Lucy Gayheart

The renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather published the eleventh of her twelve novels, Lucy Gayheart, in 1935. Set a few years after the turn of the century, the novel centers on a young woman of great artistic and musical promise. In following her dream of studying music, the heroine disrupts the provincial life of the small town that she comes from – and through her fate, Cather explores themes such as the conflicts between city and small town life, between the external expectations and internal desires of women, the value of art, and the way the accidental tragedies of life shape and alter people’s understanding of themselves and those around them.

The novel is divided into three parts.

In the first part, eighteen-year-old piano prodigy Lucy Gayheart lives in Haverford, Nebraska, a small town on the Platte River. Her father, Jacob, a watchmaker and music teacher, is a first generation Bavarian immigrant who still mourns the death of her mother who passed away twelve years ago. Lucy also has an older sister, the level-headed Pauline, who fits well into the world of Haverford. Because of Lucy’s musical gifts, she has been studying piano in Chicago at the studio of Professor Paul Auerbach.



As the novel opens, Lucy is back in Haverford for Christmas. As she ice skates on the shallow part of the Platte River that completely freezes over in the winter, the town’s wealthiest, and most eligible young man, Harry Gordon, joins her. She doesn’t seem very receptive.

Back in Chicago, Lucy goes to a performance by the internationally celebrated Lieder singer Clement Sebastian. She is thrilled because she has an audition coming up to be his stand-in accompanist while his regular accompanist, James Mockford, is ill. The more she works with Clement, the more he fascinates her – both as an artist and as a man. Much older, he has grown disenchanted with his existence – but being around Lucy's fervent loyalty and youthfully glowing admiration gives him a new lease on his life and work. Clement realizes that Lucy is attracted to him; he returns her feelings, but already married, he cares too deeply about his young accompanist to allow the relationship to become sexual. Instead, he does his best to distance himself.

Once Mockford recovers, Clement goes off on tour to Minnesota and Wisconsin with him. A depressed Lucy mopes until Clement sends her a telegram to meet him in the studio. They finally have a somewhat veiled confrontation about their mutual feelings, but Lucy is embarrassed to have her affection revealed and runs off. Clement catches up with her at Professor Auerbach’s, and they continue their working relationship for several more years. Clement again expresses his love for her, but precludes a relationship: he is too old, she is still growing up and "finding things."



While Clement is off on a tour of the Eastern U.S., Harry visits Lucy in Chicago, but although they do fun things together, Lucy finds his attention stressful. He proposes, and she rejects him, confessing that she loves another. A few months later, Lucy receives an angry letter from Pauline telling her that Harry has married Miss Arkwright, the town’s heiress.

Clement leaves to tour Europe, and Lucy has a frank conversation with Professor Auerbach, who explains that her future as an accompanist is limited. Women can only be accompanists for rehearsals because “for the performance they always have a man.” A few months later, Professor Auerbach sees in the paper that Clement and Mockford drowned in Italy, in Lake Como.

The second part of the novel explores Lucy’s return to Haverford the winter after Clement’s death.



No one knows why she has come back, and gossip spreads about an illicit relationship, or possibly, her being fired by Professor Auerbach. Harry goes out of his way to be obnoxious to Lucy whenever their paths cross. Lucy’s only solace is sitting in the orchard, visiting the elderly widow Mrs. Alec Ramsay, and going with her father to see a local opera company perform. Something about the lead singer strikes Lucy, even though overall the troupe is second-rate. Inspired, she writes to Professor Auerbach asking to come back to her old job, and he replies that he would be happy to re-employ her in March.

In the meantime, Pauline proposes that Lucy start teaching piano to two local students, but Lucy refuses to lower herself – she is only willing to teach the high-level students at Professor Auerbach’s academy. Pauline explodes at Lucy, calling her selfish and revealing that Jacob has been in lifelong debt in order to finance Lucy's musical education in Chicago. Pauline throws the gossip about Lucy’s relationship with Clement in her sister’s face.

Angry, Lucy goes out to the river with her skates. On the way, she tries to flag down Harry to catch a ride, but he ignores her and drives past. Not realizing that the shallow part of the river she used to skate on safely is no longer there, Lucy goes out onto the ice and falls through to her death.



The book’s third Part is set twenty-five years later, just after the death of Lucy’s father, Jacob in 1927, and is told from the point of view of Harry.

Harry considers himself to blame for Lucy’s death. He regrets his hasty marriage, which he admits was only out of spite, berating himself for being so cold to Lucy when she came back to Haverford. Obsessed with the idea of punishing her, but knowing that as soon as he actually talked to her he would once again be madly in love, he did his best to be harsh. Since her death, Harry has been financing the mortgage on the Gayhearts’ farm, so now that Jacob and Pauline have died, the farm belongs to him. He allows his young bank assistant Milton Chase to live in it as long as Milton preserves the footprints Lucy made when she was thirteen in a concrete sidewalk as it was drying.