Willa Cather: ‘Old Mrs. Harris’

 “Old Mrs. Harris” is a story about three generations of women under one roof.

Mrs. Harris, the grandmother, gets her energy and identity from being part of the family. Her daughter, Victoria, beautiful and self-centered, loves her children but feels everyone in the house is either disappointing or choking her. Granddaughter Vickie is ignored and underestimated. She shocks everyone by winning a scholarship — and she feels let down when the family can’t help her go to college.

The story is Willa Cather’s mediation on how family’s shape us, limit us, exasperate us. Cather is a master.

Here are three passages that give you the architecture of the story:

• How trouble starts:

 

The Templetons’ troubles began when Mr. Templeton’s aunt died and left him a few thousand dollars, and he got the idea of bettering himself.

 

• How the family, in moving from Tennessee to Colorado, bit off more than it could handle gracefully:

 

Mrs. Harris was no longer living in a feudal society, where there were plenty of landless people glad to render service to the more fortunate, but in a snappy little Western democracy, where every man was as good as his neighbor and out to prove it.

 

• On how Mrs. Harris thought of her identity, her place in the world:

 

But the moment she heard the children running down the uncarpeted back stairs, she forgot to be low. Indeed, she ceased to be an individual, an old woman with aching feet; she became part of a group, became a relationship.

 

It’s a marvelous story. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Rosen, are worth the price of admission.

And there is a story underneath the main story about the family cat. As you read, ask yourself: Who does Blue Boy belong to? (And note that the first answer is not the best.) A better question: Who takes responsibility for him? As we treat animals, so we treat people.

• Sources and notes: Willa Cather, Great Short Works of Willa Cather, edited by Robert K. Miller; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1992. The quotations are on pp. 289, 290 and 292. For a note on another wonderful short story, see “Willa Cather: ‘Neighbor Rosicky,’” Nov. 21, 2022.