Willa Cather's conflicted or ambiguous attitudes about gender and sex roles are the result of the collision of her adopted male aesthetic and her gender. Seeking to mitigate the conflicts created between these two disparate forces, Cather experimented with various techniques that have been widely discussed, e.g., the use of a male narrator. But Cather's ambivalence regarding gender is also reflected in her early short stories by the creation of strong, “manly” female characters. Drawing on her considerable knowledge of Greek mythology, Cather chose the imposing figure of the goddess Athene to embody the paradoxical qualities that she sought to incorporate into her women characters of the period 1896-1905.

The goddess Athene figures in a cluster of stories Cather wrote during a nine year period; these stories and the women in them are strikingly similar to one another in their appearance, mannerisms and emotions. In these four stories—“Tommy the Unsentimental” (1896), “Resurrection” (1897), “The Treasure of Far Island” (1902), and “Flavia and her Artists” (1905), Cather experiments with the gender-related issues that pervade all of her fiction. Each one of these stories depicts compelling female characters who embody the androgynous ideal represented by the goddess Athene.

Cather's familiarity with the pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses is well-documented; Bernice Slote asserts that references to “the heroic literature of Homer, Virgil, [and] the Norsemen” in Cather's work is “constant, insistent, pervasive. … She knew the great epics so well that all the seas and islands of the ancients were living and real [to her]” (Kingdom of Art 35). References to classical myth appear frequently in her stories, either as passing allusions or as narrative patterns. The choice of Athene to reconcile masculine and feminine roles in her fiction demonstrates the attraction that androgyny had for Willa Cather.

Cather's conflicts about gender and sex roles first manifest themselves in her own emphatic rejection of traditional gender categories that were widely accepted and enforced by her time and culture. Her preference for being called “Billie” or “Willie” and her boyish haircut and clothing are all early manifestations of her rejection of traditional gender roles. For a young girl with Willa Cather's “sharp, wild tongue, fearless independence and honesty” (Kingdom 33), reading Homer, Carlyle and Stevenson in her attic loft at night would have been a profoundly frustrating experience. It must have often struck Cather that her gender was a tragic mistake, and she must have known, like her heroine, Mary Eliza Hutchinson in “The Way of the World,” that “there are some girls who would make the best boys in the world—if they were not girls” (Collected Short Fiction 400). In order to create a heroine with all the virtues and advantages of a boy, Cather drew on her vast knowledge of Greek mythology for the portraits of Tommy Shirley, Margie Pierson, Margie Van Dyck, and Jimmy Broadwood.

Cather describes these women as having the same physical attributes that are traditionally ascribed to Pallas Athene. In the Homeric Hymn XXVII “To Athene,” the poet describes the goddess as having gray eyes, abundant wisdom and an unyielding heart. According to Martha Weigle, Athene is a “terrible virgin, [an] austere and courageous protector” (77). Athene inherits her wisdom from her father Zeus, from whose head she springs dressed in full battle gear. Athene is therefore identified with her father, and in The Oresteia she makes clear her identification with the male when she exonerates Orestes for the murder of his mother.

Apollo's argument that the mother of a child is merely a “nurse to the seed” reflects the Greek view of unbridled male superiority. As proof of his argument that the father is the true parent of the child, Apollo points to the goddess Athene. “Child sprung full-blown from Olympian Zeus / never bred in the darkness of the womb but such / a stock no goddess could conceive! (Oresteia, Eumenides lines 675-677). Athene confirms Apollo's statements by asserting that “No mother gave me birth. / I honor the male in all things but marriage. / Yes, with all my heart I am my father's child” (751-753). Pallas Athene, though a female, is firmly male-identified. She also protects Orestes from the female monsters, the Eumenides. “Pallas Athene … defends … the prerogatives, the interests, the spirit of the Father” (Stein 74). In the Odyssey, she protects Odysseus and Telemakos from danger by disguising them and later aids them during the bloody battle with the suitors.

In his “Translator's Afterthoughts” to Kerenyi's famous monograph, Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion, Murray Stein discusses what he terms the “spirit” of Athene.

