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'Willa Cather’S ‘River Of Silver Sound’: Woman As Ecosystem In The Song Of The Lark, Matthew Sivils

Matthew Sivils

Willa Cather loved the Southwest. The landscapes and cu ltural history of the area held a prominent place in both her fiction and in her own creative consciousness.1 As Judith Fryer points out, after Cather visited New Mexico and Arizona in 1912, she became so enamored with the region that she returned many times over the fol lowing decade (41). During this period Cather published a novel heavily inspired by her affection for the Southwestern landscape-The Song of the Lark. This novel fol lows Thea Kronborg from her childhood in the fictional rural town of Moonstone, Colorado, through an artistic …