56 pages • 1 hour read
Willa CatherA Lost Lady
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 6-7
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
During this winter, Niel gets to know Mrs. Forrester well. The narrator again foreshadows the future, explaining that this winter will later be known as the time right before a significant change in the Forresters’ fortunes.
Niel and Judge Pommeroy play cards regularly at the Forrester home, and they often dine there as well. Niel is very attracted to the domestic comforts of the home, and he is infatuated with Mrs. Forrester’s charm. She has a talent for making people feel that she finds them interesting. When others make her laugh, it pleases them greatly and makes them feel good about themselves.
A big storm snows the Forresters in. Niel gets their mail from the post office and treks out to bring it to them. Captain Forrester greets him, saying that Mrs. Forrester is resting with a headache. Opening his conservatory, Captain Forrester shows Niel that the hyacinths are blooming. He calls them “Mrs. Forrester’s hyacinths” because he feels that they suit her.
Mrs. Forrester comes down in her dressing gown, looking pale and tired. She moves over by Niel, and he can smell that she has been drinking. She leaves to get dressed and, when she comes back downstairs, Captain Forrester asks her for tea and toast, commenting that that is what they will serve Niel. Mrs. Forrester goes to make tea and sets Niel up to make toast in the fireplace. Captain Forrester carefully observes Mrs. Forrester while she is preparing tea; he’s visibly pleased once he sees that she has not brought sherry on the tray. He is happy to have Niel there to keep Mrs. Forrester company, as he sees them as of the same age; it “was a habit with him to think of Mrs. Forrester as very, very young” (42).
Mrs. Forrester livens up, saying that Niel has brought back her appetite. She asks the captain to read from the newspaper that Niel brought with their mail. She makes humorous comments about people mentioned in the newspaper, which makes Niel laugh.
As it grows later, Captain Forrester falls asleep in his chair. Mrs. Forrester tells Niel that she is tired of being cooped up in the house and coaxes him to run out in the snow with her. Outside, Mrs. Forrester sadly tells Niel that she expects that they will stay in Sweet Water every winter. She is despondent, since she has no opportunity to dance as she did every winter in Colorado, and she misses it. Niel tries to comfort her that spring will come soon, but she thinks of him as a boy, not a man.
Niel finds Mrs. Forrester most appealing in her role as Captain Forrester’s wife. He admires that she attracts many young men but remains loyal to a man of substance like Captain Forrester.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
When he is not at the Forresters’ home, Niel reads in his room. He has decided that he does not want to study law, so he reads Judge Pommeroy’s many volumes of the classics. Niel is most interested in histories, in “eavesdropping upon the past, being let into the great world that had plunged and glittered and sumptuously sinned long before little Western towns were dreamed of” (46). Niel’s studies lead him to decide that he wants to be an architect.
Spring finally comes. Captain Forrester enjoys tending to his beautiful garden. In early June, his peaceful labors are interrupted when a telegram arrives. A savings bank, of which Captain Forrester is one of the main investors, has failed in Denver, and there is a panic. Captain Forrester and Judge Pommeroy go to Denver. Before leaving, Judge Pommeroy tells Niel that he fears that the captain will lose a great deal of money, making Niel worry about Mrs. Forrester. He sees her as the type of person who must always be wealthy in order to be herself.
Niel regularly goes to the town hotel for his meals. After Captain Forrester leaves town, Niel sees Frank Ellinger’s name on the hotel registry, which makes him angry, thinking “it very bad taste in Ellinger to come to Sweet Water when Captain Forrester was away” (47). Niel thinks Ellinger should know that this may cause gossip.
Niel wakes early the next morning excited about summer coming; he thinks how beautiful it must be with the sun coming up over the Forresters’ marsh. He decides to go see Mrs. Forrester before Ellinger can leave the hotel to visit her. Niel feels an affinity for the land in its pure, natural state. He picks some wild roses for Mrs. Forrester, thinking he will leave them by her bedroom windows so as not to disturb her.
As Niel sets the bouquet on the window sill, he hears a woman’s teasing laughter, followed by that of a man. Blind with anger, Niel runs away. He throws the roses into a mud hole and bitterly thinks that he will never recapture the most beautiful part of his life; “this day saw the end of that admiration and loyalty that had been like a bloom on his existence” (48). Niel’s image of Mrs. Forrester’s virtue has crumbled, and he now wonders if all beautiful women conceal such coarse secrets.
Part 1, Chapters 6-7 Analysis
Mrs. Forrester is very unhappy to be spending the whole winter in Sweet Water; she worries that life is passing her by as she is confined to such a provincial place. Given the choice, she would much rather be in Colorado Springs, where she can dance all winter long, no doubt in fashionable and elegant places. She admits, “You wouldn’t believe how I miss it. I shall dance till I’m eighty. […] I’ll be the waltzing grandmother! It’s good for me, I need it” (43). Without an outlet for her natural proclivities, she fears what will become of her. Niel tries to assure her that everything will be fine, but she tells him, “My dear boy, your shoulders aren’t broad enough” (43). She means that he is not mature enough to comfort her. In a flash, Niel thinks of Frank Ellinger and his broad shoulders. Though this intrusive thought annoys Niel, it also foreshadows his Chapter 7 discovery of Mrs. Forrester and Ellinger’s affair.
When he is not with the Forresters, Niel reads his uncle’s books of classics. Judge Pommeroy brought these books West with him because they were the trappings of a gentleman, a necessary accessory for the proper sort of man. Niel becomes enraptured with these books, which “gave him a long perspective, influenced his conception of the people about him, made him know just what he wished his own relations with these people to be” (46). Niel is educating himself in human psychology and sociology through these readings, which colors his view of the world in a romanticized fashion.
Niel feels protective toward Mrs. Forrester, and since he spends so much time at her house that winter, he comes to feel possessive toward her and the Forrester house. Niel is irritated when he discovers that Ellinger must be going to dine with Mrs. Forrester while Captain Forrester is away on business. In Niel’s mind, Ellinger is intruding on his territory, interfering with his protection of the Forresters.
When he goes to see Mrs. Forrester early in the morning, he’s inspired by “an impulse of affection and guardianship” (47). As he journeys to the Forrester house, there is a “religious purity” to the “unstained atmosphere,” and Niel thinks he should come more often to see it “while the morning was still unsullied, like a gift handed down from the heroic ages” (47). This scene of pristine, idealized beauty is further emphasized when Niel sees wild roses and picks some for Mrs. Forrester. He compares the roses’ intense beauty and defenselessness to Mrs. Forrester, thinking that when she sees them on her window sill, “they would perhaps give her a sudden distaste for coarse worldlings like Frank Ellinger” (48).
This glowing scene is shattered when Niel hears Mrs. Forrester and Ellinger laughing together in her bedroom. Niel now realizes that they are having a common affair, and this destroys Niel’s picture of Mrs. Forrester as his womanly ideal. In this moment Niel loses his innocence, as he learns that Mrs. Forrester has squandered her special gifts on a crude man like Ellinger. He becomes cynical and suspicious, wondering if all beautiful women are so deceitful.
Related Titles
By Willa Cather
