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Hard Punishments, also sometimes referred to as Cather's Avignon story,^[1]^: 162^[2] is the final, unpublished, and since lost novel by Willa Cather, almost entirely destroyed following her death in 1947. It is set in medieval Avignon.

Analysis

Perhaps her only book entirely contained in the Old World,^[3] Hard Punishments was set in medieval Avignon.^[4] While little is known about the plot, this final novel of hers^[5]^[6]^: 127 is centered on its two main protagonists, who have both been injured: André has had his tongue cut out for blasphemy, and Pierre's hands have been maimed as a result of his theft^[7] by hanging him by his thumbs.^[8] Of the surviving fragments, sin and reconciliation are major themes,^[9] and specifically, the religious redemption and conversion of André to Catholicism is a key component.^[7] For this reason, it is believed that the text was intended to be one of "cruelties" and "splendours".^[6]^: 131 But even though violence and cruelty was apparently a significant part of the book, Cather withheld its description from the child protagonists and from the reader.^[10] A highly-ordered, biblically literalist state is the center of critique.^[6]^: 131 Scholar John P. Anders understands Cather's preoccupation with fourteenth-century blasphemy as "appropriately allegorical and a fitting coda" to Cather's own sexual identity,^[1]^: 139 which many understand to be lesbian.^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]

The story may have been inspired by a trip she took to Avignon in 1902,^[4] or a French trip she took in 1935.^[7]^[6]^: 152 Either way, the novel was written between the 1940 completion of Sapphira and the Slave Girl and the death of her brother, Roscoe Cather, in 1945.^[16] It is a continuation of her end-of-life focus on writing about landscapes outside of the Great Plains.^[17]^[18]

Destruction and recovery

Following Cather's death in 1947, her lifelong partner Edith Lewis complied with her wish and destroyed almost all of the manuscript for the novel.^[19] This decision—to have Lewis destroy the manuscript, instead of Cather destroying it herself—suggests she intended to finish the novel before she died.^[6]^: 131 While only one fragment was originally thought to have survived Lewis's burning,^[20]^[21] additional fragments were obtained from Cather's nephew's estate following his death in 2011.^[22] These additional fragments confirm that not only was Cather moved by French Catholicism, but that it had such a pronounced importance on her that Hard Punishments is substantially distinct from her other Catholic novels, Shadows on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop.^[23]

References

^ ^a ^b Anders, John P. (1999). Willa Cather's sexual aesthetics and the male homosexual literary tradition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803210531.
^ Five stories by Willa Cather. New York: Vintage Books. 1956. pp. 175, 177, 197, 211.
^ Thacker, Robert; Palleau-Papin, Françoise (2010). "Introduction: Translating Cather's worlds". Cather Studies. 8.
^ ^a ^b Nettels, Elsa (2002). "Wharton and Cather". American Literary Scholarship. 2002 (1): 119–135. doi:10.1215/00659142-2002-1-119. ISSN 1527-2125. S2CID 201772856.
^ Jewell, Andrew (2017). "Why obscure the record?: The psychological context of Willa Cather's ban on letter publication". Biography. 40 (3): 399–424. doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0031. ISSN 0162-4962. JSTOR 26405083. S2CID 165974717.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Nelson, Robert James (1988). Willa Cather and France: In search of the lost language. Urbana. ISBN 9780252015021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ ^a ^b ^c Murphy, John J. (2003). "Sacred places along Cather's route to Avignon". Religion & Literature. 35 (2/3): 29–47. ISSN 0888-3769. JSTOR 40059913.
^ Collins, Jack (1988–1989). "The literary endeavor of Willa Cather". Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. 32–33: 37.
^ Curtin, William M. (1975). "Willa Cather and 'the varieties of religious experience'". Renascence. 27 (3): 115–123. doi:10.5840/renascence197527313.
^ Nettels, Elsa (2007). "Violence and childhood in Cather's fiction". In Urgo, Joseph; Skaggs, Merrill (eds.). Violence, the arts, and Willa Cather. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 80. ISBN 9780838641576.
^ Ammons, Elizabeth. "Cather and the new canon: "The Old Beauty" and the issue of empire". Cather Studies. 3.
^ Homestead, Melissa J. (2021). "Introduction". The only wonderful things : the creative partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190652876.
^ O'Brien, Sharon (1984). "'The thing not named': Willa Cather as a lesbian writer". Signs. 9 (4): 576–599. doi:10.1086/494088. ISSN 0097-9740. JSTOR 3173612. PMID 12862076. S2CID 29754957.
^ Homestead, Melissa J. (2015). Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, and the historiography of lesbian sexuality. Vol. 10. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1d98c6j.5. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
^ Woods, Carly S.; Ewalt, Joshua P.; Baker, Sara J. (August 2013). "A matter of regionalism: Remembering Brandon Teena and Willa Cather at the Nebraska History Museum". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 99 (3): 341–363. doi:10.1080/00335630.2013.806818. S2CID 144497410.
^ Stouck, David (1973). "Willa Cather's last four books". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 7 (1): 41–53. doi:10.2307/1345052. ISSN 0029-5132. JSTOR 1345052.
^ Reynolds, Guy (25 March 2003). "The politics of Cather's regionalism: Margins, centers and the Nebraskan Commonwealth". Presentations, Talks, and Seminar Papers -- Department of English.
^ Zabel, Morton Dauwen (1957). Craft and character: Texts, method, and vocation in modern fiction. Viking Press. p. 265.
^ Homestead, Melissa (2011). The encyclopedia of twentieth-century fiction. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 490. ISBN 9781405192446.
^ Garvelink, Lisa Bouma (2005). Willa Cather: the letters and novels of a romantic modernist. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University. p. 249.
^ "University of Virginia buys three rare books". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, NY. United Press International. 26 June 1981. p. 8C.
^ "Part of unfinished Cather novel added to archives". Deseret News. Associated Press. 12 May 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
^ Murphy, John J. (2011). "Toward completing a triptych: The Hard Punishments fragments". Willa Cather Newsletter & Review. 55 (2): 2–8.