify Jude’s desire for respectable work—man’s labour—and the product would stand as a lasting tribute to his efforts and strength. Racist hiring practices, however, derail Jude’s quest to reshape the landscape. He must settle for marriage as a means of asserting his “manhood.” Jude’s field of opportunity is circumscribed because of his race. Cather’s Father Latour fares much better in Death Comes for the Archbishop by virtue of his religion. Latour yearns to build a cathedral “worthy of a setting naturally beautiful” (175). More than a tribute to his faith, Latour’s cathedral will be a representation of his accomplishments and a testament to his existence. Personal pride and a desire for immortality enter the equation. Discovering the one yellow hill among the green ones, Latour is reminded of the Palace of the Popes and resolves to build a cathedral in the Midi Romanesque style (240). The process will require a French architect and French stonecutters, but Latour is determined not to add to the ugly churches dotting the continent. He is in fact carrying on a family tradition— his relatives were involved in the construction of Clermont Cathedral. The New Mexico church is an emblem of the Catholic faith and the enduring values of Latour’s family. Its value as a symbol of New Mexico is, however, suspect. Latour’s impulse to leave a physical mark on the landscape is diametrically opposed to the customs of the indigenous people of New Mexico. The Navajo “obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation” (232). Witnessing the practice, Latour perceives that while white men attempt to alter the landscape, “make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn)” the Indians wish to “vanish into the landscape, not stand out against it” (232–3). The priest has enough insight to recognize the Indian belief in accommodation. He does not, however, adopt this approach; leaving his (personal and professional) mark on the landscape is in fact Latour’s dream. The Cathedral Latour has built stands out from, rather than blends into the slope. It is a grand, theatrical sight; indeed the architect asserts “that only in Italy . . . did churches leap out of mountains . . . like that” (270). Latour transfers his own aesthetic sensibilities to the terrain. It is apparently an artistic vision only the architect shares. The dramatic effect is a public declaration of a personal taste. Great cathedrals, Lefebvre asserts,

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are “political acts” (74). More than a symbol of faith, such structures are statements of power; Latour’s choice is an “imperial transmission,” argues Urgo, imposing meaning on a landscape which repulses him (185). The importance of the structure’s style or location is in fact lost on the faithful Father Vaillant who resists, but is not sure why.9 The project clearly disconcerts the humble priest whose own plan of spreading the faith calls for a simple chapel fashioned from branches or fabric. The beauty of his religion, with its strong association with the Virgin Mary, is sufficient to fulfill Father Vaillant’s aesthetic sensibilities. A change accompanies his devotions during the month of May; his senses and faith are intensified. Without the aid of a French architect or a theatrical backdrop, the majesty and power of the Mother of his faith speaks to Vaillant. The world is altered during this intensely spiritual period. It “puts on white . . . and becomes . . . lovely enough to be . . . the Bride of Christ” (204). Mary’s grace and beauty are transferred to the physical realm. It is an act which purifies and fortifies Father Vaillant; this spiritual transformation is the gift he seeks to convey to his followers. Latour’s vision takes a grand scale while Vaillant’s needs require only a quick and easily crafted shelter. One man is determined to leave a tangible monument to his faith (and personal existence), while the other is content to leave his mark on the intangible spiritual landscapes of his parishioners.10 The desire to alter the landscape, to leave some memorial does appear to be a masculine trait in the fiction of Cather and Morrison.11 Female characters do not make explicit statements about imposing monuments on the environment in the texts in this study.12 This absence, however, cannot support a definitive statement that women are in greater harmony with, or more benevolent in their treatment of the natural world. While Lena Lingard denies personal ownership of or interest in the land—“it ain’t my prairie”— in My Antonia, Antonia Shimerda adopts a very different stance (109). She and her family build a thriving farm; domesticating the prairie brings her both economic and emotional benefits. Antonia alters the landscape—cultivation imposes order and meaning of a particular type—but maintains a sympathetic connection with nature. In a sense, she cooperates with nature. Empowerment comes through an affinity with, not brute domination of, nature. She describes her concern for her trees in maternal terms. Antonia mothers the earth as tenderly as she mothers her children. Alexandra Bergson achieves a similar balance of imposed order and inspired connection in O Pioneers!. She discovers an appreciation of the country which mingles “love and yearning” with admiration of its beauty and richness (44). The action prompted by this awakening is to purchase as

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much land as possible; the economic value of the prairie is abundantly clear to Alexandra.13 She is a “speculator [who] preserves . . . closeness to the land . . . ,” concludes Guy Reynolds (55). Josephine Donovan likewise proposes that it is the “connection with the natural realm” which saves Alexandra from becoming “a hardened, disconnected opportunist like her brothers” (107). She must mediate between two spheres with conflicting needs—the pristine wilderness and the human settlement. In time Alexandra reaches the understanding that only those who love the land can “own it for a little while” (209). Guardianship is temporary, she concludes, and must be tempered by love. Morrison hauntingly illustrates the transitory quality of ownership in Song of Solomon. As Macon Dead reminisces about his father’s farm, his voice softens and sounds more Southern. The memory humanizes the cold property owner as he recalls the pleasure and pride of working alongside his father. Admiration of his father and the countryside surface in Macon’s backward glance. Love of the land is a shared trait of the father and son. Mingled with this positive image, however, is the brutal reality of the illiterate father’s loss of the farm and his life. The domesticated natural space is vulnerable to violence in a way not experienced by Antonia or Alexandra. The economic value of the land costs Macon Dead I his life. Appreciation of the natural world is abandoned by Macon Dead II in his journey northward. It is not part of his legacy to his son or a strong force in his own life (it comes to him briefly in memory, not in any practical or sustained way). Initially Milkman Dead is and is extremely inept in the natural settings. He must open his eyes and mind to the possibilities of the landscape. It is a lesson he learns in part from Pilate’s example—she is at ease with nature—and from the men of Shalimar. Joining in a hunt, Milkman at last listens with all his senses; he has just enough time to defend himself from attack. Equally important to his survival is Milkman’s discovery of the exhilaration of being connected to the earth. Belonging to the earth heals Milkman; it humanizes him. Connecting with nature and the community enables Milkman to mature; his previous detachment from his own life (never mind the lives of others) is at last eradicated. A positive response to nature is neither dependent on the sex of the student nor that of the teacher. Milkman is introduced to the natural world through the instruction of his aunt, the story of his grandfather, the men of Shalimar and the midwife Circe. Pilate and Circe guide him through recollections of lost and fragmented family stories. The men emphasize the physical interaction with nature. Pilate’s daughter, granddaughter and nieces do not benefit from her knowledge of life and nature. She cannot fill the void of

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the missing ancestors for her female relatives. They remain isolated from the healing properties of the earth.14 Both Morrison and Cather reject the extremes of the paradigm of man as defiler and woman as protector of nature. The “reality” in their fiction incorporates a middle ground: characters may be classified as adopting either stance, but gender is not the determining factor. EXPANDING VISIONS: COUNTERACTING RIGID DEFINITIONS Willa Cather and Toni Morrison bridge literary gaps through their fiction. The female experience of the prairie is a powerful subject in several of Cather’s novels. Agency and creativity are rarely linked with the woman in the wilderness in the national romance; if she appears at all it is as the helpmate to the heroic male pioneer. The lone male withstanding the terrors of the natural setting and the threat of the Indians seemed to have endless appeal. Tales of daring exploits were favoured in popular literature and the “popular imagination,” Henry Nash Smith cautions, “constantly transformed the facts of the westward movement in accordance with the requirements of myth” (102). Nowhere is this point clearer than in the representation of Daniel Boone. He is alternately “the empire builder and philanthropist” and “a fugitive from civilization who could not endure the encroachment of settlements upon his beloved wilderness,” observes Smith (54). Frederick Jackson Turner’s description of Boone’s exploits manages to blend the two extremes: Daniel Boone, the great backwoodsman, who combined the occupations of hunter, trader, cattle-raiser, farmer, and surveyor . . . pioneered the way for the farmers to [Kentucky] . . . Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark . . . he helped to open the way for civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and land. His son was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rocky Mountains . . . His grandson . . . was a power among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. (534–5)

He is a man in constant motion; an agent of civilization through “manly” activities. Boone is a farmer, but also a man of adventure. The founder of an equally adventuresome clan, Boone is not identified as a husband. The only reference Turner makes to the existence of women is: “Kit Carson’s mother was a Boone” (535). The female figure is otherwise conspicuously absent from the process of settlement Turner describes. She cannot be

