1. What is the historical background of the novel? Cather based the story on her memory of the Garbers of Red Cloud, Nebraska. Silas Garber (1833-1905) had been a captain in the Union army and a builder for the Burlington railroad. He was a founder of the town of Red Cloud, president of the Farmer’s …
Willa Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley Virginia on December 7, 1873, to Charles Fectigue Cather and Mary Virginia Boak, the oldest of seven children. When she was nine, her family moved to her grandfather Cather’s farm in Nebraska where she grew up with many pioneering neighbors, French, Swedish, and Bohemian. Later the …
If she merely bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal relation. Something about her took hold of one in a flash; one became acutely conscious of her, of her fragility and grace, of her mouth which could say so much without words; of her eyes, lively, laughing, intimate, nearly always a …
Relationship to place, to the land, is an important theme in Cather’s work, regardless of where the story is set—Nebraska, Virginia, New Mexico, or Colorado. She had a special love for the prairies, having grown up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, fictionalized as Sweet Water in A Lost Lady. The Forrester house (based on the Silas …
After Captain Forrester has a stroke and is in his last days, walking only with canes and not speaking very well, his only joy is to sit in his rose garden and watch the shadow move slowly across the sun-dial. Mrs. Forrester explains to Niel that he is not senile, but she cannot understand his …
George Adams George Adams is the polite son of a gentleman rancher from Massachusetts, and is Niel’s friend. He is the one elected to speak to Mrs. Forrester by the other boys because his family visits the Forresters. Mrs. Beasley Mrs. Beasley, the town telephone operator, overhears Marian’s call to Frank Ellinger and spreads rumors …
Summary of Chapter IXThe Judge is better, and Niel plans to go back to school at the end of summer, but he is melancholy about saying good by to Sweet Water forever. It’s the end of his youth, and the end of the pioneer era, the sunset of which he had only glimpsed. He resents …
A month later Marian comes to the Judge’s office wearing new clothes in a good mood and begs Niel to come to her dinner party. It will be all young people. He doesn’t want to because Ivy Peters will be there, but he gives in.Ivy acts the host, pouring cocktails, and his sister helps Mrs. …
Summary of Chapter VIIIt is now April, and Niel has stayed on to take care of the Judge’s business, for his uncle had been ill with rheumatic fever. Mr. Orville Ogden, Constance’s father, comes to the office, and says what a difference it has made with Daniel Forrester gone. He has stopped off between trains …
Summary of Chapter VIThe Captain dies in December and news goes out on the telegraph. Flowers and telegrams come but few of his old railroad friends attend his funeral. His only two pallbearers are Judge Pommeroy and Dr. Dennison. On the morning of the funeral, Adolph Blum knocks at the kitchen door in his old …
