Willa Cather's Use of Inner Light

A noteworthy technique that the American writer Willa Cather (1873-1947) uses for effecting characterization is by having the character contain light within; light becomes a vital force, the elan vital, the essential spirit operating within. This becomes apparent to the sensitive observer through the features and the actions of the individual. Cather seems to capture the symbolic significance of light when she establishes light in the center of the individual. J. E. Cirlot claims that "light, traditionally, is equated with the spirit.... The superiority of the spirit is immediately recognizable by its luminous intensity." (1) Light imagery has become a favorite technique of Cather's to depict characters. Focusing on examples of light imagery in some of her novels, I hope to show how this inner light, which flashes through her protagonists' eyes and features, corresponds to their states of mind as they go through the trials and triumphs of life. The Song of the Lark (1943) is Willa Cather's depiction of the spirit, desire, and yearning of Thea Kronborg, who tries to realize her artistic personality. (2) Cather apparently believed that the best way to define Thea's personal artistic struggle was to convey it through the image of a bright internal fire, the intensity of which fluctuates according to the intensity of the artistic endeavor. The Greeks are known to have represented the spirit as "a gust of incandescent air," (3) and light has traditionally been symbolic of the "creative force," of "cosmic energy," and of "irradiation." (4) Cather's extensive use of light to picture Thea's artistic spirit and creativity is aesthetically justifiable, however much it is exploited. Thea Kronborg's childhood is bathed in light. She loves the brilliant desert and the mountains surrounding Moonstone, the bright garden and rooms of the Kohlers (Thea's neighbors, who host her piano teacher), and the white illumination of the moon. At this early stage, her piano teacher perceives the special qualities of artistic sensitivity in her, and she seems to have "a face full of light and energy, of the unquestioning hopefulness of first youth. Yes, she was like a flower full of sun" (SL 122). However, the reader is not struck by the allusion to her internal fire until Thea matures and discovers her talent for singing. At this point, her internal light is made manifest through her features, which appear to emit the thermal glow of fire within. Until this point, Thea thinks she will realize her potential at the piano, but the day she sings for her music instructor, Harsanyi, he is "never quite sure where the light came from when her face suddenly flashed out at him in that way.... At such moments her hair was yellower, her skin whiter, her cheeks pinker, as if a lamp had suddenly been turned up inside of her" (SL 241). Going through periods of doubt concerning her potential to be an artist, Thea appears to her childhood friend, Dr. Archie, to be tormented: "a light seemed to break upon her face from far away--or perhaps from far within" (SL 307). Dr. Archie feels that he knows nothing about Thea during these times as she stands before him "and glittered like that all over" (SL 308). Thea receives the opportunity to sing before the professional scrutiny of Mrs. Nathanmeyer, an opera expert, and her escort Fred remembers how "remarkably brilliant and beautiful she had been when she sang at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's: flushed, gleaming, round and supple, something that couldn't be dimmed or downed" (SL 362). The striving artist in her has been awakened, and the fire within her is growing stronger. Thea becomes fully illuminated (visually in addition to spiritually) to Fred's observant eyes at Panther Canyon. Watching Thea on a distant crag, he gets "the impression of ... a kind of brilliancy of motion" (SL 397). When Thea kisses Fred, "he felt her flash into everything that she had ever suggested to him, as if she filled out her own shadow" (SL 402). …