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accommodated in a story which emphasizes the lone (celibate) male in the wilderness—Daniel Boone-cum-the mythic Deerslayer. Recognizing the imaginative value of the Western farmer was a slow process. “A new intellectual system was requisite before the West could be adequately dealt with in literature . . . ,” concludes Smith (260). Breaking free of the male-centred mythology of the West perhaps requires yet another intellectual evolution. Inserting woman into the historical landscape is necessary for those who value accuracy (and fair play!). “Migration,” asserts Julie Roy Jeffrey, “was a family affair, and one cannot understand the frontier without considering the experience of . . . women . . .” (xii). She takes exception to the popular approach of viewing “women as passive victims of men’s choices” (36). The women Jeffrey discovers in journals, letters, reminiscences from women, and men’s records, are active participants in the settlement of the West. In My Antonia and O Pioneers! the focus is firmly on a strong woman grappling with the environment. Cather does not, however, permit a glorified representation of the female pioneer. Success requires sacrifice in her stories. It also necessitates a rethinking of the roles assigned to men and women. Blurring of gender expectations accompanies the expansive terrain of the prairies. Practically speaking, clearing and cultivating the land require a group effort. The “niceties” of specialized spheres—man in the working world, woman in the private home—cannot be sustained. Notions of appropriate (gendered) behaviour nonetheless linger. Definitions of masculine and feminine roles resurface as the wild land is tamed. Carden encapsulates the ambiguous positions of Antonia Shimerda and Alexandra Bergson: Antonia both resists and reproduces culturally pervasive scenarios for female identity. Her self-making is both typically “female” and untypically independent: she fulfills an expected function as a productive body, but her productivity is unmistakably her own. In O Pioneers! Cather makes Alexandra a hero of the earth and a stunted vine, originator of national possibilities and victim of “serious times.” Her success is simultaneously glorifying and stultifying, her femininity both natural and unnatural . . . (295)

Both Antonia and Alexandra step outside the limited sphere identified with women. They enter a complex space which is simultaneously gratifying and frustrating. It is not an idealized space, but one which recognizes external obligations along with internal needs.15

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Although their approaches differ—Antonia achieves fertility through her body and the land, whereas Alexandra’s creativity is directed towards her farm—each woman is a distinctive addition to the list of prairie heroes. Pushing against definitions of femininity and masculinity, the two novels implicitly challenge the authenticity of the Western myth as it appears in American fiction. No less confrontational is Cather’s depiction of “masculine domesticity” in The Professor’s House. Joslin’s term reflects the distinctive situation of St. Peter: he works in the house, but his work is not house-work. Through a comparison with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Joslin explores the plight of “individuals . . . caught in the fabric of social living, a weave that often constricts but ultimately forms the self ” (179). Gender distinctions may alter the path, but balancing a social and personal identity is a struggle common to both sexes. Masculine domesticity takes a unique form in the novel through the Tom Outland material. Despite the necessary conditions for a boy’s adventure—three men in the wilderness, then a lone male figure against a natural backdrop—the Outland section of the novel is effectively domesticated. Framed by the Professor’s familial experience, Outland’s story, with its danger and excitement, is tamed. Karush perceptively reads Cather’s technique as locating “continental expansion firmly inside the home: it keeps Outland, whose name itself suggests expansionism, safely inland” (148). The exotic terrain and heroic experience become inseparable from the familiar family dwelling. The distance between the (seemingly) conflicting spheres of domesticity and adventure is eradicated. “Expansionism” of a different nature occurs in Morrison’s writing. She claims a space in order to fill in a void. It is an attempt to insert the unrecognized into the recognizable. Morrison “chooses to explore landscapes and themes very familiar to readers of American literature . . . ,” surmises Herbert William Rice, “to show their incompleteness” (56). Interjecting the African American experience into the American story (or more accurately, American stories) is an explicit rejection of the authority of the official version of America. Morrison’s fiction insists upon an expanded vision of the nation, its inhabitants, and its literary possibilities. Her novels redress the silences surrounding slavery and/or racism; the terrain barely visible on the margins of familiar literary landscape is brought into focus. Morrison’s spotlight is also directed towards theories of gender inequality and the need to expand models of analysis. Recognizing that white and black women experience “domesticity” differently is a crucial first-step in appreciating the depictions of masculinity/femininity, family, and home in Morrison’s novels. Public and private divisions are

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not as rigid in Morrison’s neighborhoods as they are in those depicted by Cather. Individuality or self-sufficiency in defiance of an oppressive social group is not validated; instead Morrison emphasizes the need for community, for connection. Isolation is dangerous. Knowledge and mutual responsibility lie within the village with its continuity of ancestors. Simultaneously a survival strategy and a social pattern from their lives in Africa, extended concepts of family and intricate webs of connection enhanced the otherwise painful existences of slaves. The power of mutual care and relationships based upon shared values, Morrison’s fiction reveals, must not be sacrificed in the name of freedom. It is a position in direct opposition to the popular image of the autonomous American defying society’s conventions. Attachments—emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and familial— function as supports in Morrison’s writing. Individuals who break from, or cannot access, the continuity of community flounder. Morrison vehemently rejects single sex communities in her essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.” In terms of theoretical practice she warns “ . . . any model of criticism or evaluation that excludes males from it is as hampered as any model . . . that excludes women from it” (344). Exclusivity and isolationism are counter-productive processes. Simply repeating the approach of masculinist critics is a crucial mistake in feminist practices, Morrison declares. A rich resource of knowledge and love is lost when the ancestor—male or female—is absent. The importance of communal cohesion is a dominant theme in Morrison’s fiction. In the previously cited article she firmly asserts that Hagar’s flaws in Song of Solomon stem from the absence of strong men in her life. The comparison between grandmother and granddaughter highlights the practical benefits of a male influence: Pilate had a dozen years of close, nurturing relationships with two males . . . And that intimacy and support was in her and made her fierce and loving . . . Pilate is the apogee . . . of the best of that which is female and the best of that which is male, and that balance is disturbed if it is not nurtured. . . . (344)

Both sexes are necessary for nurturing the next generation; while her mother is dead, Circe is a positive female presence in Pilate’s life. A melding of female and male traits is crucial to the development of a healthy and whole individual. Despite her remarkable personality, Pilate’s love is insufficient to save Hagar. She fails to recognize the crisis of identity until it is too late. The distancing of Pilate’s daughter and granddaughter from positive masculine

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guidance diminishes them and leads to tragic consequences. Pilate’s ability (and opportunity) to synthesize the best of each sex enables her to step outside the standard definitions of feminine or masculine behaviour. She boldly defies the drive to classify, but cannot instill the same confidence in Reba and Hagar. Playing with gender expectations is a distinctive part of Cather’s O Pioneers !. The title itself foregrounds the issue of gendered roles. Invoking Walt Whitman’s “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” raises the image of a masculine figure taming a feminine landscape; the pioneer is engaged in “virgin soil upheaving.” The poem is laced with terms like “danger,” “manly pride,” “daring,” “venturing,” and “detachments.”16 It is virtually a call to action, a call to arms. Women do receive a brief mention: but, given the use of relationships to identify the female pioneers—daughter, wife, mother—one can surmise that the “bearing” they do has nothing to do with arms. Cather’s novel offers a decidedly different vision of the pioneer: woman as tamer of the land. Antonia Shimerda lovingly nurtures her orchard and farm. The fertility and vitality of the property is reflected in the lively (and abundant) children she raises in this specialized place. Alexandra Bergson becomes a business success while retaining a strong love and respect for the land. She and Antonia synthesize the masculine developer and feminine protector binary, providing a vivid redefinition of the pioneer. While Alexandra’s brothers can hardly be construed as “the best of that which is male”—they are greedy, whiny, and self-indulgent—her father does leave her (and not them) the legacy of the land in both a literal (debt-free farm) and imaginative (dream of productive farm) sense. Alexandra and Antonia, like Pilate, are the amalgamation of male and female traits. The fusion of masculine and feminine attributes is telegraphed by the variations of male appellations given to the three women: Pilate, Alexandra, and Antonia. More than simply playing with names Morrison and Cather depict the three women as synthesizing qualities identified with men— strength, courage, and reason—and those connected with women—compassion, co-operation, and empathy. Rigid gender divisions cannot be applied to these characters. One factor in their unique personalities is the early influence of strong male figures: Antonia’s and Alexandra’s fathers help shape their futures, while Pilate has the guidance of a loving father and brother (Macon turns on her after their father’s death). My Antonia also offers, in the Harlings, the example of an influential, but negative father. The contrast between Frances Harling, a sympathetic member of the community and chief clerk for her father, and Mr. Harling, a cold, impersonal businessman,

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clearly favours her approach to business. She too is a hybrid of the best of each sex. BATTLING BINARIES: GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITY The reliance on binary systems can result in the impression that divisions like masculine/feminine, exterior/interior, public/private are inevitable, logical and permanent. Borders (and other boundaries), proposes Wald, “are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us and them” (1). To classify is to define both the other and the self; despite (or perhaps because of ) the value judgment placed upon “them,” “they” are a necessary element in our understanding of “us.” It is only through the “constitutive outside”—“the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks”—contends Stuart Hall, that “the ‘positive’ meaning of any term [its identity] . . . can be constructed” (4). Mutually dependent descriptions are not immune to cross-influence. The binary model obscures the fact that boundaries do blur, overlap, and even collide: a point dramatically illustrated in the fiction of Cather and Morrison. The two authors challenge the inviolate nature of categories by creating malleable geography and gender roles. Multiple geographies of identity exist in the writings of Cather and Morrison. The spaces characters occupy have a distinct impact on their identities. Blurring boundaries expands personal and collective landscapes. In the process self-definition enjoys a wider range of possibilities than are permitted in rigidly gendered literary settings.17 Moving beyond the mindset of contrast and conflict permits Cather and Morrison creative room to maneuver. The pair is actively engaged in what Jos Boys identifies as a necessary search for “new categories of position” (205). Boys’ analysis specifically focuses on the issue of architecture and gender, but her conclusions are an apt assessment of the representation of space in the works of Cather and Morrison: “rather than mutually exclusive territories defined by their oppositional characteristics, categories of thought are here conceived as more fluid and overlapping; for example, as linked contradictions, borders and margins, or indeterminate and open systems . . .” (205). Its fluidity and multifarious qualities characterize space in Boys’ analysis. Exclusivity and opposition are rejected in favour of interpenetrability and the accommodation of difference. Cather and Morrison not only anticipate this “rethinking of the space of theory itself,” but implement the theory in the practice of space in their fiction (205). Incorporating the sheltering places of the domestic and the expansive spaces of the natural realms counteracts the claustrophobic effects of segregated geography. Previously untold

