Strong Female Characters, Willa Cather & Edith Lewis
Very few writers can write strong female characters. Of course Willa Cather gave us Ántonia and Alexandra from O! Pioneers . From reading The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout) you get a sense of how much she loved and appreciated women, especially the girls she surrounded herself with growing up. Willa Cather and Edith Lewis shared an address, first at 5 Bank street (1913 – 1927) and then at 570 Park Ave. in New York City. Edith Lewis was a gifted editor. Surely their’s was a partnership. Many have tried to suss out the exact nature of their relationship. A tomboy growing up and at times a cross-dresser in high school and university, Cather is thought to have been a lesbian. The editors of Cather’s letters looked at the two women’s correspondence. “There aren’t, you know, explicit kind of descriptions of the nature of their relationship in here,” Jewell said. “Instead, what you get is Edith Lewis’ perpetual presence in Cather’s life in m...