SONG OF THE LARK

SONG OF THE LARK Review

I am really shocked at the number of reviewers who criticize Thea, our heroine, for being selfish and unlikable--many of these reviewers women. The women's movement has a long way to go, I see, before women who pursue something that they want aren't subject to censure. In our culture we rarely have a problem with men who act passionately in the pursuit of their dreams, but we still (in 2009) don't allow women the same freedom. I'm sure that Willa Cather felt these complaints in her own life, but thank goodness she persevered in spite of them to write such an honest account of what it really takes to pursue and achieve excellence. If we think that being an artist of renown is easy, we are foolish. However, it seems that some readers are put off by the truth and would prefer the conventional story of the happy ending achieved with only minimal pain and sacrifice with the heroine acting constantly in a nice fashion. I saw the same criticisms for The Gathering, a recent Booker prize, about a woman reevaluating the happiness of her own life after the death of her brother. "Self -absorbed" and "selfish" were what some critics said of the main character because she had the audacity to question whether she was happy in her marriage.

SONG OF THE LARK Overview

Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone. His offices were in the Duke Block, over the drug store. Larry, the doctor's man, had lit the overhead light in the waiting-room and the double student's lamp on the desk in the study. The isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner were aglow, and the air in the study was so hot that as he came in the doctor opened the door into his little operating-room, where there was no stove. The waiting room was carpeted and stiffly furnished, something like a country parlor. The study had worn, unpainted floors, but there was a look of winter comfort about it. The doctor's flat-top desk was large and well made; the papers were in orderly piles, under glass weights. Behind the stove a wide bookcase, with double glass doors, reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was filled with medical books of every thickness and color. On the top shelf stood a long row of thirty or forty volumes, bound all alike in dark mottled board covers, with imitation leather backs.

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