Asexualizing Willa Cather's One of Ours

Asexualizing Willa Cather's One of Ours Iqra Shagufta Cheema Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, Volume 77, Number 3, Fall 2021, pp. 81-100 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2021.0017 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/807799 [ Access provided at 3 Nov 2021 09:07 GMT from University Of North Texas ] Iqra Shagufta Cheema Asexualizing Willa Cather’s One of Ours W illa Cather’s One of Ours (1922) narrativizes an enigmatic relationship between Claude and Enid. Their ambivalent and apparently unconsummated marital relationship departs from the spectrum of heteronormativity. Claude has a “sharp disgust for sensuality,” whereas “everything about a man’s embrace is disgusting to Enid” (Cather 49, 172). Claude and Enid’s explicit aversion to sex signals that they may be asexual—simultaneously, it highlights Claude’s deviant masculinity and Enid’s uninterest in wifely roles. By positioning these complex psychosexual and sociosexual intricacies in World War I, Cather highlights the inalienable connection of sexuality to identity and masculinity in Western societies. The vague sexual identities of these characters also complicate and expand representations of non-heteronormative sexual orientations. But the characters’ unclear sexualities and the novel’s glorification of war as a site of selfactualization has led to an exceptionally convoluted and controversial critical reception. Hermoine Lee and Marilee Lindemann have analyzed the central relationship between Claude and Enid from homosexual and queer perspectives;1 however, I argue that Claude and Enid are better understood as asexual—a term that was not available to Cather and most of her critics. The introduction of asexuality as an orientation into contemporary discourse destabilizes the earlier gay and queer readings of these characters. Asexuality, by enabling a retrospective and corrective reflection on the complexity of sexual orientations, renders the previously unread asexual characters more visible. Reading the novel through asexuality enables a more nuanced and pluralistic reading of both characters’ sexuality in One of Ours. Anthony Bogaert defines asexuals as “individuals who are low on attraction for both sexes” (“Asexuality” 241).2 The Asexuality Visibility Arizona Quarterly Volume 77, Number 3, Fall 2021 • issn 0004-1610 Copyright © 2021 by Arizona Board of Regents 82 Iqra Shagufta Cheema and Education Network (AVEN), an online forum founded in 2001, defines an asexual as “a person who does not experience any sexual attraction,”3 while Michael Storm, who first introduced the term in 1979, states that asexual individuals are “attracted to neither sex” and “score low on both heteroeroticism and homoeroticism” (“Sexual Orientation” 173; “Theories” 784).4 Other definitions also identify a lack of sexual behavior (Rothblum and Brehony) and a lack of sexual desire or excitement (Prause and Graham 2007). I prefer Bogaert’s definition because it is the least contested by the asexual community and best conforms to the most recent literature.5 The subtle differences in these definitions highlight the complexity of sexual attraction in asexual individuals. Asexuality studies establish that romantic and sexual attraction is disconnected in asexual individuals (Van Houdenhove et al.),6 while Dominique Canning also affirms that asexuality is a “lack of sexual attraction,” not the “absence of sexual orientation” (60).7 On the basis of their experience of arousal, AVEN further categorizes asexuals into “libidoist asexuals” and “nonlibidoist asexuals”—but maintains that they feel no need for partnered sex (“Overview”). Another mixed method study demonstrates that asexual individuals “want the closeness, companionship, and intellectual and emotional connection that comes from romantic relationship” but “[do] not desire sexual closeness (Brotto et al. 610). Moreover, Ela Pryzybylo posits that the “sexual world for asexuals is very much akin to what patriarchy is for feminists, and heteronormativity, for LGBTQ populations” (446). Asexuality studies further comment on the role of gender to suggest that more women identify as asexual than men because of different gender expectations. Women do not perceive sexual arousal, receive conditioning of sexual orientation, or label genital responses as consistently as men do (Oliver and Hyde; Freund; Bogaert, “Asexuality”; Bianchi). These discussions about asexuality override the equivalence of sexual and romantic identities in a “sexualnormative” society.8 This detachment of romance and sex is the minute difference in Claude and Enid’s characters that erodes their relationship. All of Claude’s interactions with both women and men occur under the socio-cultural heteronormativity, which is why the reactive fusion of identity, masculinity and sexuality is more visible in Claude. Throughout the novel, Claude’s gender performance violates the heterosexual masculine code of his family and community in his aversion Willa Cather’s One of Ours 83 to traditionally manly tasks, his nonconforming romantic engagements, his passive (a)sexuality, and in Cather’s description of his character. He appears as a misfit, dislikes insensitive masculine behavior, and struggles “with his own nature” (Cather 25). For instance, Mrs. Wheeler, Claude’s mother, casually complains that the cherry tree in their orchard is too tall to pick fruit. Whereupon, Mr. Wheeler, Claude’s father, promises to solve the problem. He saws the cherry tree and happily informs his wife that she will be able to “pick [cherries] as easy as can be” (25). An unsuspecting Mrs. Wheeler picks up the pail “trustfully” only to see the cut tree lying beside its “bleeding stump” (25). While his family is unsurprised by Mr. Wheeler’s insensitivity, Claude is extremely disturbed: “Choking with rage and hate,” angrily “howling and kicking the loose earth,” he turns into a “little demon” (25). He repeatedly calls his father “a damn fool” and thinks that “God would surely punish a man who could do that” (25). Pearl James notes that this incident turns “the pastoral landscape of childhood into a site of castration” and causes Claude’s “fall from innocence” (98, 99). Since the cherry tree is archetypically a symbol for paternal relationship between fathers and sons, this incident becomes a “lynchpin for the novel’s ideological conflicts,” writes James (99–100). Most importantly, James comments that the tree incident also rips Claude of any male models to emulate (100), which ultimately hinders the confident realization and orientation of Claude’s sexual identity. His need for male role models reappears later in the novel when Claude hopes that he will “get over” his “feeling of loneliness” because “even his father had been restless as a young man” (Cather 100). Claude’s simultaneous need and dislike for masculine models anticipates his disoriented sexual identity. The cherry tree incident reinforces Claude’s disgust for strong expressions of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity like his father’s. Not only does Mr. Wheeler feel “annoyed” whenever Mrs. Wheeler “complains” about any “physical weakness,” but he also often tries to “harden” Claude, who is “the most handsome” and “the most intelligent” boy in the town (Cather 24). But Claude could never “forgive” his father’s “rugged masculinity” and his “practical joke” on the cherry tree (24–25). After that joke, the rest of the narrative is “an attempt to reverse” the tree incident, maintains James (99). Claude’s discomfiture with traditional masculinity also manifests in his description of his brother Bayliss. Claude finds Bayliss’s controlling nature hideous and thinks that Bayliss 84 Iqra Shagufta Cheema “makes life bleak, perfunctory, utilitarian” (Kingsbury 137). Diction and imagery in the episodes described above suggest that Claude is not man enough for his father, nor for the Nebraskan community. The childhood cherry tree experience also leads to Claude’s failure in emulating the examples of seemingly normal masculine behavior, which, in turn, overdetermines his masculine crisis, colors his self-perception, and affects his heterosocial and homosocial interactions. Claude’s strong attachment to his mother Evangeline, Mahailay, Mrs. Erlich, Annabelle, Peachy Millmore, Gladys, and Enid provide a leitmotif in the narrative, which shows his socio-culturally odd relations with women. His nonnormative romantic pattern reflects his nonheteronormative, and later nonhomonormative, (a)sexuality. Claude’s idea of romance is to share a house and a life with a woman who could cook him good food, provide domestic comfort, and have good conversation with him. He never makes any sexual advances towards women, even when they are interested in him. His relationships with women linger on the borders of romantic, but are never sexual—unsettling his heterosexual orientation. But Claude also does not experience any homoeroticism, not even at Mrs. Erlich’s household where he spent the most intellectually and emotionally invigorating time of his life. The Erlich family’s attire, intellect, confidence, and sociability impresses Claude. Though he finds Erlich boys’ conversations interesting, intriguing, and educating, the only person with whom he connects both intellectually and romantically is Mrs. Erlich—and he never attempts any sexual interaction even with her. At home, Claude is emotionally and intellectually closest to his mother. This mother-son relationship is a compensation for Mr. Wheeler’s paternal absence from Claude’s life and his romantic absence from Mrs. Wheeler’s life, which has left an emotional paucity in both. Evangeline, who is extremely religious in what Celia Kingsbury describes as a “personal and unobtrusive” way (142), feels “tainted” with “passionate human feelings” only for Claude (Cather 59). Mr. Wheeler’s hyper masculine, demeaning, and controlling nature overbears the entire household and brings Claude closer to his mother and their maid, Mahailey. While Patrick Shaw reads their emotional, intellectual, and “Oedipal connection” as “repressed eroticism [as] of genuine maternal affection” (78), I contend that Claude, his mother, and their housekeeper Mahailey take refuge from Mr. Wheeler’s hypermasculine despotism into one another’s emotional and intellectual companionship. Willa Cather’s One of Ours 85 As a non-libidoist asexual, Claude longs not for sexual, but intellectual and romantic relationships. Although he finds the prospect of romance, stimulating conversations, and