Wright Morris Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Bruce Allen

Critical Essay by Bruce Allen

A summary description of [Plains Song: For Female Voices] suggests that this sophisticated "regionalist" has forsaken the impressionistic visual emphases that distinguish his best fiction (The Works of Love, The Field of Vision, Ceremony in Lone Tree), for a more conventionally narrative picturing of life in Nebraska's "middle Western plains"; the method, let's say, of Conrad Richter or Willa Cather….

We infer that this new tide of "womanly independence" offers a satisfying culmination to the long-unrewarded labors of Cora Atkins and her descendants. Yet we must suspect irony—when museum replicas of extinct creatures provoke speculation on "the future of man in a world of women"; when Morris does not resist slyly caricaturing a no-nonsense vanguard feminist with no use for men. I think this novel is saying that the way women have changed is only part of a fabric of overall change; and that, in saying so, it makes the...
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