The Themes from ‘The Song of the Lark’

Introduction

Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark is one of the most significant novels in American literature. Written in 1915, it was the follow-up to Cather’s first successful novel, O Pioneers!. At the time, America was experiencing what would later come to be known as “The Progressive Era” – a time for “emancipation, the progress of knowledge, culture, and imagination.” This was the beginning of a new age of thinking in America, as people began to think differently than their forefathers, and widely accepted “truths” were being questioned publicly.

At the center of this historic era is Cather’s protagonist of The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronborg. In the young singer, Cather encapsulates a multifaceted portrait of a young artist that is intensely autobiographical in nature, as plausible connections can be drawn between Cather’s life and that of her main character.

As in any great novel, one can find a myriad of themes woven within the greater story at hand. One of the most interesting and relevant is the theme of art coupled with personal and psychological identity. While the expression of one’s self through art can be seen as a testament to who they are on the inside, it also subversively hints at the very nature of their art as they see it. In this way, the individual is drawn closer to their craft while still remaining slightly detached. This is evident when Thea moves back and forth from being aware of her own iron will, yet sometimes pawns off her own success to luck and the right people being in the right place. Furthermore, Thea’s “success” as an artist is seen in resonance with her growing maturity and self-discovery. Throughout the entire novel, there are hints toward potential greatness within Thea that she and others are too humble or blind to see. Another major theme examines gender and cultural barriers present throughout this era in history. This is seen through the lens of Thea as she ventures out into the “real” world of traveling and is met with a barrage of men and women who belittle her raw talent. Language and style play great significance in the overall narrative and the internal struggle of Thea to piece together her artistic abilities and her own self-identity.

Art and Identity: The Protagonist's Journey

In Cather’s The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronborg is defined by her choice to pursue a career in opera despite social constraints. Her artistic ambitions are deeply personal and reflect her individual struggles. However, when she chooses to adopt her father’s name, “Thea Kronborg” is also synonymous with her art. She transcends not only others’ viewpoints but her own rigid standards in a struggle for artistic purity and the hope for fame without compromise. This section of the novel begins when Thea has achieved a degree of international success. The story is filled with moments of transformation - an archetype of the story of the artist. Each character has their orbit around the central figure, Thea Kronborg, and is affected by her art. These individuals often guide or mold her potential. Literary scholarship is fairly sure that any adult male in any Willa Cather novel is her stand-in, a modern idealistic woman with freedom. In her life, Thea mixes imitation with the instinctual leaps that are the creative process. This is a real Catherian conflict: can you imitate authenticity? Probably not, yet she achieves greatness. Early feminist ideas were based around the concept of self-discovery and self-definition. Cather is interested in the intense identification of one’s insistent identity by art, which does not wholly make sense considering how her female protagonists are often semifictionalized versions of the writer herself. A self made entirely of art, a self that grows less “real” as it ages in time, seems to be the goal even if it is not necessarily rewarded in the traditional sense given for “deserving” one. Artistic empowerment that simultaneously makes one “exceptional” and “not real” is a common Catherian goal.

Nature and Music as Symbolic Elements

Throughout "The Song of the Lark," nature and music work together symbolically and play an essential part in the story because of their symbolization. They describe the heroine's struggle and mirror her inner emotional life as "equally various" and full of flux and drama. In the "prickly chorus" of the desert cliffs as well as the green-and-gold expanse of the Nebraska prairie, the mountains and "thawing rivers of coal," Thea's nature and art are consistently represented as a struggle with passion, as an amalgamation of ferocity and pinning down, and occasional over-vitalism. The imaginative landscape of the novel embodies struggle as much as freedom. Thea's "American grimness" is portrayed as a will to "do," as the drive to "overcome," to win and gain "power," not over others but power as salvation-justification.

Descriptions of landscape are given in compensatory-affective terms, projecting thus overtly lyric sensation through evocative description. "Imaginative intonation" is well-rounded and complete; landscape in "Song" has to do with the "struggle to appropriate," the process tendency to penetrate and create the self. The use of natural settings typifies these concerns, and increasingly through and because of them, nature starts to symbiotically evoke music. Throughout "The Song of the Lark," music and nature are linked together because both represent Thea's identity fragmentation.