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stories and unrecognized terrains are explored in the fictional texts in this study. Borders are potential sites of empowerment. Enclosure and exclusion may be the goal of demarcating territories (whether physical, intellectual, or imaginative), but the possibility of interaction nonetheless exists. The exchange can be invigorating, transforming a barrier into a facilitator. “Borderzones are sites of creative cultural creolization,” contend Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg, “places where crisscrossed identities are forged . . .” (15). Identities and spaces are formed and re-formed through interplay. Exile or displacement from a homeland may complicate the relationship between place and identity, but places continue to “play a potentially important part in the symbolic and psychical dimension of our identifications,” propose the editors of Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location (xii). Being situated between places can create a space of resistance, an opportunity to embrace the best of both “worlds.” “ . . . I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in . . . ,” mused Virginia Woolf ’s narrator in A Room of One’s Own (24). The division of geography, whether it is along gender, racial, class or any other discriminatory line, diminishes both those who are excluded and those who are included. Constrictive categories of space, and identity, Woolf ’s speaker astutely recognizes, create multiple barriers to (potentially) invigorating interaction. Classifications, whether of territories or people, do not hold. The category relies on the myth of permanency and self-containment, but the reality is much more mobile and shifting. As Butler’s work suggests, “gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently” precisely because it “intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities” (3). The interchange between these elements of identity requires subtle shifts in the performance of identity (or more accurately identities). Labels rarely, if ever, encapsulate any identity in all its complexity. Mapping space based upon such an arbitrary system of codification is therefore not a reflection of “natural” divisions. It is an indicator of power structures. Gendered territories are metaphorical (and not infrequently actual) sites of imprisonment. Michel Foucault’s work on a seventeenth-century technique for dealing with the plague is oddly applicable to the use of spatial partitioning as a form of social containment. The panopticon, Foucault notes, is an “enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised . . .” (197). Enclosure within this specialized structure is literal and absolute; inmates are under constant supervision. Guards too

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are subject to scrutiny and circumscribed in terms of mobility in such a system. The analogy between prison space and the imprisonment of gendered geography lies in their mutual dependency on binaries: warder/inmate, normal/abnormal, male/female. In such a line of reasoning boundaries are unyielding and the individual is lost in the classification. Knowing “your place” is both an act of determining domain and definition; identity is presupposed and perpetuated by and through the binary label. You are classified on the basis of what you “do” rather than who you are. Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream and alternative spaces is a vital step in debunking the myth of naturally occurring separate spheres. Disengagement from gendered geography in the fiction of Cather and Morrison is achieved through an emphasis on inclusion. Connection occurs between the individual and the community, between “male” and “female” areas. An ability to connect seemingly exclusive or contradictory spaces is one of the many strengths of the two authors’ writings. Immensity and intimacy are key features of their landscapes; the vitality of these spaces generates a type of movement, an energy which cannot be contained by simplistic labels. Neither space nor time can be compartmentalized; each is irrevocably interconnected. The fluidity of time is concretized in a sculpture created by Ed Hamilton to commemorate the Amistad story. Although each panel is unique and captures a particular historical aspect, they do not, indeed cannot, stand alone. Osagie offers this insightful interpretation of the work of art: “Hamilton engages memory as a theme of circularity: the past, present, and future all flow into each other and are dependent on each other for their full meaning”(93). He could very well have been describing the writings of Cather and Morrison. Whether it is the emotional connection with vanished Indians, or Sethe’s theory of rememory, the spaces of the past play a crucial part in the experience of the present for many of Cather’s and Morrison’s characters. Oppositional spaces based upon hierarchies are not limited to the work of non-feminists. In her discussion of spatial metaphors in feminist discourse, Kerstin W. Shands identifies “two basic positions or directions” perpetuated by many theorists: a “resisting or ‘bracing space’ of constant travel and of sites of resistance where all comforts of home, unity and dwelling, are . . . to be withstood” and “‘embracing space,’ an open ‘parabolic’ space that is not only politically but also spiritually empowering” (2). Rejecting the assertion that the two spaces are incompatible, Shands insists that “between the suffocation of confinement and the superoxigenation of unlimited openness there is a feminist imagery that visualizes an empowering spatiality whose

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embrace is both open and protective” (105). Decades in advance, Cather and Morrison provided just such a space. The space Shands describes lies between the angle and the curve. To borrow from Morrison, it is the apogee of the best of that which is male and the best of that which is female. Cather and Morrison create fictional terrains that challenge the spatial models of hierarchies and dichotomies. The individual components of such approaches—male/female spheres, exterior/interior, movement/stasis, public/private—are disconnected, re-examined, and reconstructed in the literary landscapes explored in this study. A hybrid geography emerges which shatters any paradigm based upon immovable barriers or boundaries. Shands’ use of the parabola to represent her theory of space is a persuasive explanatory device. She proposes that “if we think of a curve as a mobile point and an unending line as curving into parabolic contour, embracing space could be seen as a fusion of circles and lines . . .”(112). “Contradictory” qualities coexist in one space. They in fact can function as complementary features. The tension between the need for home and the desire for freedom of movement, so common in American writing, is defused in Shands’ imagery. The roots of parabolic—parai (beside) and ballein (to throw)—imply an “adverb-verb combination that suggests a blending of place and mobility and a decomposition of the dichotomies of stasis and movement . . .” (112). Seemingly incompatible possibilities meet in the specialized space. Embracing space has a particular relevance for American fiction. Cather and Morrison achieve a balance between “place and mobility” and “stasis and movement.”18 Symbiosis and not opposition mark their geographies; despite differences in life experiences, each author rejects the adversarial model of space. They favour an inclusive and evolving approach to creating fictional worlds. “Canon building,” Toni Morrison succinctly concludes in “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature,” “is empire building. Canon defense is national defense” (31). In this article she challenges the notion of a cohesive definition of American literature “that according to conventional wisdom, is certainly not Chicano literature, or Afro-American literature, or Asian-American, or Native American . . . It is somehow separate from them and they from it . . .” (24). By their very nature definitions exclude; what is is defined against what is not, if only by implication. Silences can, however, speak volumes. “Certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves . . . ,” observes Morrison (34). To define American literature as a boy’s adventure in nature is to ignore a vast array of American experiences. To limit the literary landscape to one type of space—the wide outdoors—is, paradoxically, a claustrophobic practice.

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Opening up the territory encapsulated in the phrase “American fiction” is a shared concern of Cather and Morrison. Each writer has pushed against the boundaries of the official canon; refusing to shape their work to the critical framework, they have opted to challenge its authority rather than acquiesce to its limited expectations. Judith Wilt reads Morrison’s work as “an effort to reclaim and impart to the official American idea, the African and African-American story” (273). A sense of an author writing about “the wrong America . . . , at least as far as the dominant critical voices in American letters were concerned” is Guy Reynold’s interpretation of the initial response to Cather’s fiction (3). Cather’s stories, like Morrison’s, fall outside the “official American idea.” The act of recording unrecorded (or at least marginalized) lives—immigrants and survivors of slavery in particular—is an implicit statement about the incompleteness of the “official American idea.” “Space can be contested in many ways,” Elizabeth Kenworthy Teacher observes, “bloodily in wars, with litigation during the planning process, and subtly in the home and work place” (3). I would add through the skillful descriptions of gifted and perceptive authors. Willa Cather and Toni Morrison subvert the textual expectations of gendered geography. One of the great strengths of their writings is the ability Cather and Morrison possess to recover familiar territory by destabilizing definitions and expectations. Feminine and masculine landscape features are present in their writings, but the insistence on privileging one over the other is conspicuously absent. A journey through the fictional terrains of Cather and Morrison offers invaluable insights into the intimate connections between space, gender, race, and identity. Imaginative wanderings through the novels in this study invite introspection and return visits to the invigorating space between the angle and the curve.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Quoted in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, page 137. 2. Quoted in Cologne-Brookes, 1; original source: Eagleton, Terry. “Merrie State of Mind.” Guardian 2 (1993): 8. 3. Ermarth borrows the term from the poet and scholar Michael Alexander. 4. Quoted in Ermarth, 405; original source: Vaclav Havel, December 9 address to the Parliament and Senate of the Czech Republic (New York Review of Books, 5 March 1998). 5. Beloved’s desire for her mother, notes Stacey Vallas, “takes two forms—the desire to look at her, especially to gaze into her face, to be mirrored there, and the desire for stories” (107). Beloved’s quest to achieve identity seeks acknowledgement through the visual (see herself reflected in her mother’s eyes) and the oral/aural (to hear herself reflected in her mother’s, and to a lesser extent her sister’s words). 6. The dangers of not writing one’s own “script” are dramatically portrayed in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The named title character, Sapphira, “turns the people around her into characters, functionaries on the stage of the poisonous play she is writing,” theorizes Angela M. Salas (99). In stark contrast, the unnamed title character—the slavegirl Nancy—is a mere object of her manipulations. 7. The importance of the home in Cather’s fiction has been documented by a number of critics: Eudora Welty, Leon Edel, Doris Grumbach, Joseph R. Urgo, Katherine Joslin, Cynthia K. Briggs, Judith Fryer, and many others. The complexity of the home in Morrison’s works has garnered the attention of such critics as Michael Hogan, Barbara Christian, Valerie Smith, Patrick Bryce Bjork, Charles Scruggs, Emily Miller Budick, Liliane Weissberg, and several other scholars. 8. The tension between stasis and mobility in Cather’s fiction is a concern in the writings of such critics as Briggs, Fryer, Urgo, and Robert Kroetsch.

