A Lost Lady

by Willa Cather

Book Overview

A Lost Lady is the portrait of a frontier woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them.

To the people of Sweet Water, a fading railroad town on the Western plains, Mrs. Forrester is the resident aristocrat, at once gracious and comfortably remote. To her aging husband she is a treasure whose value increases as his powers fail. To Niel Herbert, who falls in love with her as a boy and becomes her confidant...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679728872
• ISBN13: 9780679728870
• Release Date: June 1990
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

LOST TO POSTERITY...

This is a simply written but thematically complex, metaphoric story, replete with subtle nuances. The events that transpire are seen primarily through the eyes of a boy who comes of age, a contrivance that the author successfully employed in her best selling classic, "My Antonia". Here, it is no less successful. Through the eyes of Neil Herbert, who lives in Sweet Water, a prospective railroad hub on the Western plains in one of the prairie states, the reader gets to know Marian Forrester. She is the much younger, envied wife of one of the town's more prominent and wealthier citizens, Captain Daniel Forrester, a former railroad contractor. As Neil grows into a man, his adoration of the lovely Mrs. Forrester undergoes a change. He sees her fall from the pedestal from where he and all the townspeople have placed her and sees her, really sees her, warts and all, for the first time, when he discovers her involved in an unexpected peccadillo. It comes as a shock to him that she may not be all that she seems to be. Still, his life is closely entwined with hers, as his uncle, with whom he lives, is Captain Forrester's personal attorney and of the same social standing in this socially circumscribed backwater. Just as Neil's perception of Mrs. Forrester begins to change in his eyes, so do the fortunes of the town and that of Captain Forrester. As Mrs. Forrester physically deteriorates under the strain of the vicissitudes of fate, so do the town and its surrounding environs. As she revives, leaving behind her old values and adopting new ones that are anathema to those who respect the traditional ones, her revival parallels changes in the town itself, as the old makes way for the new. These changes also parallel the shifts occurring on the American frontier, as social mores and personal values undergo a change, and those stalwart pioneer values give way to new ones. Beautifully descriptive of a bygone era and laconic in its pace, this is most certainly a novel to be savored. Fans of the author will especially enjoy it.

LOST TO POSTERITY...

This is a simply written but thematically complex, metaphoric story, replete with subtle nuances. The events that transpire are seen primarily through the eyes of a boy who comes of age, a contrivance that the author successfully employed in her best selling classic, "My Antonia". Here, it is no less successful. Through the eyes of Neil Herbert, who lives in Sweet Water, a prospective railroad hub on the Western plains in one of the prairie states, the reader gets to know Marian Forrester. She is the much younger, envied wife of one of the town's more prominent and wealthier citizens, Captain Daniel Forrester, a former railroad contractor. As Neil grows into a man, his adoration of the lovely Mrs. Forrester undergoes a change. He sees her fall from the pedestal from where he and all the townspeople have placed her and sees her, really sees her, warts and all, for the first time, when he discovers her involved in an unexpected peccadillo. It comes as a shock to him that she may not be all that she seems to be. Still, his life is closely entwined with hers, as his uncle, with whom he lives, is Captain Forrester's personal attorney and of the same social standing in this socially circumscribed backwater. Just as Neil's perception of Mrs. Forrester begins to change in his eyes, so do the fortunes of the town and that of Captain Forrester. As Mrs. Forrester physically deteriorates under the strain of the vicissitudes of fate, so do the town and its surrounding environs. As she revives, leaving behind her old values and adopting new ones that are anathema to those who respect the traditional ones, her revival parallels changes in the town itself, as the old makes way for the new. These changes also parallel the shifts occurring on the American frontier, as social mores and personal values undergo a change, and those stalwart pioneer values give way to new ones. Beautifully descriptive of a bygone era and laconic in its pace, this is most certainly a novel to be savored. Fans of the author will especially enjoy it.

As brilliant as it is short

In the opening sentence of this short novel, Cather describes Sweet Water, the Nebraska town in which it takes place, as "so much grayer today" than it was a generation or so before, when the story takes place. When she wrote those words in 1923, she couldn't possibly have known how prophetic or poignant they would be today, as that part of the country has continued to lose population and become dotted with ghost towns in the decades since then. But sad as that may be, it only adds to the brilliance of this story of times that changed and a community that didn't keep up with the changes. As per usual for Cather, her heroine is seen mostly through the eyes of a young male character, about whom we know less in the end than we do about the woman he tells of. Taking place toward the end of the nineteenth century, it's a coming of age story for the both of them and for the land they call home, and, one could argue, for America at large. (Subtlety always was among Cather's strongest points; it's never easy to tell for certain whether her stories really are only about individuals or whether they're intended as an allegory for the loss of her beloved Midwestern frontier.) As the times change, so does the place of her protagonist, Mrs. Forrester, in the insular community due to some circumstances she can't control and some she can but won't. Like the title itself, the story ultimately leaves it up to us to decide whether she is ultimately better or worse off at the end than at the beginning and whether her fate reflects poorly on her friends and neighbors or herself, or both. The one certainty is a loss of youthful exuberance on the part of the town as a whole, which Cather paints vividly as a bustling young community at first and a wounded, declining one not long thereafter. We're left on our own to decide what it all says about Mrs. Forrester, her generation, women in society as a whole, and Cather's own opinions about it all. It's not easy to leave so much ambiguity without leaving the reader frustrated, but remarkably, that's just what happens here.

Homeless on the Range

This book is from Willa Cather's middle period of writing -- between My Antonia and Death Comes to the Archbishop. This may be the least known but best portion of her output.As does My Antonia, The Lost Lady pictures the American frontier in the middle west and its closing due to urbanization, the demise of the pioneer spirit, and commercialization.Together with its picture of the changing of the West, the book is a coming of age novel of a special sort and a portrait of a remarkable, because human and flawed, woman.As with many of Cather's works the story is told by a male narrator, Neil Herbert. We see him from adolescence as an admirer of, and perhaps infatuated by Marian Forrester, the heroine and the wife of a former railroad magnate now settled on a large farm in South Dakota. Neil matures and leaves to go to school in the East. We see his idea of Ms. Forrester change as he learns that there is both more and less to her than the glittering self-assured woman that meets his young eyes.The book is also the story of Marian herself, of her marriage, her self-assuredness, and her vulnerabilty. She is independent and a survivor and carries on within herself through harsh times and difficult circumstances, including the change in character of her adopted home in the midwest.This is a tightly written, thoughtful American novel.

Subtle and graceful

Like the majority of Cather's works, "A Lost Lady" immediately draws readers into its straight-forward narrative, and brings otherwise unremarkable characters to life with very concisely-worded descriptions. This novel tells the story of Marian Forrester, the wife of a much-older former railroad construction manager living in a small town in the Great Plains. Her beauty, polite reserve and the fact that she is from California make her a magnet for attention to the people of this small town. Most of the story is told through the eyes of Neil Herbert, a young man who has admired Mrs. Forrester from near and afar since his boyhood. I believe that the book's title refers more to Neil's perception of Mrs. Forrester as being somehow lost rather than a reflection of the actual situation, since Mrs. Forrester proves herself unexpectedly resourceful in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting aspect oft his rather too-short novel is the skillful way that Cather integrates her themes and leitmotivs: there's Cather's well-known fixation with the closing of the pioneering era of the American prairies, as well as her rather subtle portrayal of racism, as seen in the German immigrant boys who "know their place." This novel is definitely among Cather's better works of fiction.