윌라 캐더의『 잃어버린 부인 』과 로버트 월러의 『 매디슨 카운티의 다리 』: 미국 중서부의 탈도덕적 마담 보봐리

Abstract

In the conventional adultery novels, silence, isolation, and eventual self-destruction are the ultimate prices paid for such heroines who committed adultery as Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Edna Pontellier. However, unlike those novels, the affairs of adultery in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady and Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County seem to be portrayed as not much of grave violation against moral and social standards. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing the tolerant portrayals of adultery in the two novels of Cather and Waller. The geographical settings of A Lost Lady and The Bridges of Madison County are in the Midwest, and Nebraska is a neighborhood state of Iowa. Since Cather glorifies the heroine Marian as an aesthetic ideal, her adultery is not causing a serious scandal but hurting the mind of Niel who romanticized her. The Bridges of Madison County also exempts the four-day lasting adultery from moral judgement, lauding the heart-breaking love between its heroine and hero. Most of all, in the novels, the adulterous affairs of the female protagonists do not destroy their families. Although both Marian and Francesca are unfaithful wives, they do not undermine the boundary of marriage and family, being dedicated until the death of their husband. The image of Marian in the memory of Niel as an immaculate, harmonious, and aesthetic ideal has been hampered; however, as years go by, Niel regains his long lost lady Mrs Forester. Although Michael and Carolyn, Francesca’s grown up children, are surprised by their mother’s extramarital affair, they finally understand her past, feeling sympathy to their mother’s sacrifice for family. In the two novels, adultery is not treated as a tarnished flaw to the lives of the heroines. Through the protection of Marian by the male characters who acquiesce her mistakes, Cather treats her illicit love affair leniently and weakens the moral judgement of the reader. On the other hand, Waller also hampers the moral intervention of the reader by way of showing Francesca’s tough decision to keep her love only in pure memory. Therefore, giving more weight to Cather’s novel, this paper is to analyze the novels in terms of the way how the moral judgement on the adultery featured in both A Lost Lady and The Bridges of Madison County can be suspended.