A distinctly American voice : the Emersonian consciousness in the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Sibert Cather : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

Abstract

Using the works of Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather as examples, this thesis illustrates the persistence of Emersonian ideas -- particularly those advanced in Nature "Self-Reliance," "The American Scholar," and "The Poet" – in the twentieth-century American consciousness and thus in American fiction which reflects the "everyday people who [grow] out of the soil." Drawing on Jewett's "A White Heron," The Country of the Pointed Firs, and A Country Doctor, and on Cather's novels, 0 Pioneers!, M Antonia and The Professor's House, as well as on their letters and other writings, this thesis considers Emerson's four seminal essays in turn, and provides corresponding examples from the women's texts to establish the endurance of his ideas.