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

Scholars of Morrison who explore this issue include Scruggs, Patricia McKee, Christian, and Jeanette Batz Cooperman. The connections between identity and place—central concerns for both Cather and Morrison—have captured the interest of numerous scholars. In terms of Cather’s fiction, these include: James L. Davis and Nancy H. Davis, Shelley Saposnik-Noire, Fryer, and Susan J. Rosowski; Scruggs, Bjork, Christian, Melvin Dixon, and Katherine Leake are among the many critics who discuss this relationship in Morrison’s writings. The land itself plays a significant role in the fiction of Cather and Morrison; among those who have documented this fact are: Rosowski, Ann Moseley, Patrick J. Sullivan, Sharon O’Brien, Mary Kemper Sternshein (for Cather) and Christian, Karla F. C. Holloway, Lauren Lepow, Judylyn S. Ryan, and Dixon (for Morrison). Gendered landscapes in the texts of Cather and Morrison, with all their complexities, have received attention from such scholars as : Ellen Moers, Judith Fetterley, Rosowski, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Edel, David Laird, Patrick W. Shaw, Hermoine Lee (for Cather) and Robert James Butler, Barbara Hill Rigney, Houston A. Baker Jr., Thomas H. Fick and Eva Gold (for Morrison). The question of whether or not there are gendered responses to nature is raised in most of Cather’s and Morrison’s novels. Cather scholars who have ventured into this territory include Josephine Donovan, Helen Fiddyment Levy, and Niel Gustafson; their “counterparts” in Morrison scholarship include Dixon, Sandra Adell, and Christian. Bachelard’s work deliberately ignores the spaces of hostility, of confrontation; he deals with an idealized space. “Enclosed and humanized space is place,” concludes Yi-Fu Tuan (54). Human agency plays a key role in the process of (re)creating space. Space is thus not an objective “reality” but a highly subjective “fiction.” Wilbur Zelinsky identifies places as “totally human constructs not just chunks of a Newtonian cosmos, with all the complications and paradoxes such a genesis implies” (170). Sharon Zukin also proposes that the human component is crucial to understanding place. It is “a form of local society rendered . . . special by economy and demography . . . a cultural artifact of social conflict and cohesion” (12). Carol P. MacCormack in fact challenges the “myth” of nature. She contends that “neither the concept of nature, nor that of culture is a ‘given’ and they cannot be free from the biases of the culture in which the concepts were constructed” (6). “The meanings attributed to male and female,” MacCormack further asserts, “are as arbitrary as are the meanings attributed to nature and culture . . .” (18). Building upon Beauvoir’s examination of woman’s “enslavement to the species,” Sherry Ortner suggests three reasons why woman is seen as closer

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17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

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to nature than man: woman’s physiology seems to place her closer to nature, woman’s body places her in social roles considered to be lower than man’s roles, and traditional social roles give her a different psychic structure which is interpreted as being closer to nature (27). Alcoff traces “the major factor in [the] masculinist formulation of reason . . .” back to the “mind-body dualism” proposed by such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bacon, Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant (14–15). Each man relies upon, and reinforces, the mind/body split; it is not too surprising that the hierarchy favours the masculine over the feminine given its origins. Gillian Rose’s work on the connection of woman and nature in art cautions that woman and land are similarly vulnerable to male appropriation and exploitation. In a subsequent collaboration with Alison Blunt, Rose examines sexual imagery in Imperialist literature. Woman and territory merge in the masculine expansionist drive. The non-white woman’s sexuality is an “object” open to appropriation. She is part fo the allure of the new land. Focusing specifically on prairie fiction Kroetsch illustrates one of the practical effects of the division of gendered space: “To be on a horse is to move: motion into distance. To be in a house is to be fixed: a centering unto stasis. Horse is masculine House is feminine. Horse: house. Masculine: feminine. On: in. Motion: stasis. A woman ain’t supposed to move” (76). It is a comical but perceptive analysis of the link between space and identity. Motion and exploration are the prerogative of the male; stasis and the status quo are the constraints imposed on the female. Bachelard divides space along gender lines: the angle is cold, rejects us, and is masculine while the curve is warm, has nest-like powers, and is feminine. Quoted in an interview with Tate, 124–5.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1. This quotation is taken from O’Brien’s Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice, 63. Clearly the author did not have Toni Morrison in mind, but the insights O’Brien offers are applicable to Morrison’s relationship with “space and landscape” and “memories of the child’s encounter with” the world. 2. “Truth,” as the philosophers and poets of countless decades have discovered, is never objective. The definer cannot escape from personal bias. 3. Both A Glossary of Literary Terms and The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms indicate that later critics have utilized the term in a neutral sense. 4. Quoted in Ferguson, 154; original source: Toni Morrison, “Living Memory.” City Limits 31 (1988): 10–11. 5. Alexandra’s dreams of a mysterious lover are clearly linked to nature; she has a vision of a man who is strong and swift with the “smell of ripe cornfields,”

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6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

and she feels is “yellow like sunlight” (137). The lover is not a mere man, but a Corn God. Quoted in Eagleton, 307. The pattern of locating herself is strongly reminiscent of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The child, Stephen Dedalus, meticulously documents his situation in his geography textbook: “Stephen Dedalus Class of Elements/Clongowes Wood College/Sallins/County Kildare/Ireland/Europe/The World/ The Universe” (15–16). Quoted in Eagleton, 307–308. This dream will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter Three; at this point I would simply draw attention to the differing responses to the concept of the dream world. The significance of the home will be addressed in greater detail in Chapter Four. The sex of the lovers, Mikey tells Gigi, has been hotly contested. Some say they are two men or two women but Mikey “had touched the body parts” determining that it was a woman and a man (63).

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. Quoted in Moers, 254. 2. The body, J. Douglas Porteous suggests, can become “a personal landscape to enhance” through such practices as tattooing and the use of cosmetics (71). Toni Morrison evocatively illustrates the effect when the “expression” is not made by the self. Sethe recalls how her mother showed her a “circle and a cross burnt right in the skin” (61). Recognizing her physical vulnerability, Sethe’s mother accepts the mark of the master as a means of conveying her identity to her daughter. It proves to be ineffectual; she is hanged and the mark becomes unreadable (61). 3. The first quote Carden provides is from Richard Slotkins’ Regeneration Through Violence, 5; the second quote is from Frederick Jackson Turner’s The Frontier in American History, 21. 4. This practice was not a North American development; Kolodny points out that “gendering the land as feminine was nothing new . . . Indo-European languages among others, have long maintained the habit of gendering the physical world and imbuing it with human capacities” (8). 5. The positive creative power symbolized by gardens is compellingly captured in Alice Walker’s essay “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.” In spite of backbreaking labour and extreme poverty, her mother cultivated fantastic gardens: “because of her creativity with her flowers, even my memories of poverty are seen through a screen of blooms . . . Her face, as she prepares the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me . . . respect for the possibilities—and the will to grasp them” (241–2). The mother’s garden is

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6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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both her own creative outlet and the artistic inspiration for her more privileged daughter. It speaks to the possibility of life and art and the maternal power. “In search of my mother’s garden,” Walker concludes, “I found my own” (243). It is a statement of personal and collective creativity and strength. An invaluable point raised during a discussion with Professor Susan Warwick (York University). Cather moved to Pittsburgh in 1896 where she worked as a journalist and teacher. In 1906 she moved to New York, initially as a magazine editor, but ultimately as a writer. She live in New York until her death in 1947. As Grumbach observes, “it is interesting to note that the great Nebraska novels were written from the distant comfort of a New York residence” (xiv). Cather chose to remain in the city, returning to the prairie in her imagination. The ground work for Thea the artist is laid in Moonstone. She studies piano, teaches music and sings professionally, but she discovers her true instrument—her voice—in Chicago. Ryan reads Jadine and Son as “viewing the other’s world as impoverished and/or unsafe; it is thus “an occasion to ‘rescue’ the other” (67). Bjork offers antithetical views of New York: for Jadine it is “a place for self-confidence and self-assertion where a past of traditional roles and ways does not intrude” while Son has “a darker, grimmer perspective of the city”—a summary of “African-American social, geographical, and cultural disruption and transformation” (132). The incompatibility of these interpretations provides ample reason for a “rescue operation” and telegraphs the doomed outcome of the love affair. The other exceptions are My Mortal Enemy and, perhaps, Shadows on the Rock (although the use of “city” is open to debate when referring to old Quebec). The attack on the convent by the men of Ruby is clearly a male invasion of a female space. Given their fear of female autonomy, the assault on the garden is quite revealing for, as Giamatti’s analysis of literary gardens contends, “to waste a garden is the proper external symbol for a man’s interior disintegration and uneasiness” (42). Deborah Karush reads the Professor’s garden as “more like an indoor space than an outdoor one.” She suggests (quite perceptively) with “its emphasis on tidiness, polish,and symmetry the garden is a model of discipline and control” (162). Chandler takes a similar stance, concluding that “the design of the garden suggests a deep need for control and reflects exactly and schematically the designs of the gardener . . .” (195). Reginald Dyck addresses the issue of violence in the garden. He identifies several “strategies to make violence safe” in Cather’s fiction (to deny the violence “would weaken her fiction’s dramatic force and sense of authenticity” but the “vision of an ideal world” must be protected) (58). These include

