SOURCE: Petry, Alice Hall. “Harvey's Case: Notes on Cather's ‘The Sculptor's Funeral.’” South Dakota Review 24, no. 3 (autumn 1986): 108–16.

In the following essay, Petry locates the meaning of the story “The Sculptor's Funeral” in the protagonist's homosexuality.

The fictional works of Willa Cather that have always enjoyed substantial critical attention and popular acclaim are her best-known novels: O Pioneers!, My Antonia, The Professor's House, and Death Comes For the Archbishop. But her fine short stories such as “Neighbor Rosicky,” “Paul's Case,” and “The Sculptor's Funeral” have generated significantly less interest. Surely one reason for the dearth of responsible scholarly attention paid to these short works is that critics and readers too often take them at face value, imposing upon them preconceived and rather superficial interpretations which brush past their thematic and technical complexities. A case in point is “The Sculptor's Funeral,” which has generally been dismissed lightly as “apprentice work...