O Pioneers! | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 32 pages of analysis & critique of O Pioneers!.

O Pioneers! | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 32 pages of analysis & critique of O Pioneers!.
This section contains 8,127 words
(approx. 28 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by C. Susan Wiesenthal

SOURCE: Wiesenthal, C. Susan. “Female Sexuality in Willa Cather's ‘O Pioneers!’ and the Era of Scientific Sexology: A Dialogue between Frontiers.” Ariel 21, no. 1 (January 1990): 41-63.

In the following essay, Wiesenthal investigates the role of sexuality in O Pioneers!

Perhaps the most critical issue which immediately confronts any discussion of Willa Cather's fictional portrayal of sexuality is the nature of the relationship between the author's life and her work, between biography and art. For it is primarily on biographical bases such as Cather's adolescent rejection of femininity—her masquerade as the short-haired, boyishly-dressed ‘William Cather Jr.’—and her adult relationships with women such as Louise Pound, Isabelle McClung, and Edith Lewis, that an increasing number of critics have been led to consider her as a ‘lesbian writer.’ Although no evidence exists to indicate that any of Cather's relationships with women involved an erotic dimension, many scholars agree that, at...

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This section contains 8,127 words
(approx. 28 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by C. Susan Wiesenthal
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Critical Essay by C. Susan Wiesenthal from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.