A Lost Lady

A Lost Lady is primarily a transcendent of realism, arriving shortly before The Great Gatsby which shares many of its characteristics. A characteristic of this type of novel is that the society is in transition from an old culture to a new, a power struggle that causes there to be a preference for an idealized past. It leads to a conflict between idealism and coarseness. Although Cather is better known for other works about Nebraska, this is her first modernist novel. Cather's work falls into the category of "literary regionalism", a narrow account of a culture within a national experience. At the time she was writing, 1923, there are really only two veins of cultural description, the international or pan-national account, and the regional national. The description of national culture came later.