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영어

Willa Cather is known to be an American feminist novelist whose major works are about female characters who challenge and overcome their surrounding hardships with their undaunted will and courage. But, ironically, her first novel was about a man who undergoes a mid-life crisis as he becomes skeptical about his professional success and wealth when he meets his first lover, which reflects Cather’s inner conflict when she resolved to start a new life as a full-time novelist. Dissatisfied with Alexander’s Bridge, she turned to female protagonists from the Midwest in her following novels, which led to her fame as a novelist of nostalgia missing the lost past values. But she returned to male protagonists in One of Ours, The Professor’s House and Death Comes for the Archbishop after 1922. The 1920s in America was the Jazz Age when economic boom nourished materialism and low hedonistic culture, which disillusioned Cather and made her turn to the past ideal values. The momentum of her turn to male protagonists was the death of her cousin Grosvenor in World War I, which shocked and gave her an idea on an innocent Midwest youth whose disenchantment with his crude milieu leads him to yearn for French high culture and willingly die for his ideals. Professor’s House presents a famed old scholar who loses his energy and will to live in a materialistic world after accomplishing his masterpiece and looks backward for the lost values. He is dejected to the point of isolating himself from his family and being tempted to commit suicide. On the other hand, Archbishop Latour and his assistant and friend Father Vaillant in Death Comes for the Archbishop are the calm spectators on life who finally succeed in overcoming mundane ambition for fame and achievement. They are distinguished from other priests who are avaricious and corrupted pursuing worldly values, and they rebuild the collapsed Christianity in the newly-won territory of Southwest based on their respect for aboriginal culture and belief and devoting themselves to the perpetual values they believe. Through these three novels, Cather presents us the male protagonists whose belief in the lost values and ideals lead to different results and makes us to ponder on her meditation on the lifelong pursuit for true values.