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14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

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Notes to Chapter Three making the “violence exotic” (story of Pavel and Peter in My Antonia) and reducing “violent characters to minor, one-dimensional figures” (Wick Cutter of the same text); the representation of nature in O Pioneers! Could be construed as another strategy whereby the explosion of violence is effectively defused. The question of whether or not there are gendered responses to nature will be addressed in the final chapter in this study. Antoina’s identification with the land in fact counters her seeming absence from “Book 3”—the Lena Lingard section. There are only a few passing references to Antoina, instigated by Lena, not Jim. But there are three references to the prairie. Jim works near the west window overlooking the prairies and “the earthy wind” blows through his room (166, 169). He confesses to thinking about his own “land and the figures scattered upon it . . . of the places and people . . .” (168). Land and people are connected and both invade his thoughts. Jim specifically names Jake, Otto and Russian Peter. Antonia is conspicuously absent from the list, but is a hovering presence through her identification with the prairie. I believe Jim’s omission is connected to a feeling of betrayal: Antonia exposed him to the violence and unpleasantness of Wick Cutter (end of the previous book) and is engaged to Larry Donovan—a man Jim hates. Moers focuses on the creation of female landscapes by women writers. Later in the text Father Duchêne suggests that it was probably “used for astronomical observations” (197). Regardless of which assessment is accurate, it is clearly a masculine space. John N. Swift reads the “landscape of the Cliff City, cave and tower” as speaking “geographically in [a] symbolic language, this one genital . . . converging movingly in the authoritative presence of the missing father, the phallic tower . . .” (305–6). In a revealing discussion of the inadequacies of language, Moers points out that “for the female landscape there should be a term equivalent to ‘phallic symbol’ but there is not” (256). Moers’ ananlysis of the origins and implications of terms like vagina, womb and Mons Veneris speaks to the complexity of female anatomy and the comparative superficiality of the words used to describe and/or recreate it. It is an ambiguous ending to say the least. A case could be made that in embracing Guitar, Milkman is enacting Pilate’s lesson of love and responsibility. Shalimar’s “knowledge” complicates such a reading; his flight was solo and resulted in a splintering of the family. Michael Awkward emphasizes Solomon’s self-interest in “‘Unruly and Let Loose:’ Myth, Ideology, and Gender in Song of Solomon.” He points out that Morrison’s use of the myth of the flying African omits “an accompanying sense of social responsibility” (483). Traditionally, the individual who possessed the secret of flight arranged a “communal escape from the site of mistreatment and oppression” (484). Solomon’s flight is solo (although he

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21.

22. 23.

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attempts to take Jake with him, he does not return when the child falls) and disrupts the community. I do not read the incident as implying that there is a lesbian quality to their relationship. Both girls respond to boys and as adults seek out heterosexual relationships (Nel with her husband, Sula with a variety of male lovers), but the strongest and most intimate emotional connection in their lives is with each other. In “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” Barbara Smith proposes that the relationship can be read as lesbian. “Despite the apparent heterosexuality of the female characters,” Smith proposes, “ . . . it works as a lesbian novel not only because of the passionate friendship between Nel and Sula, but because of Morrison’s consistently critical stance toward the heterosexual institutions of male/female relationships, marriage and the family” (9). Such a stance, however does not take into account Morrison’s criticism of all female communities; in several interviews, and through Song of Solomon, she highlights the negative affect of the missing (male) ancestor. Later in the novel Milkman will be guided to this same cave by the voice of Circe (midwife and guardian of the children Macon and Pilate). Milkman’s experience of the cave marks the (tentative) beginning of a rebirth; the chamber he emerges from is a feminine space. Morrison telegraphs Jadine’s arrested development through her last name— Childs. Stone Lips becomes a site where Latour must confront “something fearful that he has not incorporated into his waking life,” contends O’Brien. She convincingly concludes that it is “the matriarchal power of female sexuality and creativity which his patriarchal religion domesticates in the figure of the Virgin” (203). The experiment is hardly a success; at this point Latour fails to recognize (or perhaps acknowledge) the positive power of the womb.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. The contrast between Nancy’s position and that of the young child introduced at the end of the novel is striking. The child “Willa Cather” rests in her mother’s bedroom awaiting Nancy’s return. A private reunion between mother and daughter becomes a public entertainment. A privileged space of privacy (the child can access both her own bedroom and that of her mother) is transformed into a place of public performance. Despite the end of slavery, Nancy’s relationship with her mother continues to be denied private intimacy. The earlier ambiguous space Nancy occupied—sleeping in Sapphira’s doorway—is subtly reinforced. The bedroom once again articulates Nancy’s vulnerability. She is no longer prey of the invalid Sapphira or the rake Martin, but her life is at the whim of a restless child confined to a sick bed. Till offers to wait for her daughter in the bedroom, but Nancy is not consulted about the arrangement.

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Notes to Chapter Four 2. The sanctuary itself has a dual nature. Briggs interprets descriptions of the room as suggesting “the duality of an oxymoron, for Thea’s room provides safe freedom and enclosed space” (163). O’Brien identifies a similar duality in the cave room Thea later discovers in Arizona. “Hidden spaces that are not isolated enclosed spaces that are not closed—like the Southwest itself. Thea’s ‘nest’ in the cliff and the Indians’ stone city integrate opposites” (409). The rooms offer possibility and protection, but are also potentially life denying and life destroying. 3. While the study repositions St. Peter within the domestic circle, the new— separate—bedrooms isolate him in a disturbing and new way—the choice is Lillian’s. 4. The decision to accept the social roles his family expect of him, distinguishes the adult St. Peter from the “young self ” whose only connection was to the earth. 5. Even the process of becoming a mother has been contingent on the powers of another woman—Ruth requires Pilate’s help to seduce Macon and prevent him from ending the subsequent pregnancy. 6. Sapphira Colbert’s parlour is described as having such “deep-set windows” that a child could use them as a playhouse (41). Child’s play becomes a serious adult struggle in Morrison’s writings. Hiding places are mentioned in Sapphira and the Slave Girl, but they concern soldiers, not slaves. Confederate soldiers “home on leave . . . could always hide from search parties in [Mrs. Bywaters’] rambling garrets. Her house was exempt from search” (274). Fear of discovery is not a concern for those who make it to this spacious sanctuary. 7. Harriet A. Jacobs writes eloquently of the escaped slave’s experience in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Her first “safe retreat” was in the house of another slave holder; hidden under a plank in the floor she “had just room enough to bring [her] hands to [her] face to keep the dust out of [her] eyes . . .” (103). From this grave-like space she is relocated to the comparative “luxury” of a garret in her grandmother’s house. Jacobs alternately refers to it as a “hole,” “dungeon,” “wretched hiding place,” or “loophole,” but it is a relatively safe space which allows her to see and occasionally hear her children through a peep hole (114, 139, 147). Astonishingly, Jacobs occupied this “little dismal hole, almost deprived of light and air, and with no space to move . . . for nearly seven years” (148). 8. A point which throws into question Tom’s moral outrage at Roddy’s sale of the artifacts. While Tom claims disinterestedness, he too anticipated financial compensation and the “plans” he berates Roddy with are hatched in the moment (219). The cold rejection of Roddy’s plea for mercy based on his motives is Tom’s cruelest action. Jonathan Goldberg perceptively proposes that Tom’s “betrayal of Roddy is perhaps a deeper betrayal . . .—for Roddy had treated the ‘relics’ as things to be sold for the sake of his friend, and his

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10.

11.

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friend had . . . [place] the mesa and the ruins above their relationship” (137). Tom assumes the moral high road, but it is a suspect position. Herbert G. Gutman and Carol B. Stack emphasize “elastic household boundaries” in their respective studies of Black communities in America (Gutman, 468). Each author highlights the creation of extended, non-biological and biological families as survival strategies; Gutman traces the practice from the period of slavery to the early 1920s while Stack studies a particular community in the 1970s. The absence of spaces or punctuation, Jacqueline De Weever proposes, does more than “approach the psychic confusion of the novel” (403): “Individual space has disappeared as it does in the novel; the father intrudes on and violates the child’s space. The clear structure of the storybook is wrecked as Pecola’s life is wrecked” (404). Textual and sexual boundaries are obliterated. Like the character Sethe, Jacobs envisions freedom as a home for her family. Jacobs concludes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, with the lament: “the dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own” (201). Ownership of oneself is connected with ownership of a house of one’s own. Cather incorporates a similar detachment from Africa in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Only Jezebel is identified with Africa, the other slaves self-identify with Virginia. No sense of a lost legacy or home here; pride is located in Virginia. Bjork perceptively reads the “narrator’s sparse and subdued description of the Breedlove home” as “analogous to the emptiness and despair of their domestic life . . .” (36). The layout of the interior highlights both a lack of privacy (all four members of the family sleep in the same room) and a detachment from their surroundings, from each other, and from life. Lynn Scott concludes that the home is inseparable from the store. The setting “symbolizes a conflation of commercial and domestic space revealing the extent to which the Breedloves’ private lives have been thoroughly interpenetrated by market values” (15). The traditional nuclear family—Macon’s—is distorted by materialism and a lack of love, but both it and the less conventional household of women are made vulnerable by the fact that the continuity of ancestors is broken. The sensual and the spiritual coalesce in a pair of cowboy boots in My Antonia. Otto Fuchs is the proud owner of boots with “roses, and true-lover’s knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels” (11). Earthly pleasure (lover’s knots) and heavenly bodies are united. Fuchs’ aesthetic pleasure is solemn. The Bodwins are white abolitionists; as such they are symbols of both benevolence (aiding Baby Suggs) and vulnerability (they are a response to a continuing, and therefore threatening, system of brutality). The “protection” they afford is insufficient and tragedy descends on Baby Suggs’ home. In the process both the dwelling and the inhabitants are irrevocably altered.

