Date of Award
Fall 12-2011
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Audrey Goodman
Second Advisor
Dr. Nancy Chase
Third Advisor
Dr. Mark Noble
Abstract
Willa Cather's 1913 novel, O Pioneers! concludes with an unexpected moment of extreme violence as two young lovers, Emil Bergson and Marie Shabata, are murdered by Marie's husband in a mulberry orchard. Cather's novel is almost wholly devoted to the psychological interior of the protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, thereby rendering this violent interruption more dynamic as it essentially undercuts the generally lulling interiority of the narration. My interest here is to examine this strange moment of violence and Alexandra's subsequent forgiveness of Frank for the murder of her brother and his own wife through the theoretical paradigms of René Girard, Jacques Derrida, and Slavoj Žižek.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/2192751
Recommended Citation
Hobson, Jordan F., "Willa Cather's O Pioneers!: Violence and Modernist Aesthetics." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2011.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/2192751