SOURCE: Wasserman, Loretta. “Part 1: The Short Fiction.” In Willa Cather: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 3–78. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

In the following essay, Wasserman surveys Cather's short fiction.

Initial Bearings and the Question of Modernism

To describe the working habits of Professor St. Peter, the writer-historian in her novel The Professor's House, Willa Cather drew on an extended simile: “Just as, when Queen Mathilde was doing the long tapestry now shown at Bayeux,—working her chronicle of the deeds of knights and heroes,—alongside the big pattern of dramatic action she and her women carried the little playful pattern of birds and beasts that are a story in themselves.”¹ This fanciful image of parallel paths serves for Cather's own writing as well—her novels being “the big pattern” for which she is best known, and her short stories “the little playful pattern.” The comparison holds if not...