Fairy tale woman transformed, mythical artist re-born: Recontextualizing the female artist’s narrative in The song of the lark

Abstract

This essay considers Willa Cather’s use of fairy tale, musical, and mythological references within The Song of the Lark to rewrite cultural paradigms of patriarchal oppression and create a female-empowered narrative of an artist’s life. Through a complex network of allusions, Cather creates a successful künstlerroman by conveying the complicated realities of her female protagonist’s struggle to become an artist. Only by examining the full context of the novel’s allusions can we clearly understand the author’s characterization of her main character, Thea Kronberg.