A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

👒 The lady suggested by the title is a Mrs. Marian Forrester, wife of Captain Forrester, a noble pioneer of a prairie town called Sweet Water. She is an exceptional woman with elegant beauty and lively spirits; gracious, warm, and kind. People respect the couple, and the boys, in particular, always praises Mrs. Forrester.

👒 One of the boys who grows up idolizing Mrs. Forrester is Niel Herbert. It is from his point of view that we witness her gradual social decline, which, at the same time represents that of the American West frontier, amidst the rising of industrial capitalism.

👒 At first I thought Niel is falling in love with Mrs. Forrester, but it turns out that it is only what she represents that charmed him: elegance, dignity, and nobleness of a lady. How sad he becomes when first witnessing Mrs. Forrester's love affair with Frank Ellinger, and later on, Ivy Peters, the coarse, vulgar businessman.

👒 Mrs. Forrester wants to reach the glorious past which she missed, and to achieve that, she is ready to sacrifice her own self. Morality, dignity, are not important anymore, but that vague and glittering thing - the American Dream!

👒 And that's essentially what this novel (novella?) is about. It is a dreamy, poetic, and charming story of the glorious past, on the brink of modernization. It has the similar quality of The Great Gatsby - in fact, Fitzgerald himself owned that this book was his great inspiration for The Great Gatsby.

👒 As always, Cather never disappoints me; her writing is calming and beautiful. It's another of my favorites.

Rating: 5 / 5