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Hard Punishments

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Hard Punishments, also sometimes referred to as Cather's Avignon story,[1]: 162 [2] is the final, unpublished, and since lost novel by Willa Cather, almost entirely destroyed following her death in 1947. It is set in medieval Avignon.

Analysis

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Perhaps her only book entirely contained in the Old World,[3] Hard Punishments was set in medieval Avignon.[4] While little is known about the plot, this final novel of hers[5][6]: 127  is centered on its two main protagonists, who have both been injured: André has had his tongue cut out for blasphemy, and Pierre's hands have been maimed as a result of his theft[7] by hanging him by his thumbs.[8] Of the surviving fragments, sin and reconciliation are major themes,[9] and specifically, the religious redemption and conversion of André to Catholicism is a key component.[7] For this reason, it is believed that the text was intended to be one of "cruelties" and "splendours".[6]: 131  But even though violence and cruelty was apparently a significant part of the book, Cather withheld its description from the child protagonists and from the reader.[10] A highly-ordered, biblically literalist state is the center of critique.[6]: 131  Scholar John P. Anders understands Cather's preoccupation with fourteenth-century blasphemy as "appropriately allegorical and a fitting coda" to Cather's own sexual identity,[1]: 139  which many understand to be lesbian.[11][12][13][14][15]

The story may have been inspired by a trip she took to Avignon in 1902,[4] or a French trip she took in 1935.[7][6]: 152  Either way, the novel was written between the 1940 completion of Sapphira and the Slave Girl and the death of her brother, Roscoe Cather, in 1945.[16] It is a continuation of her end-of-life focus on writing about landscapes outside of the Great Plains.[17][18]

Destruction and recovery

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Following Cather's death in 1947, her lifelong partner Edith Lewis complied with her wish and destroyed almost all of the manuscript for the novel.[19] This decision—to have Lewis destroy the manuscript, instead of Cather destroying it herself—suggests she intended to finish the novel before she died.[6]: 131  While only one fragment was originally thought to have survived Lewis's burning,[20][21] additional fragments were obtained from Cather's nephew's estate following his death in 2011.[22] These additional fragments confirm that not only was Cather moved by French Catholicism, but that it had such a pronounced importance on her that Hard Punishments is substantially distinct from her other Catholic novels, Shadows on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop.[23]

References

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  1. ^ a b Anders, John P. (1999). Willa Cather's sexual aesthetics and the male homosexual literary tradition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803210531.
  2. ^ Five stories by Willa Cather. New York: Vintage Books. 1956. pp. 175, 177, 197, 211.
  3. ^ Thacker, Robert; Palleau-Papin, Françoise (2010). "Introduction: Translating Cather's worlds". Cather Studies. 8.
  4. ^ a b Nettels, Elsa (2002). "Wharton and Cather". American Literary Scholarship. 2002 (1): 119–135. doi:10.1215/00659142-2002-1-119. ISSN 1527-2125. S2CID 201772856.
  5. ^ Jewell, Andrew (2017). "Why obscure the record?: The psychological context of Willa Cather's ban on letter publication". Biography. 40 (3): 399–424. doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0031. ISSN 0162-4962. JSTOR 26405083. S2CID 165974717.
  6. ^ a b c d e Nelson, Robert James (1988). Willa Cather and France: In search of the lost language. Urbana. ISBN 9780252015021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ a b c Murphy, John J. (2003). "Sacred places along Cather's route to Avignon". Religion & Literature. 35 (2/3): 29–47. ISSN 0888-3769. JSTOR 40059913.
  8. ^ Collins, Jack (1988–1989). "The literary endeavor of Willa Cather". Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. 32–33: 37.
  9. ^ Curtin, William M. (1975). "Willa Cather and 'the varieties of religious experience'". Renascence. 27 (3): 115–123. doi:10.5840/renascence197527313.
  10. ^ Nettels, Elsa (2007). "Violence and childhood in Cather's fiction". In Urgo, Joseph; Skaggs, Merrill (eds.). Violence, the arts, and Willa Cather. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 80. ISBN 9780838641576.
  11. ^ Ammons, Elizabeth. "Cather and the new canon: "The Old Beauty" and the issue of empire". Cather Studies. 3.
  12. ^ Homestead, Melissa J. (2021). "Introduction". The only wonderful things : the creative partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190652876.
  13. ^ O'Brien, Sharon (1984). "'The thing not named': Willa Cather as a lesbian writer". Signs. 9 (4): 576–599. doi:10.1086/494088. ISSN 0097-9740. JSTOR 3173612. PMID 12862076. S2CID 29754957.
  14. ^ Homestead, Melissa J. (2015). Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, and the historiography of lesbian sexuality. Vol. 10. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1d98c6j.5. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  15. ^ Woods, Carly S.; Ewalt, Joshua P.; Baker, Sara J. (August 2013). "A matter of regionalism: Remembering Brandon Teena and Willa Cather at the Nebraska History Museum". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 99 (3): 341–363. doi:10.1080/00335630.2013.806818. S2CID 144497410.
  16. ^ Stouck, David (1973). "Willa Cather's last four books". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 7 (1): 41–53. doi:10.2307/1345052. ISSN 0029-5132. JSTOR 1345052.
  17. ^ Reynolds, Guy (25 March 2003). "The politics of Cather's regionalism: Margins, centers and the Nebraskan Commonwealth". Presentations, Talks, and Seminar Papers -- Department of English.
  18. ^ Zabel, Morton Dauwen (1957). Craft and character: Texts, method, and vocation in modern fiction. Viking Press. p. 265.
  19. ^ Homestead, Melissa (2011). The encyclopedia of twentieth-century fiction. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 490. ISBN 9781405192446.
  20. ^ Garvelink, Lisa Bouma (2005). Willa Cather: the letters and novels of a romantic modernist. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University. p. 249.
  21. ^ "University of Virginia buys three rare books". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, NY. United Press International. 26 June 1981. p. 8C.
  22. ^ "Part of unfinished Cather novel added to archives". Deseret News. Associated Press. 12 May 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
  23. ^ Murphy, John J. (2011). "Toward completing a triptych: The Hard Punishments fragments". Willa Cather Newsletter & Review. 55 (2): 2–8.
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