Lucy Gayheart: Analysis of Major Characters
"Lucy Gayheart" explores the complex lives of its major characters, particularly focusing on Lucy, a talented and ambitious music student from Haverford, Nebraska. She is deeply admired by her father, Jacob, and pursued by Howard Gordon, the wealthy heir to the local bank. While studying in Chicago, Lucy becomes infatuated with Clement Sebastian, a married concert singer, leading to a tumultuous love affair that ultimately ends in tragedy with Sebastian's accidental death. As Lucy grapples with her heartbreak, she returns to her hometown, where her relationships deteriorate, particularly with her older sister, Pauline, and her former suitor, Howard, who marries another woman. The narrative delves into themes of love, ambition, and the consequences of choices, culminating in Lucy's untimely drowning while skating, a tragic end that resonates with the unresolved tensions in her life. The story also highlights the impact of familial expectations and societal pressures on personal choices, making it a poignant exploration of the human experience.
Lucy Gayheart: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Willa Cather
First published: 1935
Genre: Novel
Locale: Haverford, Nebraska, and Chicago, Illinois
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: Christmas, 1901, to winter, 1902–1903, and 1927
Lucy Gayheart, a music student in Chicago. She is a bright, willful, and talented young pianist, the darling of her home-town of Haverford, Nebraska. She is particularly prized by her father, Jacob Gayheart, and the heir to the local bank, Howard Gordon. While studying music under her mentor, Paul Auerbach, Lucy attends a recital by Clement Sebastian, a concert singer. Later, while working with Clement, Lucy falls in love with him, as both a man and an artist. Pleased and surprised to learn that he shares her feelings, although he has a wife in England, she lies to Howard Gordon that she and Sebastian have been lovers. In late spring, Sebastian leaves for a tour of Europe, and Lucy is devastated in September to hear that he has died in a boating accident. She returns to Haverford depressed, amid much curiosity and gossip, but tells no one her tale. Barely tolerated by her older sister, Pauline Gayheart, she is completely scorned by Howard Gordon, who has married another woman. After an argument with Pauline in the middle of winter, she walks down to an old ice-skating area, unaware that while she was away in Chicago, the riverbed shifted and that the area is no longer safe for skating. The ice breaks, she falls in, her feet get caught on a log, and she drowns.
Howard Gordon, the son of a Haverford banker and a businessman in his own right. Wealthy, strong-willed, handsome, and accustomed to getting his own way, he decides—as he and Lucy are leaving Haverford after Christmas—that he will marry her. When he meets her in Chicago for the opera season, he proposes to her. Lucy refuses, exaggerating the nature of her relationship with Sebastian, and he walks out on her. Several weeks later, he marries Harriet Arkwright, a young heiress whom he had been courting but whom he does not love. When Lucy returns to Haverford, he ignores her as a means of punishing her, though he still feels deeply in love withher.Herefusestogiveheraridewhenhepassesheron his sleigh on a bitterly cold day and does not tell her that the old skating area is unsafe. Twenty-five years later, when Lucy's father dies, Howard is a successful businessman in his fifties, stuck in a loveless marriage. He still misses Lucy and still blames himself, though he has come to terms with his actions to some degree. Having held the mortgage on Jacob Gayheart's property, he becomes its sole owner. He leases it to a teller, Milton Chase, rent-free, with strict instructions that nothing must happen to a cement sidewalk in which Lucy left three footprints when she was a girl and Howard had just moved to Haverford.
Clement Sebastian, a concert singer. Talented, middle-aged, and married to a wife in England, he finds himself falling in love with his young rehearsal accompanist, Lucy. He dies in a boating accident when his professional accompanist, James Mockford, grabs onto him in panic and takes them both down.
Pauline Gayheart, Lucy's unmarried older sister. Not un-musical herself, she was forced to be practical by her father's impractical nature and her mother's death. Pauline reared her sister, Lucy. It is as a result of a fight about money matters with Pauline, who is impatient with her sister's flightiness and self-absorption, that Lucy leaves to go skating and drowns. Pauline dies twenty years after Lucy and five years before their father.
Jacob Gayheart, a local watchmaker and band leader in Haverford. Happy and good-natured, but impractical, he doted on his daughter Lucy and encouraged her musical ability. Toward the end of his life, he becomes a fast friend and chess companion of Howard Gordon.
Paul Auerbach, Lucy's music teacher in Chicago. Less of a romantic than Sebastian, he tries to encourage Lucy to marry Howard Gordon. Lucy has intentions of returning to Chicago to give piano lessons for him when she dies.
James Mockford, Sebastian's professional accompanist, born poor. He is an ambitious man. Sebastian makes plans to replace him. It was as a result of treatment to his bad hip that a position as Sebastian's rehearsal accompanist opened up. Lucy views him as a grotesque, almost evil—if talented—man. Mockford grabs Sebastian in a headlock after their boat capsizes, drowning them both.