SOURCE: Schneider, Sister Lucy, C. S. J. “Willa Cather's Early Stories in the Light of Her ‘Land-Philosophy.’” Midwest Quarterly 9 (1967): 75–94.

In the following essay, Schneider discusses Cather's notion of the value of land as depicted in her short fiction.

In Willa Cather's literary love affair with the land as manifested in her fiction with a Midwestern setting, it is helpful to suggest three stages, roughly corresponding to the periods 1892-1912, 1913-1918, and 1922-1947. Although in general there is adequate and sometimes abundant evidence to support a theory of Miss Cather's developing attitude toward the land, still when one examines the whole sweep of her fiction, he finds a basic continuity in her commitment to the land as a value in itself and as a touchstone of value. That commitment, which at first is only latent, progressively becomes ever more overt and explicit.

With this qualification in mind, one can...