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17. Mary Titus’ work on nineteenth century plantations reveals that “architectural readings of the layouts of famous plantations . . . note the elaborate spatial hierarchies of houses and out-buildings, which relegate food preparation . . . to buildings separate from the main house and invisible when the house is viewed from the front—the traditional viewpoint” (246). Titus further observes that layouts “echoed master/slave, mind/body hierarchies in their location of offices, kitchens, and cabins . . .” (246). Baby Suggs’ rejection of her former spatial position is therefore an act of claiming the humanity so brutally denied by her enslavement. 18. Baker proposes that the “house’s ceaseless increase [through the multiple staircases] is a testimony to its owner’s desire for expanded dominion” and “it attests the very ‘manlove’ that we are told is the ruling creed of the Peaces”—stairs in Freud’s researches represent copulation (241). Power and sexuality are proclaimed through the bizarre building which houses the Peace family. 19. Bjork interprets Eva and her house as “the antithesis to the order and continuity of Helene Wright” and her home (63). Visually this observation is accurate, but it fails to address the hidden layers of the two households. 20. The journey echoes Virginia Woolf ’s description of an interrupted walk through “Oxbridge” in which a young woman is literally placed on the right path by a Beadle. “Turf ” belongs to the men; “gravel” is the place for the women. The illustration of both physical and intellectual restrictions based upon sex parallels the MacTeer sisters’ awareness of racial divisions in the treatment of social space. 21. It is worth noting that the house was planned by Captain Forrester when he was with his first wife. Marian Forrester is inserted into a pre-existing vision of domestic bliss. 22. Chadwick-Joshua reads the city as the catalyst for Violet’s realization “that she must kill the angel in the house or in this case that Violet, the violent one if she is ever to regain not just her old self but, more importantly, her reborn self . . .” (174). While I would not dispute her point about the city, I would suggest that the “reborn self ” incorporates the empowerment of that Violet (the anti-angel in the house in my reading) and the responsibility of the domestic/social Violet (the angel in the house). 23. Beauvoir’s description of the “maniac housekeeper” waging “her furious war against dirt” is an apt summary of Mrs. Archie: Severe, preoccupied, always on the watch, she loses joie de vivre, she becomes over prudent and avaricious. She shuts out sunlight, for along with that comes insects, germs, and dust, and besides, the sun ruins silk hangings and fades upholstery. . . . She becomes bitter and disagreeable and hostile to all that lives: the end is sometimes murder. (505) In the case of Mrs. Archie, it is self-immolation.

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24. The story of Peter and Pavel throwing the bride to the wolves is an unambiguous statement about their evaluation of heterosexual relationships—she is expendable in their context. I would still categorize their household as “male,” being gay clearly challenges socially constructed expectations of masculinity, but does not negate the biological status of being male. 25. On a literal level, there are no women present in the cabin or on the Blue Mesa; the loss of Mother Eve (she slips off the canyon edge during the removal of artifacts) hints at a hovering female presence. Rafeeq O. McGiveron points out the rarely acknowledged fact that Cather renamed the Mesa Verde the Blue Mesa. The switch takes the eye from “the more prosaic green and brown earth far below” to “the sky that is viewed so unobstructedly from its high top . . .” (39). It also reconnects the orphan Tom with the “first” mother—Mary—the “sky goddess” whose “colour is blue” (Warner, 266). 26. Morrison’s concerns about the inadequacies of all female communities are not articulated by the men. If the women would keep to themselves (and not entice the women of Ruby), the men claim, there would be no conflict.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1. Quoted in Anthony Channell Hilfer’s The Revolt From the Village 1915–1930, 3, 5. 2. Morrison herself asserts that the town does sustain Sula. In an interview with Claudia Tate she explains: “I found that community to be very nurturing for Sula. There was no other place in the world she could have lived without being harmed . . . Medallion is a sustaining environment even for a woman who is very different” (130). By virtue of not persecuting Sula, the community is a positive space. 3. William Monroe interprets the emergence of this boy as a result of St. Peter’s forgetting that “Outland’s story is essentially like the Aeneid, one celebrating . . . allegiance to family, to community, and to polity” (309). The child without social ties or feelings of responsibility can only appear when “Tom disappears.” The fact that Tom does not remain on the mesa, opting to return to society, lends credence to Monroe’s reading. St. Peter’s physical and emotional detachment from his family, however, creates the necessary space for the “boy” to return. St. Peter’s idealized memory of Tom focuses on his carefree days and not his scholarly or romantic ties. 4. Perhaps equally telling is his chagrin at being relocated to a separate bedroom in the new house; separation from his wife is not an entirely pleasing prospect to St. Peter. 5. The inclusion of the Indian material has opened Cather to charges of cultural appropriation. O’Brien addresses the issue in her “Introduction” to The Song of the Lark. Initially, she was struck by “the respect and consideration

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Cather showed for Indian culture in the novel,” but subsequently O’Brien finds the treatment more problematic (xv). “Not only do Cather and her heroine take something that does not belong to them, but both are using the art of a communal (and eventually colonized) culture—which is anonymous, domestic, ritualistic—to empower an individualistic notion of the artist that is anything but anonymous” (xv-xvi). Both Thea and Cather handle the obligation of connection with respect and dignity. While Cather confessed to removing pot fragments during her Southwest trip, it is not entirely accurate to say Thea commits the same sacrilege. Thea “liked better to leave them in the dwellings where she found them,” but she does hide “a few bits . . . under the blankets . . . guiltily” (263). There is no definitive statement that she took them with her when she left. Nonetheless the pottery seems to represent a collective, anonymous art form which seems to be opposed to the individual glory Thea (and Cather) seeks. The jars Thea discovers, however, are far from uniform; individual artistry shines through: “Some of the pottery was decorated in colour . . . in graceful geometrical patterns . . . she found a crested serpent’s head . . . a broad band of white cliff-houses . . . They were scarcely conventionalized . . .” (264). Individual artistic voices speak through the pottery; perhaps they even identified their creators. Clearly my use of the term “ancestors” raises the issue of cultural appropriation. The Indians are not literally Tom Outland’s ancestors, but there is a spiritual link between the two parties (albeit tenuous and fragile) which I believe justifies a (qualified) use of the term. The argument for this kinship is perhaps stronger in the case of Thea Kronborg, but it too must be qualified. The hatred symbolized by the burning cross of the Ku Klux Klan is another possible interpretation. Both the racist organization and the mob of men project their disgust and distrust of non-members onto an emotionally charged symbol (a point raised in a discussion with Professor Elizabeth Sabiston of York University). Budick notes that Beloved appears right after Paul D’s assertion to Sethe that “We can make a life” (46). The paternity of Beloved is complicated by this moment: Paul D could be seen as drawing her into the world of the living (she had been content to cause mayhem from the spirit world prior to his entrance); Sethe had sex with the white engraver; Halle is the absent first father. Latour’s confession that finding the yellow rock is more gratifying than receiving a charitable donation might account for Vaillant’s hesitation (242). Latour’s cathedral has generated much critical debate. Critics who read the structure as in harmony with the natural setting highlight the use of stone. Ostwalt epitomizes such an approach: “spiritual experience of the sacred natural world is symbolized by the cathedral he builds from the native stone

