My Mortal Enemy Annotated

My Mortal Enemy is the eighth novel American author Willa Cather. It was first published in 1926. Wikipedia

Willa Cather’s darkest and most dramatic work, My Mortal Enemy is an agonisingly honest examination of marriage, love, and the evolution of a single person’s life. This 1926 novella depicts a life set for fortune that ultimately results in spite and bitterness. Myra Henshawe, an Irish Catholic, abandoned her uncle and her fortuitous inheritance, instead eloping with her true love, an Ulster Protestant. But is love alone enough to sustain a marriage? As Myra ages and her husband’s economic position worsens, she grows resentful and is filled with regret. The narrator, Nellie Birdseye, is a young woman who has met Myra three times. She has also been filled with many stories and snippets of gossip about the infamous woman from her Aunt Lydia, who helped Myra elope. Towards the end of Myra’s life, it is Nellie who comforts her, and Willa Cather poses a revelatory question to her readers about the true enemy in one’s life. Featuring an introductory essay by H. L. Mencken, My Mortal Enemy is a short classic that would make a great addition to the bookshelves of all Cather readers.

"Sometimes, when I have watched the bright beginning of a love story, when I have seen a common feeling exalted into beauty by imagination, generosity, and the flaming courage of youth, I have heard again that strange complaint breathed by a dying woman into the stillness of night, like a confession of the soul: 'Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy.'"Willa Cather's protagonist in My Mortal Enemy is Myra Henshawe, who as a young woman gave up a fortune to marry for love-a boldly romantic gesture that became a legend in her family. But this worldly, sarcastic, and perhaps even wicked woman may have been made for something greater than love.In her portrait of Myra and in her exquisitely nuanced depiction of her marriage, Cather shows the evolution of a human spirit as it comes to bridle against the constraints of ordinary happiness and seek an otherworldly fulfillment. My Mortal Enemy is a work whose drama and intensely moral imagination make it unforgettable.

Willa Sibert Cather (1873 - 1947)Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 - April 24, 1947) American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.

Volume 3 of Cather Studies demonstrates the range of topics and approaches in contemporary discussions of Willa Cather?s work for the informed reader or the specialized student. In fourteen essays, critics and scholars examine Cather?s Catholic Progressivism, her literary relations with William Faulkner, and her place in the multicultural canon of American literature.