Athene's version of spirit is embodied in her favorite heroes: men of practical affairs, winners on the battlefield and in the forum, enterprising men of business and leaders in military enterprises.

(75)

Tommy Shirley, the central female character in “Tommy the Unsentimental,” is surely filled with the spirit of Athene as Cather writes that:

Tommy knew plenty of active young business men and sturdy ranchers, such as one meets about live western towns … they were practical and sensible and thoroughly of her own kind. She knew almost no women because in those days there were few women in Southdown who were in any sense interesting, or interested in anything but babies and salads.

(CSF [Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, 1892-1912] 474)

Stein goes on to add his own interpretation of the spirit of Athene when he remarks that “it is hard to keep from seeing Athene … in American football” (75). One is here reminded of Willa Cather's own statements regarding football in one of her 1893 newspaper columns:

It makes one exceedingly weary to hear people object to football because it is brutal. So is Homer brutal, and Tolstoi; that is, they all appeal to the crude savage instincts of men. We have not outgrown all our old animal instincts yet, heaven grant we never shall!

(Kingdom 212)

Cather leaves no doubt that her admiration of football is based on a masculine aesthetic derived from her admiration of Greek literature: “A good football game is an epic, it rouses the oldest part of us, the part that fought ages back down in the Troad with ‘Man-slaying Hector’ and ‘Swift-footed Achilles’” (212). Further, as is typical of Cather's early writings, she not only admires the masculine, she rarely lets an opportunity pass to denigrate femininity or the feminine principle. It often seems impossible for Cather to praise the male without ridiculing women.

Athletics are the one resisting force that curbs the growing tendencies toward effeminacy so prevalent in the eastern colleges. … It is all very well for old grandmothers over their tea to sigh at the cruelties of the game. But it is not half so dangerous as other things. It doesn't do Chollie or Fweddy any harm to have his collar bone smashed occasionally.

(213)

Jay Ellington Harper in “Tommy the Unsentimental” is one of those effeminate “Chollies” or “Fweddies” for whom Cather reserved some of her most derisive comments. A weak, foppish character, Jay is described as a “baby,” a “sad mess,” “too giddy,” and “foolish.” Nevertheless, he stirs in Tommy a bemused affection and Tommy treats him as if he were a woman, albeit a childish, feeble-minded one. Described as “logical,” “unfeminine” and “aggressively masculine,” Tommy clearly plays the role of Athene in the story by protecting and defending Jay.

Like Athene, Tommy is strongly male-identified and as such is often described in male terms. She takes care of her father's bank during his absence “signing herself T. Shirley, until everyone in Southdown call[s] her ‘Tommy’” (CSF 473). (Tommy's mother receives no mention in the story.) She has a “peculiarly unfeminine mind that could not escape meeting and acknowledging a logical conclusion” (474). Like Athene, Tommy is physically androgynous; although she is female, she has the “lank figure of an active, half-grown lad … a shrewd face that was … like a clever wholesome boy's” (475). In her role of a defender of men, Tommy rushes to Jay's rescue when Bohemian farmers make a run on his bank in a distant town. Riding her “wheel” over twenty-five miles of rough road in the middle of summer, Tommy emerges as the hero of the story. The plot, with its heroic quest, further attests to the pervasiveness of Greek mythology in Cather's fiction.

Cather's aesthetic—one that elevated the male and denigrated the female—caused an enormous creative conflict in the young writer. Her creation of this boy-woman with many of the physical and spiritual attributes of the goddess Athene reflects her need to reconcile gender with aesthetics. Androgynous Athene, born not of mother but of father, embodies all the masculine characteristics that Cather admired, and Cather imbues Tommy Shirley with Athene's power and heroic vitality.

Other female characters in Cather's short fiction also have Athena-like qualities. Jimmy Broadwood in “Flavia and her Artists,” like Tommy (and the goddess Athene), has “gray eyes” and a decidedly masculine ethos. Cather describes Jimmy, again like Tommy, as boyish, clever and clean. Further, the character of Margie Pierson in “A Resurrection” resembles Tommy and Jimmy in her appearance.

She was a tall woman … powerfully built and admirably developed. … Her features were regular and well cut, but her face was comely, chiefly because of her vivid coloring and her deeply set gray eyes, that were serious and frank like a man's.