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of the region. This is his statement on the harmonious existence that one should seek with one’s surroundings” (60). While Audrey Goodman observes that the cathedral has “organic origins, “ she also suggests that the yellow stone is linked to “the region’s earliest imperial exploration, Coronado’s search for the seven legendary cities of gold” (68, 67). The paradox is highlighted by Deborah Williams: “the cathedral seems to be one with the southwestern and French, organic and constructed . . .” (93). Cather makes a clear distinction between the impulse of European men (Latour and his architect) eager to transform the new territory and the Indian instinct to respect the existing terrain. Kit Carson is the only white man who opens himself to the lessons of the land and the Indians. Unfortunately, he uses that knowledge to hunt down the besieged Indians. Morrison, in an interview with Rosemarie K. Lester, proposes that there are distinctly gendered responses to space. Referring to her sons she observes that “they related to architecture and space differently” and concludes the “male view of the world . . . means a delight in dominion—a definite need to exercise dominion over place and people” (quoted in McKay, 47–48). However, Eva Peace’s willful exercises in architecture in Sula are in fact designed to ensure her personal dominion. In contrast, Cather’s depiction of the Navajo in Death Comes For the Archbishop emphasizes the male figure ensuring the visual integrity of the landscape. Women are not immune to the lure of dominion and men are not slaves to an imperialistic drive, in the context of my study. There is a tendency in recent literary criticism of pioneer fiction to distinguish female cultivation of the land from that of male farmers. Carol Fairbanks interprets “the relationship between women and the land” as different from the “traditional (and usually male) assumption: the land must be subdued . . . [women’s] heroism arise[s] out of their ability to work with the land” (170). O’Brien specifically reads John Bergson of O Pioneers! As wanting “to make his mark on the soil by imposing his will upon it” (434). In contrast, Alexandra “achieves her creative designs by letting them emerge from the soil . . .” (392). It is a view supported by Helen Fiddyment Levy: “Cather indicates that the stubborn Nebraska earth will yield to female nurture what if refuses to male conquest” (75). Gustafson makes a compelling counter argument. He asserts that Alexandra’s dream stems from “her father’s vision of the land . . . It is a shared dream” (152). Alexandra succeeds not because she is female, but through “her insight and good business sense” (156). It is tempting, but disingenuous to read woman as motivated by a higher purpose than man where cultivation of the land is concerned. Antonia Shimerda and Alexandra Bergson thrive on the prairie by retaining the visions of their fathers—the value of the garden and the farm. Death of the father does not disrupt the line of ancestors for either character; the absence of the father in Song of Solomon—whether by murder,

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Notes to Chapter Five business preoccupations, or a failure to build a lasting relationship—has dire consequences. Myres’ work on “Westering Women” offers a justification for Cather’s portrayal of the female pioneer. Myres concludes that “like western men, they did not completely break with tradition . . . They did enlarge the scope of woman’s place, however, and countered prevailing Eastern arguments about woman’s sphere . . .” (239). New settings required a renegotiation of gendered roles, but a radical vision of an egalitarian society did not develop with the settlement of the prairie. In fact, as David Laird notes, Alexandra “is permitted to exercise a good deal of power and authority” while her family struggles for survival (246). Once prosperity is achieved, however, she is expected to behave like a lady. Upon Carl Linstrum’s return, Alexandra’s “concerned” brothers urge her to consider the social and economic ramifications of her behaviour (111). Considering Whitman’s challenge to “masculinity” in his own (sexual ) life, there may be a subversive element to the poem. Unfortunately, such a discussion falls outside the parameters of this study (and into the murky territory of imposing biography on textual criticism). The need to reconceptualize “separate spheres” has long been a concern of feminist theorists. Friedan observes, “I am not the first feminist to realize that that either/or split is what really holds women back, and to call for restructuring not abandonment, of the home” (The Second Stage, 287). Nor is she the last; the need for a re-evaluation of the home remains. Chandler notes “the characteristic tension in American culture between the project of building and settlement and the romantic image of the homeless, rootless, nomadic hero . . .” (4). The American hero as “Displaced Person” (“an individual with no passport and no identity papers, no place he can return to . . .”) is W. M. Frohock’s provocative thesis (9). Cather and Morrison reject the representation of the house as site of imprisonment and the notion that freedom can only be found via the trail, road, or river.

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PRIMARY SOURCES Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. 1923. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. ———. Death Comes For The Archbishop. 1927. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. ———. My Antonia. 1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988. ———. O Pioneers! 1913. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994. ———. Sapphira and the Slave Girl. 1940. New York: Vintage Books, 1968. ———. The Professor’s House. 1925. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. ———. The Song of the Lark. 1915. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1991. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1998. ———. Jazz. 1992. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993. ———. Paradise. 1997. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1999. ———. Song of Solomon. 1977. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1982. ———. Sula. 1973. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1982. ———. Tar Baby. 1981. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1982. ———. The Bluest Eye. 1970. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994.

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Index

A

B

Acoma, 78 Affinity, with land, 37, 39, 132 Africa, 31, 80 Akerman, France, 10 Alcoff, Linda Martin, 5, 18, 191 Alternative terrain, 3 Amelioration, space, 111 America, myth of garden, 3, 62–63, 64, 65 America, violent origins, 12 American dream, 12–13 American fiction, challenge to definition, ix, 3, 181, 187–188 American literature, expanding landscape, 2 Ancestors; see also Communities, choice absence, 70–71, 162 importance, 153, 155 Angel in the house, 122, 138, 141 Angle/curve, masculine/feminine division, viii Anti–angel in the house, 138–139, 139–140, 140–141 Apogee, 182, 187, 188 Architecture assertion, identity, 105, 134 reconstruction, identity, 112–113 Armitage, Susan, 60 Arnaud, Noel, 1 Audience, identity, 8, 48 Awkward, Michael and Sharon P. Holland, 156, 194

Bachelard, Gaston, vii, 14–15, 65, 122–123 Background, foreground, 4, 27–28, 58 Baker, Houston A. Jr., 198 Bauman, Zygmunt, 7 Bedroom, 106, 107–108, 111–112 Beloved, spatial and temporal bridge, 32, 50 Belsey, Catherine, 9 Bergstrom, Janet, 10 Bethel, Elizabeth Rauh, 11 Between the angle and the curve, 187, 188 Birth scene, 95 Bjork, Patrick Bryce, 154, 193, 197, 198 Black Hawk, 55, 67 Blunt, Alison, 60, 191 Body, house, 121, 122 Body, landscape, viii, 3, 19, 86 Body, sacred space celebration, 169 desecration, 168–169 Boone, Daniel, 61 Bottom, the, 90–92 Bowers, Susan, 49 Boys, Jos, 184 Briggs, Cynthia K., 109, 196 Budick, Emily Miller, 33, 200 Butler, Judith, 5, 185

C Canada, 39, 47 Canyon de Chelly, 89, 94 Carden, Mary Paniccia, 61 Chadwick–Joshua, Jocelyn, 70, 198

221

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222 Chandler, Marilyn R., 12, 120–121, 136, 148, 193, 202 Chicago, 68, 154 Christian, Barbara, 37–38 Church, Soaphead, 42, 43 City dominating space, 69 paradox, 67–68, 70, 71 “City Limits, Village Values: Concepts of the Neighborhood in Black Fiction,” 32, 71, 151–152 City, presence of natural world, 30 City versus country paradigm tradition, 3, 18, 65 revision, 40, 68–69, 72 Clearing, the, 170–171 Cliff City, 87–88, 117–119, 169–170 Cologne–Brookes, Galvin, 2 Communities, choice kindred spirits, 156, 157–158, 159, 161–162 vulnerability, 160–161 Communities, conflicting, 41 Community, absence, 162–163, 163–164 Community, false, 164–165 Community, nurturing, ix, 9, 151–153, 155–156, 165 Community, oppressor, 151, 153, 154, 164, 165 Complementary space, ix Connection methods, 148 obstacles, 45 Concept of good home, challenged, 126–127, 144 Constructionist theory, 5, 18 Contrast, open territory and enclosed places, 103 Coronado, 82–83 Counter definitions, 3 Counterstories, 9 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 23 Cultural landscapes, 17

D de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, 5, 6, 18, 20, 198

Index De Weever, Jacqueline, 197 Diedrich, Maria, 12, 55 Disconnection, 10, 36 Dissenting fictions, 9 Divide, the, 34, 82 Division of labour, gendered, vii Division of space gender, vii race, 105 Dixon, Melvin, 89, 91 Dollar, J. Gerard, 159 Domestic space avoidance, 110–111 naturalized, ix Domestic sphere, viii Donovan, Josephine, 178 Doren, Carl Van, 152 Dreamscapes, 13, 31, 49, 50–53 Dreiser, Theodore, Sister Carrie, 66 Duvall, John N., 8 Dyck, Reginald, 193–194

E Eagleton, Mary, 6 Eagleton, Terry, 2 Eloe, 51, 69, 72, 97 Ermarth, Elizabeth Deeds, 6, 9 Essentialist theory, 5, 18 Ethnicity, 6 Exploitation, natural and human landscapes, 35–36, 89

F Fairbanks, Carol, 201 Felicitous space, 14–15, 28, 119; see also Bachelard Feminine landscape sensual appeal, 84–85, 92, 94 violation, 60, 74, 81 Feng, Pin–chia, 84 Ferguson, Rebecca, 32 Fischer, Mike, 11–12, 63 Fleischer, Jennifer, 10–11 Forrester, Captain, 77, 107 Foucault, Michel, 185 France, Anatole, Le Mannequin d’Osier, 99 Freud, Sigmund, 5, 19, 59, 65, 121

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Index Friedan, Betty, 104, 202 Friedman, Marilyn, 156–157 Frohock, W. M., 202 Frontier, myth, 61 Fryer, Judith, 27–28 Furman, Jan, 30 Fuss, Diana, 6

G Garden destroying, 73, 78 sheltering, 72–73, 74–77, 79–80 Garden, avoidance tactic, 76–77 Garden, slavery, 79–80 Gender definitions, 5–6, 8 redefinitions, 8, 23 Gendered space, sources, 17–21 Geographic journey disorienting, 13, 52 inspiring, 7, 43, 47 Geographic touchstones, 28 Geography, 33, 44 gender, vii–viii, 17, 22–23, 137 race, 22–23, 125–126, 137 Geography, hybrid, 3, 6, 148, 184–188 Geometrical nightmare, 13, 52 Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 64–65, 193 Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, 121 Goldberg, Jonathan, 196 Goodman, Audrey, 201 Gravesites, 172–174 Group identity, shared space, 37 Gustafson, Neil, 201 Gutheil, Emil A., 19 Gutman, Herbert G. and Carol B. Stack, 197

