She eventually leaves the town and marries an Englishman, dying before Niel ever sees her again. She had a special love for the prairies, having grown up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, fictionalized as Sweet Water in A Lost Lady. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. An elder boy who knocks down a woodpecker and slits her eyes before releasing her. During the times that she is shut up, Mrs. Forrester gets more and more agitated. After watching her first have an affair with Frank Ellinger and later Ivy Peters, he finally gives up on her. It is Mrs. Forrester who is the main focus of this novel. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. His death leaves her finally lost without his patience and strength to sustain her bright but brittle charm. This Study Guide consists of approximately 36 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - He is cocky and pretentious and becomes a lawyer. Francis Bosworth Ellinger, called Frank, a bachelor of forty with a reputation for being fast and dangerous; he had on one occasion driven publicly through Denver with a pretty prostitute. Mrs. Marian Forrester: The wife of Captain Forrester, she is a small town aristocrat. His attitude toward her is one of boyish adoration until he accidentally learns of her affair with Frank Ellinger. After her husband's death she allows Ivy Peters to run her estate. A Lost Lady, novel by Willa Cather, published in 1923, depicting the decline of the American pioneer spirit and the aridity of small-town life.. Willa Cather. Niel takes over the law offices because his uncle has contracted rheumatic fever. She is married to Captain Daniel Forrester who is twenty-five years older than she is. Copyright © 1999 - 2020 GradeSaver LLC. He is proud of his beautiful wife. A short time later, he suffers a stroke from which he never fully recovers. Later in the novel he becomes very wealthy and eventually he succeeds in owning the Forrester estate. Mrs. Forrester, however, is having an affair with Frank Ellinger, a man who visits the Forrester home often. After her husband's accident the two are forced to spend more and more time at their house in Sweet Water. Niel Herbert, the sensitive, perceptive young man from whose point of view much of Mrs. Forrester’s story is presented. Niel's uncle, he is a lawyer that falls on hard times much the way the Forresters do. A Lost Ideal: Perspective in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady, Declaration of Dependence: Cather's Critique in A Lost Lady. GradeSaver, 25 February 2000 Web. Courteous, considerate, honorable, he never reveals his knowledge of his wife’s infidelities. Eventually, Niel Herbert hears that she has died in the Argentine as the wife of an English rancher named Henry Collins. "A Lost Lady Characters". At the beginning of the novel, Mrs. Forrester is described as being young and pretty. A Lost Lady study guide contains a biography of Willa Cather, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. One of these is Niel Herbert, an impressionable adolescent through whose eyes, as he grows in years and understanding, the story of her decline is presented. The picture of her deterioration is linked subtly with the declining importance of Sweet Water as a frontier town and the passing of the Old West into a newer and less heroic age. A Lost Lady Characters . everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of A Lost Lady. He falls in love with what she represents and struggles to preserve his boyhood image of her. After her husband's death she allows Ivy Peters to run her estate. The town phone operator, she listens in on all long distance calls. This Study Guide consists of approximately 36 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of A Lost Lady. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of A Lost Lady. The wife of Captain Forrester, she is a small town aristocrat. A Lost Lady literature essays are academic essays for citation. After suffering two strokes he eventually dies, signifying the end of the pioneering era. He is a frequent visitor at the Forrester home. Unable to face neglect or hardship, she finds escape in love affairs and drink, and in the end surrenders herself as well as her business affairs to Ivy Peters, an unscrupulous shyster lawyer of the new generation in the West. Start studying Characters for A Lost Lady. A characteristic of this type of novel is that the society is in transition from an old culture to a new, a power struggle that causes there to be a preference for an idealized past. After reading law for a time in his uncle’s office, Niel eventually goes to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. STYLE As he grows older, he thinks of her more and more in relation to her husband, the dignified, noble old man whom he sees as the embodiment of the imagination and enterprise that went into the building of the West. The flaw in Mrs. Forrester’s character is the fact that she possesses no inner resources of her own. Niel falls in love with what she represents, and is dismayed to discover that she has a lover, Frank Ellinger. The novel opens at a time when he has already been physically destroyed by a fall from a horse. Niel realizes by the end of the novel that his perception of Mrs. Forrester is based on the Captain's influence over her. A large man, he is a bachelor at the beginning. A girl Niel's age whom he tries to entertain at the Forresters, she later marries Frank Ellinger. This section contains 2,216 words A Lost Lady is primarily a transcendent of realism, arriving shortly before The Great Gatsby which shares many of its characteristics.