(CSF 436)

In this story, Cather combines the image of the virgin and the mother, which are also aspects of the goddess Athene. Margie Pierson loves a weak male character, Martin Dempster, whose child she has raised. Margie Pierson represents Cather's desire to unite essential elements of womanhood—virginity, which in psychological terms represents independence and freedom from men, and motherhood, which necessitates, at least momentarily, depending on a man. Margie Pierson's virgin-mother status demonstrates yet another one of Cather's efforts to unite paradoxical, conflicted qualities that are also reflected in the goddess Athene.

Cather experiments with a different aspect of Athene in her 1902 story, “The Treasure of Far Island.” Here she creates another Margie—Margie Van Dyck—who also has “gray, fearless eyes” and to whom Cather attributes masculine characteristics. Margie's childhood playmate, Douglas Burnham, is a famous artist who has returned home for a visit. Burnham remembers Margie with fondness precisely because of her masculine characteristics.

She was not an indifferent slugger herself and never exactly stood in need of masculine protection. What a wild Indian she was! Game, clear through, though! I never found such a mind in a girl. But is she a girl! I somehow always fancied that she would grow up a man—and a ripping fine one too!

(CSF 268)

Margie's association with Athene is reinforced by Douglas's repeated references to her as a “goddess.” He tells her that he was afraid of approaching her because he “hadn't grown into a[n] Apollo” (271-272). Douglas thinks to himself at one point that:

Margie had preserved that strength of arm and freedom of limb that had made her so fine a playfellow and which modern modes of life have well-nigh robbed the world of altogether. Surely, he thought, it was like that that Diana's women sped after the stag down the slopes of Ida, with shouting and bright spear.

(278)

Douglas thinks of Margie as an “enchanted princess,” “a sleeping beauty,” and “Helen of Troy.” Later, he likens her bending of a tall sapling to the “Thracian women when they broke the boughs wherewith they flayed unhappy Orpheus” (278). References to the Greek pantheon and classical allusions pervade this story. Throughout most of the story, Douglas keeps his romanticized visions of Margie to himself. But near the end, he shares his feelings with her and tries to recapture their lost childhood. Margie resists such romantic notions, and her resistance represents that aspect of the goddess Athene that Stein describes as “healthy-minded” and “pragmatic,” and that “keeps us grounded in the ‘real world’” (75). As a dramatist and romantic, Douglas needs Margie's “wise counsel” to balance his flights of fancy. In the final scene she gently chides him:

I have grown up and you have not. Someone has said that is wherein geniuses are different; they go on playing and never grow up. So you see, you're only a case of arrested development.

(273)

Eventually Margie does allow herself to be persuaded by Douglas's advances and in the end “all her vows never to grace another of his Roman triumphs were forgotten. … [and] they had become as the gods, who dwell in their golden houses” (282).

Cather's classical allusions here mitigate between the romantic fantasies of childhood and adult realizations. Although Margie succumbs to Douglas's persuasive speeches, even he admits that “the pirate play is ended and the time has come to divide the prizes” (282). Margie helps Douglas translate his infantile search for his childhood into mature adult love.

All these androgynous females represent Willa Cather's dissatisfaction with traditional notions of femininity and masculinity. The figures of Tommy Shirley and Jimmy Broadwood are Cather's attempt to refashion gender roles and categories, to combine male-female characteristics into an androgynous figure more acceptable to her own concept of strong, independent womanhood. In the character of Margie Pierson, she uses the figure of the goddess to reconcile the dual aspects of virgin-mother and in the character of Margie Van Dyck, she demonstrates Athene's ability to transform childish, infantile fantasies into adult realities. The dualistic nature of the goddess Athene finds its resolution in the characters of these vibrant, compelling women.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. The Oresteia. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack et al. New York: Norton, 1985.

Cather, Willa. Collected Short Fiction, 1892-1912. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970.

———. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather's First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893-1896. Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966.

Stein, Murray. Afterword. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. By Karl Kerenyi. Zurich: Spring Pub. 1978.

Weigle, Martha. Spiders and Spinsters: Women and Mythology. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1982.