It is only through music that Thea experiences a moment of self-identification and self-expression through her music. Music and transcendent nature are transformed into expressional, poetic art material only because the "harmonious self" emerges at the novel's end. Before this - before the escape to Europe and the climax of mother-knowing, of finding the mother within herself - music is described in absolute terms of inversion as negativity: perverse, forbidden, threatening forces and lies, as a symbol of dissolution.

Gender Roles and Social Expectations

Because of her intelligence, creativity, and assertiveness from an early age, Thea is set somewhat at odds with social expectations and traditional gender norms. Attending Thea’s piano recital in her hometown, Arnold Brahms tells Thea the townspeople called it ‘A Plea for the Bow’. He later asks, ‘“Miss Kronborg, was it?” [...] if she is able to make a chosen prelude, the significance is lost, is it not?’ As a woman and unattached, Thea contravenes ties to home and hearth in search of personal and professional success. Born in Colorado in 1880, Cather wrote ‘The Song of the Lark’ in the 1910s and early 1920s, meaning that readers will have to consider the ways in which attitudes toward women, surrounding marriage, motherhood, and spinsterhood, might well be evident in the characters and the lives that they are limited to. Lyman Ward is circumscribed too, because of war trauma, but he at least had the option to fight for his country, to enter an occupation conventionally specified as a man’s. We might also note the imbrication of Lawrence and Thea, who defies convention by being a young single woman and by having a vital town but who is nonetheless sacrificed on the altar of career aspiration.

Domesticity, or lives that revolved around home and family, was incentivized in the period, partly for demographic reasons, and many people embraced it. Individuality and professional ambitions remained difficult choices for people like Robinson and Thea. Female professional aspirations were also subject to limitations and cavils. Cather defines ‘talent’ as firmly ungendered. Cather discusses women professionals such as singers, dancers, suffragist orators, and WWI nurses as trying to break that mold, to transcend contemporary limitations. Thea and Archie are drawn in their private interactions, rehearsals, and candid discussions. They present talented stage performers, creating him nearness and efficiency of action during performances, as significant realizations of individuality. Given the male cynicism with which Cather confronts the motivations of her characters, the possibilities for autonomy, flawed and restricted as they are perceived to be, are feminist radicalizations. They occur within a narrative preoccupied with questions of individual occupation and the human capabilities that drive them.

Conclusion: The Impact of 'The Song of the Lark'

'The Song of the Lark' traverses the heights and depths of human experience and art, and the potential connection between the two as embodied in the character of Thea Kronborg. This worldly journey is reflected in both the novel’s language, characters, and setting, their depth and vivacity. As readers engage with the text on these levels, it continues to prompt discussions about women and art, and whether women can “have it all” as Thea attempts to hold onto love and art for as long as possible. There is imperfection in Thea, as there is in the world; there is rawness in Thea, as there is in the world. And it is through these two aspects that an every(wo)man narrative element is re-introduced into a story otherwise complex and alienating. One may not connect with or even like Thea, but the impure flaws in the construction of the character, as well as the freedom to explore so much that pertains to humanity, have captivated many since 1915, and will continue to do so.

As a creation, Thea Kronborg is compelling because she is not just one universal early 20th century woman. Instead, she is many women struggling with the expectations and opportunities of that time; in some aspects, she is a woman of the 21st century as well. And while the “contrarian” argument can be pursued, Thea, as a complex, truthful, brave, and truly created character, will gain residuary value in discussions of the novel and early 20th century art and society long after those parts of the novel oriented toward one historical moment are forgotten. Symbolism, theme, and character: such sprawling and orienting elements are incontrovertibly noteworthy aspects of The Song of the Lark in either summative argument. The creation of Thea and others and the trials and triumphs that she constantly throws up in their paths are hundreds of pages worth of dense, painstaking human observation. Even if the appeal of the novel’s themes and symbols are lost on some readers, the creation and the creators live on.

Did you like this example?

244

10