H Halbwachs, Maurice, 11 Hall, Stuart, 5 Hamilton, 76 Hamilton, Ed, 186 Havel, Vaclav, 7 Hayden, Dolores, 121 Herrmann, Claudine, 15 Hilfer, Anthony Channell, 152–153

223 Hogan, Michael, 126, 143–144 Home, viii emotional value, 120–124, 128–129, 133, 138, 151 refuge, 39, 124, 128, 146–147 Home, ship’s cabin, 123, 124 Homestead Act, 22 hooks, bell, 125, 165, 166 Hostile space, 15 House, landmark, 55–56, 129 House, vulnerability, 38, 126, 130 Humanesque, 29 Humanized landscape, 16, 35, 117–119, 169–170 Hybrid territory, 3, 23

I Identification through home, 127–128, 129, 130, 133, 134–136 Identification with land, 36, 83, 85–86 Identity, contingent on place, 1, 2–3, 7, 14, 27 Identity, performance, 5–8, 48 Immensity, ix, 13, 27 Immigrants, 12–13, 22 Interactions with landscape controlling, 174, 175, 176 identifying with, 177–178 Intersection of earthly and spirit worlds, 49–50, 52 Intersection of past and present, 32–33 Intimacy, ix, 13, 26 Isle des Chevaliers, 35, 36, 69

J Jacobs, Harriet A., Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 196, 197 James, William, 30–31 Janeway, Elizabeth, Man’s World, Woman’s Place: a Study in Social Mythology, 119–120 Jansen, Odile, 11 Jeffrey, Julie Roy, 180 Jerusalem, 31 Joslin, Katherine, 181 Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 192

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224 K Karush, Deborah, 181, 193 Key, symbol of possession, 142–143 Kitchen, 104–105 Kolodny, Annette, 62, 63, 192 Kroetsch, Robert, 191

L Labels limiting, 40–41, 48, 136 locating, 6 Laird, David, 202 Land, character, 4, 13 Land, lover, 34, 92–93 Land, structural feature, 30 Landmarks challenge, mainstream, 57–58 emotional effect, 13, 53, 54, 55–57, 94 Landscape, 13 definition, 16–17, 44, 59 gendering, viii, 3, 59, 87 Landscape, concretized dream, 51 Landscapes, memory, 10, 13, 27, 30–32, 51 Language repression, 10 resistance, 9, 29 Language, spatial markers, 1 Lavie, Smadar and Ted Swedenburg, 185 Leclair, Thomas, 34 Lefebvre, Henri, 15, 65, 175 Legacy of slavery, effect on home, 126 Levy, Helen Fiddyment, 201 Lewis, Sinclair, Main Street, 151–152 Linguistic isolation, loss of identity, 10 Lucenti, Lisa Marie, 158

M MacCormack, Carol, 190 Mapping identity, 7 Marx, Leo, 167–168 Massey, Doreen, 127 Maternal landscape emblem, mother, 19, 59, 87, 88, 89–90 substitute, mother, 83–84 Margin, 165, 166, 185 Marginalization, 125, 137

Index Masculine settler/feminine land, myth, 60, 61, 62, 84, 179 McGiveron, Rafeeq O., 199 McKee, Patricia, 58 Medallion, 71 Meining, D. W., 17 Michigan, 31 Midwest, 4, 13, 27 Moers, Ellen, 87, 103–104, 194 Monroe, William, 199 Moses, Cathy, 9 Morgan, Steward, 38 Movement versus confinement, 2, 14 Munro, Alice, Lives of Girls and Women, 43 My Mortal Enemy, 193 Myres, Sandra L., 202

N Nash, Roderick, 62 Nation challenge to, 12, 13 creation, 1, 2, 11 Natural rooms, 100–101 Natural space, domesticated, ix Nebraska, 28, 35, 54 Nelson, Hilde Lindemann, 9 Newman, Shelley, 63 New Mexico, 52, 109, 161 New York, 68–69, 72 Non–felicitous space, viii

O O’Brien, Sharon, 53, 145, 195, 196, 199–200 On Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art, 23–24 124, home, 56, 143–144 Ortner, Sherry, 190–191 Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan, 10, 11, 186 Ostwalt, Conrad Eugene Jr., 200–201 Outdoors, 46, 47 Outland country, 32, 119

P Panther canyon, 87, 116–117, 143, 161–162, 170 Parabolic space, 186–187

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Index Participation, reader, 24–25 Paternal landscapes, 89–90 Pathetic fallacy, 29–30; see also Ruskin Pearlman, Mickey, 2 Pepper, Andrew, 6 Perez–Torres, Rafael, 45 Personification of nature, 34, 35 Philbrick, Ann Leone, 20 Pioneer, challenge to masculine stereotype, 82–83, 180–181, 183 Place, 3–4, 13, 16, 44, 58–59 defining other, 38, 39 defining self, 40 Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 21, 45 Porteous, J. Douglas, 64, 121, 192 Possessing a home autonomy, 105, 143–144 responsibility, 142, 143 Prairie, ix, 4, 13, 27, 28 Prostitutes, geographic labels, 85–86

R Race, identity, 1, 5–6, 9 Race, treatment in American fiction, 45 Racism, spatial effects, 21–23, 38, 47, 105–107 Relph, E., 15 Remembrance communities, 10, 11 Rememory, 33 Renan, Ernest, 11 Responsibility, 118, 170, 182 Revolt from the village, 152 Reynolds, Guy, 178, 188 Rice, Herbert William, 181 Rich, Adrienne, 6, 42–43 Rigney, Barbara Hill, 34, 137 Rodrigues, Eusebio L., 32 Room, view, 109 “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” 182 Rose, Gillian, 17, 60, 125, 191 Rosowski, Susan J., 12, 34, 100 Ruby, 57, 73 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 29 Ryan, Judylyn, 41, 193 Ryna’s Gulch, 89

225 S Sacred sites definitions, 166, 167, 174 nature, 167–168, 170–171, 171–172 Salvaggio, Ruth, 3 Same sex households, 144, 145, 146 Sandusky, 78 Saposnik–Noire, Shelley, 35 Seasons, 30 Self–definition, place, 40 Self–denial, 107, 108–109, 110 Self–naming, Cather and Morrison, 8 Separate spheres division, vii–viii, ix, 17, 103–104, 119–120 resistance, 49, 104, 180, 181 Setting, vii, 4, 28, 42, 43 Shadowscapes, 13, 31 Shadows on the Rock, 193 Shands, Kerstin W., 186–187 Shared territories, ix Shiprock, 93–94 Slotkin, Richard, 61 Smith, Barbara, 195 Smith, Henry Nash, 22, 61–62, 179, 180 Social hierarchy, 129, 136 Sollors, Werner, 12, 55, 156–157 Solomon’s Leap, 89–90, 93–94 Somerville, Siobhan, B., 5 Southern settings, ix, 27, 28 Southwest, ix, 4, 13, 27, 43–44 Space, 1, 6, 9, 14–16, 22–23 Space, 115 absence, 44–46, 48, 172 combat, viii; see also Non–felicitous space Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location, 185 Spatial divisions, political dimensions, viii Squier, Susan Merrill, 65 Stepto, Robert, 4 Stillwell, Mary K., 139 Stouck, David, 63, 162 Stout, Janis P., 12 Story telling, 9, 10, 189 Study, 112, 113, 114 Subversive geography, 166 Survival sites, 115, 182

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226 Sweet Water, 51, 153, 159 Swift, John N., 194 Systems, identification, 6

Index Virginia, 35, 54, 79 Virgin soil, 2, 3

W T Tate, Claudia, 22, 28 Teacher, Elizabeth Kenworthy, 188 Textual spaces, identity, 9 Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, 12 Titus, Mary, 198 Tolkien, J. R. R., influence of setting on character, 7 Trace, Joe country label, 40 mother in landscape, 83–84; see also Womb–rooms Transplanted Southerners, 28, 41 Tropics, 4 Tuan, Yi–Fu, 190 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 61, 179

U Udall, Sharyn Rohlfsen, 29 “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro–American Presence in American Literature,” 187 Urgo, Joseph R., 2–3, 120, 121

V Vallas, Stacey, 189 Vickroy, Laurie, 96, 113 Village Values, 151–152, 155; see also Ancestors

Wald, Gayle, 5, 21–22, 184 Walker, Alice, 192–193 Warner, Marina, 98, 199 Waterscapes, 39–40 Watkins, Mel, 149 Weissberg, Liliane, 33 Welty, Eudora, 4, 37, 44 Whitebrook, Maureen, 7 Whitman, Walt, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!,” 183 Williams, Deborah, 31, 98, 201 Wilson, Elizabeth, 18, 65–66 Wilt, Judith, 188 Winters, Laura, 4 Wish, 57 Womb possibility, 20–21, 94, 95, 97–99 threat, 90–91, 95–96, 97–98 Womb–rooms, 88, 99, 116–117 Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, 112, 185, 198

Y Young, Robert, 11 Youngbear–Tibbetts, Holly, 19, 59, 124

Z Zelinsky, Wilbur, 190 Zukin, Sharon, 17, 58, 190