A Thematic Study of The Song of the Lark

Abstract Initiation story is a splendid pearl in the literary history of America. As a type of fiction with the theme of characters’ progress, it is mainly to depict the process of a man’s psychological development in his series of action. Willa Cather is an eminent American fictionist in the twentieth century. Her novel The Song of the Lark describes the successful story of a girl named Thea Kronborg. It consists of the archetypal structure of initiation story: innocence—ordeal—epiphany—maturity. On the journey of Thea’s pursuit of artistic career, she undergoes frustration, sadness and depression since she, on one hand, wants to keep her self and resist social influence, but on the other hand, aspires for obtaining social acceptance. Eventually, she chooses to conform to the society and becomes a successful singer. In the meantime, she has to endure the anxiety and longings in her heart. The Song of the Lark is also a song which sings praise for female’s tenderness and firmness. In this fiction, Cather has given more human concerns to the development of women and the advancement of her nation as well.

Key Words: initiation story; The Song of the Lark; Thea Kronborg

Ⅰ Introduction Willa Cather (1873-1947) is one of those most distinguished women writers in modern American literary history. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Howells Medal from the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters. As long as we finish reading her works, we will find that she really lives up to the great reputation. Her reputation has been rising steadily through the twentieth century and her novel O Pioneers! is acclaimed as one of the greatest books that has shaped American mind

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was the first author who showed his concern for the growth of adolescents in his novels, while the emergence of initiation stories was partly attributable to another American writer, Herman Melville (1819-1891). In recent years, initiation story has become a focus in the field of criticism both in the U.S. and in China. Those critics have done some research concerning many aspects such as definition, transformation and narrative structure, etc.

This thesis will analyze Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, which gives an account of the growth of a girl who was born in a small town and eventually develops into a famous artist.

Ⅱ Thea Kronborg’s road of growth

What grips Thea’s imagination is a Jules Breton painting called “The Song of the Lark,” depicting a peasant girl standing in a field, arrested by the song of a meadowlark. The image reinforces an even more important revelation, when Dvorák reveals to Thea a link between the landscape in her memory and the musician she wants to become. From that moment she understands what she wants, and she leaves determined that “as long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for it, work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it, time after time, height after height.”

Later, enfolded in the shelter of the canyon she sheds restrictive clothing and mental debris, bathes naked in the stream at its base, naps under an Indian blanket, and opens every pore until her body becomes completely receptive. Thus poised, she suddenly recognizes the spiritual connection between the shards of ancient Indian pottery. From here on, Thea views her vessel, her body, as part of the sacred order of things. Her daily bath in the stream “comes to have a ceremonial gravity. The atmosphere of the canyon is ritualistic.”

The mature Thea readers meet in the last section is ten years older than the young woman who comes of age in Panther Canyon. She has returned from study and successful performances in Germany, and is now a reigning soprano at the Metropolitan Opera.

Ⅲ Nature of Thea Kronborg’s growth

ⅰAwareness of self

In the circle of those emotions and ideas and beliefs stands an individual’s self or identity. The development of an individual’s self originates from two sources. One is the individual’s unconsciousness which has been interpreted clearly and emphatically in Freudian theory. The other is collective unconsciousness. It refers to the primitive images and ideas preserved in the long evolutionary course of human beings.

ⅱ Common factors of nemo in The Song of the Lark

Thea Kronborg, in The Song of the Lark, has a ministerial father. Her life is inevitably influenced by her religious background. In her daily life, Thea, together with her brothers and sister, has to observe religious proprieties. On Sunday, they always head for Sunday School. The other town fellows say that to see them is like watching a military drill. Not only is their communal life definitely ordered by religion, but every individual has to devote some time for it. Thea has to sing in church every Sunday morning and give up one night a week to choir practice. However, on part of her ministerial father, it’s not enough. She is required to play the organ and lead the singing at prayer-meeting of Wednesday nights. Thea’s life is closely associated with religion because of the strong religious atmosphere around her. Her father is a priest. Her mother never questions revelation and her convictions. In addition, language plays an important part. If Thea did something against the sense of propriety, people neighborhood would gossip here and there. In this way, Thea gradually develops her religious consciousness. By means of suggestion and infection of feelings and views, and the magic power of language, individuals acquire the collective psychology. In the sense of religion, people obtain sort of identification to the society.

ⅲ Conflicts between self and nemo

Thea Kronborg’s early experiences of simple, plain life in Moonstone and her preference for beautiful nature never leave her mind. Those romantic sentiments about life are hidden inwardly and comfort her on the uneven road which her nemo urges her to walk on. On her thirteenth birthday, Thea wanders for a long while about the sand ridges, her favorite place, picking up crystals and looking into the yellow prickly-pear blossoms with their thousand stamens. Looking at the sand hills, she wishes she were a sand hill, yet she knows that she’s going to leave them all behind some day. (Cather, 80) The conflict between nature attachment and career pursuit is always accompanying her and intensified on an unexpected occasion. Once in Chicago she goes to a concert. When the first movement ends, Thea is too much excited to know anything except that she wants something desperately.

“She knew that what she wanted was exactly that. Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the things that wakened and chirped in the early morning; the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeasurable yearning of all flat lands. There was home in it, too; first memories, first mornings long ago; the amazement of a new soul in a new world; a soul new and yet old, that had dreamed something despairing, something glorious, in the dark before it was born; a soul obsessed by what it did not know, under the cloud of a past it could not recall.” (Cather, 200)

This is the first time the conflict strikes her mind. A soul yearns for the past natural life but is compelled to dream for life in a completely new world. Sojourn in Panther Canyon, to some degree, satisfies the self dwelling inside. The old canyon even helps her temporarily released from the enslaving desire to get on in the world. (Cather, 297) However, the temptation of the outside world is not easy to be resisted. Later she becomes a famous singer. Even though she succeeds, she can’t help pondering how good it would be to sink into peace, to cut the nerve that keeps one struggling, that pulls one on and on. (Cather, 381) She reminds of a freedom that is no more: blue, golden mornings long ago, when she used to waken with a burst of joy at recovering her precious self and her precious world. (Cather, 428)

Ⅳ Conclusion

The Song of the Lark is a typical initiation story. Its protagonist, Thea Kronborg, develops from an innocent girl to a mature woman by overcoming various hardships and frustrations both in her career and in her mind. She draws on the inherited memory of the “longer” past—the pottery jars of the Indian women. Thus, Thea is sustained by the past memories and mysterious nature at each phase of her psychological and professional progress. This, actually, accords with Thea’s self and nature. Her innermost is always expecting a calling from the past and the nature. However, she pursues social acceptance and measures her value by the outward standard.

In conclusion, Thea’s uniqueness lies in the aspect that her progress is a conflicting process between her self and nemo from autonomy to socialization.

Notes

[1] 郭晶英.探析凯瑟的精神世界--论对比在威拉.凯瑟边疆小说中的运用[J]. 哈尔滨学院学报2007.5.vol28(5):93-96

[2] 丁莹莹.The Heritage of Willa Cather [J] Read and Write Periodical. 2009.4vol. 6 (4):8-9

[3] 邓江兰.Subversion of the Traditional Gender Roles in Willa Cather's Fiction.

[4] 吕东方. A Gender Study of Willa Cather's the Song of the Lark and a Lost Lady

[5] 赵瑛华.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: the Artist Heroine in the Song of the Lark

willa cather--the song of the lark