SOURCE: “Cather's Creative Women and DuMaurier's Cozy Men: The Song of the Lark and Trilby,” Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Spring, 1994, pp. 27-37.

In the following excerpt, Titus discusses how Willa Cather's Song of the Lark is indebted to Du Maurier's Trilby in its portrayal of male and female characters.

… In its sustained attention to male authority and use of masculine approbation, The Song of the Lark represents more a continuity with than a break from Willa Cather's early writing. Although the novel traces the achievement of a woman artist, it does so from a masculine point of view, moving from male spectator to male spectator, exploring as much the critical acumen and communal relations of these men as it does the heroine's ascent. In fact the novel is indebted to a particular portrait of a woman artist and her male admirers that Willa Cather enthusiastically reviewed...