Review of \u3ci\u3eIsolation and Masquerade: Willa Cather\u27s Women\u3c/i\u3e By Frances W. Kaye and \u3ci\u3eWilla Cather\u3c/i\u3e By Sharon O\u27Brien
In her introduction to Isolation and Masquerade Frances Kaye immediately establishes her disagreement with Sharon O\u27Brien\u27s views of Willa Cather as they appear in O\u27Brien\u27s 1987 work, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. O\u27Brien\u27s 1995 book was written for the Chelsea House young adult Gay Men and Lesbians series, but though this work, unlike the 1987 book, takes the writer into her last days, O\u27Brien\u27s perspective on Cather\u27s accomplishments is essentially no different from what she has already revealed; so, we can be certain that Kaye\u27s disagreements would also apply to O\u27Brien\u27s more recent efforts. Two more different views of a single subject are unimaginable. Kaye explains that her purpose in writing Isolation and Masquerade was to pin down what she has always found discomforting-and finally profoundly distasteful in Willa Cather\u27s writing: what Kaye characterizes as Cather\u27s sense that the concerns of ordinary women, heterosexual or homosexual, are not valid and do not deserve to be voiced (p. 188). Kaye wishes to demonstrate that Cather saw herself as separate from other women, both in terms of her lesbianism and her role as an artist. Her self-isolation was unfortunate for Cather herself, Kaye believes, because it involved psychic costs; but even worse, its results, as manifested in her work, are dangerous for readers. Kaye complains that Cather asks the female reader to identify with Alexandra and repudiate heterosexual passion; to identify with Thea and repudiate the concerns of other women. Even lesbian readers can be led astray by Cather, Kaye believes, when they are asked to identify with Jim Burden and stand by helplessly as a loved woman is lost to a heterosexist society. Hence, all women readers are forced to pay psychic and social costs (p. 187) if they are seduced by Cather\u27s work
