The Best Years (story)

The Best Years is a short story by Willa Cather, first published after her death in the collection The Old Beauty and Others in 1948.[1] It is her final work,[2] and was intended as a gift to her brother, Roscoe Cather,[3][4] who died as it was being written.[5] Set in Nebraska and the northeastern United States,[6][7] the story itself traces the response of Lesley Ferguesson's family to her death in a snowstorm over a period of twenty years.[8][9]

The short story carries images or "keepsakes" from each of her twelve published novels and the stories in Obscure Destinies.[10] In keeping with her own literary tradition, the story has been described as being steeped in a "sense of place", where "land and physical realities" work alongside (both influencing and being influenced by) the characters and their emotions.[8][11] The story also deals with what Cather described as the "accords and antipathies" of family relationships, including those between older and younger generations,[12][13][14][15] and the feelings of loss that accompany these relationships.[16][17][18] In doing so, it has been described as her "final achievement" in pursuing the mystery genre,[19] and as "a rich portrait" by scholar Ann Romines.[20] For example, it was noted as "richer in domestic feeling than anything else she ever wrote".[21] At the same time, this final story of Cather's has been dismissed by some scholars as "a slackening into self-indulgence",[22] "minor",[23] "bad" and centered on "sentimental" "self-pity",[24] or outright ignored.[8]

The story draws heavily on Cather's own life,[25][26] among the most autobiographical stories she wrote.[27][28] Her friend and teacher, Evangeline "Eva" King, is a model for the character Evangeline Knightly.[29][12] According to Cather, after she moved with her family to Red Cloud, Nebraska, King, as a principal of the high school, was "the first person who interviewed the new county pupil" and "was the first person whom I ever cared a great deal for outside of my own family."[30] It has also been suggested that her brother, James Cather, served as a model for the character of Bryan Ferguesson; similarly, her brother John "Jack" Cather may be the basis for Vincent Ferguesson,[31] and Roscoe Cather is Hector.[5] Her own childhood home—in particular, the attic[32]—is also depicted in the story, largely as small and overcrowded.[33][34]

While much of Cather's writing has been described as male-centered, "The Best Years" continues her end-of-life tradition of exploring mother-daughter relationships through the lens of women, rather than men, with careful use of a female protagonist.[35]

References
  1. Gerber, Philip L. (1995). Willa Cather (Rev. ed.). New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 75. ISBN 080574035X.
  2. Cather, Willa (2009). Youth and the Bright Medusa: The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. University of Nebraska Press.
  3. Brown, Marion Marsh (1980). Only one point of the compass : Willa Cather in the Northeast (1st ed.). [Danbury, CT]: Archer Editions Press. p. 128. ISBN 0890970173.
  4. Burgess, Cheryll (1990). "Cather's Homecomings". Willa Cather : family, community, and history (the BYU symposium). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Humanities Publications Center. p. 52. ISBN 0842522999.
  5. Lee, Hermione (1989). Willa Cather : double lives (1st American ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. p. 372. ISBN 0394537033.
  6. Brienzo, Gary (1994). Willa Cather's transforming vision : New France and the American Northeast. Selinsgrove [Pa.]: Susquehanna University Press. p. 95. ISBN 0945636660.
  7. Poore, Charles (2003). "The Last Stories of Willa Cather". In Reynolds, Guy (ed.). Willa Cather : critical assessments (2 ed.). Mountfield, East Sussex: Helm Information. p. 60.
  8. Bush, Sargent (Spring 1968). ""The Best Years": Willa Cather's Last Story and its Relation to Her Canon". Studies in Short Fiction. 5 (3): 269.
  9. Harvey, Sally Peltier (1995). Redefining the American dream : the novels of Willa Cather. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University. p. 3. ISBN 0838635571.
  10. Skaggs, Merrill Maguire (2007). "Icons and Willa Cather". Cather Studies. 7.
  11. O'Brien, Sharon (1997). Willa Cather : the emerging voice : with a new preface. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0674953223.
  12. Woods, Lucia (1973). Willa Cather: a pictorial memoir. University of Nebraska Press. p. 102.
  13. Murphy, John J. (1982). "Willa Cather and Catholic Themes". Western American Literature. 17 (1): 53. doi:10.1353/wal.1982.0045.
  14. Nichols, David K. (December 2012). "Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass and Diana Schaub (eds), What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story Speech and Song: Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011. 790 pp. $35. ISBN: 978–1610170062". Society. 49 (6): 567–570. doi:10.1007/s12115-012-9605-1.
  15. Jackson, Joseph Henry (September 22, 1948). "Bookman's Notebook". Los Angeles Times (II). p. 5.
  16. Bennett, Mildred R.; Rosowski, Susan J. (1984). "Willa Cather Today An Introduction". eat Plains Quarterly. 4 (4): 211–212.
  17. Murphy, John J. (2006). "William to Willa, Courtesy of Sarah: Cather, Jewett, and Howellsian Principles". American Literary Realism. 38 (2): 145–159. ISSN 1540-3084.
  18. Ugo, Joseph R.; Skaggs, Merrill Maguire, eds. (2007). Violence, the arts, and Willa Cather. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 71. ISBN 0838641571.
  19. Murphy, John J. (1992). "Willa Cather and the Literature of Christian Mystery". Religion & Literature. 24 (3): 41. ISSN 0888-3769.
  20. Romines, Ann (1996). "Her Mortal Enemy's Daughter: Cather and the Writing of Age". Cather Studies. 3.
  21. Wagenknecht, Edward (1994). Willa Cather. New York: Continuum. pp. 156–157. ISBN 0826406076.
  22. Murphy, John J. (1992). "Willa Cather: A Study of the Short Fiction by Loretta Wasserman". Studies in American Fiction. 20 (1): 124–125. doi:10.1353/saf.1992.0018.
  23. Grumbach, Doris (December 1984). "A study of the small room in the professor's house". Women's Studies. 11 (3): 327–346. doi:10.1080/00497878.1984.9978620.
  24. Randall, John Herman (1960). The landscape and the looking glass; Willa Cather's search for value. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 357.
  25. Thurin, Erik Ingvar (1990). The humanization of Willa Cather : classicism in an American classic. Lund: Lund University Press. p. 357. ISBN 0862382394.
  26. Quirk, Tom (1990). Bergson and American culture : the worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 179. ISBN 0807818801.
  27. Pers, Mona (1976). "Repetition in Willa Cather's Early Writings : Clues to the Development of an Artist". American Studies in Scandinavia. 8 (2): 55–66.
  28. Fryer, Judith (1986). Felicitous space : the imaginative structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 249. ISBN 0807841358.
  29. Bohlke, L. Brent (1986). Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters. 1909: RED CLOUD: Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.CS1 maint: location (link)
  30. Cather, Willa. "Edwin J. Overing, Jr. (April 30, 1909) | Willa Cather Archive". cather.unl.edu. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  31. March, John (1993). A reader's companion to the fiction of Willa Cather. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 262–263. ISBN 0313287678.
  32. Synnott, Kevin A. (1994). "Defining Community in "Jack-a-Boy"and "The Best Years". Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. XXXVIII (3): 41.
  33. BENNETT, MILDRED R. (1982). "THE CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER". Great Plains Quarterly. 2 (4): 204–209. ISSN 0275-7664.
  34. Kraft, Stephanie (1979). No castles on Main Street : American authors and their homes. Chicago: Rand McNally. p. 98. ISBN 0528818287.
  35. O'Brien, Sharon (1984). ""The Thing Not Named": Willa Cather as a Lesbian Writer". Signs. 9 (4): 596. ISSN 0097-9740.
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