409Z Summer 2025 Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy

In the middle of her Great Middle Period (1922 to 1927), Willa Cather dropped a novella titled My Mortal Enemy. Her readers never knew what to expect from her next novel because she did not repeat what went before. This story follows a woman named Myra from her elopement through her final years as she struggles with the choices she made. The story is told by young Nellie who observes the self-absorbed Myra as she moves from Illinois to NYC to San Francisco and from happiness to disillusionment to physical and psychological decline. The story is dark, the ending tragic, and the words are minimal. Cather was testing her theory that what’s important in art is the emotion conveyed, not the word count. In her description of Myra’s marriage, Cather charts the tension between love and hate between two married people and the downside of romantic love. Like the narrator, the reader feels the powerful effects of social rejection, family ties, resentment, and the comforts of religion.

Jane Fitzgibbons retired from the federal government in 2020.During her government career, she headed training and communications departments. She has an MS in National Security Strategy from the National War College and an MA in Politics and Literature from the University of Dallas where her admiration for the works of Willa Cather began, which led her to a forum at the University of Nebraska on the centenary of Ms. Cather’s birth. She attended two Willa Cather conferences in 2023: one honoring Willa Cather’s sesquicentennial birthday and one focusing on Ms. Cather’s literary life in New York City.