warmth of a home irresistible, the presence of a woman, or man, never arouses him. He helps Evangeline and Mahailay in the kitchen and feels gratified in the domestic sphere, but this effeminates him in his community and further dissociates him from heterosexual masculinity. Claude’s aversion to sexuality is visible in his very first semi-sexual interaction with a woman, Peachy Millmore, whom he met at the Erlich’s. Despite liking her and “look[ing] forward” to seeing her, Claude develops an instant dislike for Peachy when he notices that she is a sexual being. Since Peachy has no “reserve,” she is “attractive to [Claude] no more” and her “eager susceptibility” does not offer him “the slightest temptation” (Cather 49). His father’s talk of “disreputable men” has built “a sharp disgust for sensuality” in him (49). This aversion to the prospect of a sexual encounter adds weight to the argument that Claude is asexual. But his asexuality is repressed even to himself because it has no name in the sexual identities available in his cultural moment. Despite multiple chances of sexual engagement, Claude only finds pleasure in nonsexual pursuits of intellectual bonding, romantic joy, and domestic comfort. After a football game, Annabelle, Claude’s classmate, “positively throws herself upon his neck” (Cather 33). Claude, instead of accepting the celebratory hug, “disengages himself, not very gently” and walks away (33–34). Annabelle feels “sentimental” about him, but he finds her “flimsy pretenses of light-housekeeping” quite “distasteful” (29, 39) and, Erik Thurin has observed, thinks he “doesn’t need that kind of girl” (233). But the same housekeeping draws him to Mrs. Erlich: he admires how Mrs. Erlich runs the household, celebrates Christmas, and makes German cakes (Cather 39). Unlike Annabelle’s young passions, Mrs. Erlich offers Claude an emotional yet calm domestic warmth. When Mrs. Erlich looks at him with “a quaintly hopeful expression” at the end of his first visit to their house, Claude joyously thinks “nobody has ever looked at [me] like this before” (37). Instead of becoming attached to the Erlich boys, who first invited him to their house, Claude becomes attached to Mrs. Erlich. Claude’s stay in Lincoln and his visit to the Erlich house not only unsettles heterosexual but also the homosexual readings of his character. Claude’s friendship with Julius Erlich dissipates after Claude develops a romantic connection with Mrs. Erlich. Despite multiple chances 86 Iqra Shagufta Cheema of having discussions or playing sports with the Erlich boys, Claude was “perfectly content to be an onlooker” (37). On the contrary, he eagerly looks forward to his interactions with Mrs. Erlich. He even assesses other friends of the Erlich boys on the qualities that would impress Mrs. Erlich, and not the Erlich boys. Baumgartner, Claude observes, despite being “a gawky boy with big red hands and patched shoes,” could “speak German” to Mrs. Erlich and play piano (38). The Erlich boys eventually become a mere excuse for Claude to meet Mrs. Erlich. He “couldn’t resist” visiting the Erlich’s in the afternoons when “the boys were away, and he could have Mrs. Erlich to himself for half-an-hour” (Cather 39). Cather devotes most of this section not to Claude’s friendship with the Erlich boys, but to the descriptions of Mrs. Erlich, her domestic activities, her conversations, and her emotional influence on Claude. Mrs. Erlich, along with providing romantic joy and domestic warmth, also ignites an intellectual spark in Claude. He loves listening to her sing German songs while she works. She makes him feel “happy and full of kindness” (Cather 39). While she enumerates the cake ingredients to him in the kitchen, he thinks about “the things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendship,” “glow of early memories,” “wonder working rhymes and songs” (40). Instead of spending time with Annabelle (a more age-appropriate romantic prospect) or the agreeable Erlich boys, Claude chooses the older and domestic Mrs. Erlich. He even sends her “the reddest roses,” a thing that a Wheeler never does (40). Via these red roses, a symbol of romantic love, reveals his deep affection for Mrs. Erlich. He does not express this love even for his wife, Enid—even though she tells Claude in their first meeting that she takes “more interest in flowers than . . . in people” (105). For neither, however, does Claude express any hint of sexual interest. His relations with women remain strictly heteroromantic, never heterosexual. One of Ours repeatedly employs the term “queer” to point to its characters’ nonnormative characteristics. When Enid shares her intention of going to China to help her sister Carrie in the missionary work, Claude discourages her because “going wandering off” makes people “queer” (Cather 105). Cather, via Leonard Dawson’s character, describes Claude’s injury in Nebraska as “the queerest thing” (115). In addition to that, Claude’s friend, Ernest, notes that Claude is a “big and strong” “queer boy” who has good “education” and “all that fine land” but just does not “seem to fit in” (116). Although Cather’s use of the Willa Cather’s One of Ours 87 term does not carry an overt sexual connotation, Cather’s recurrent use of queer in the novel is, like the historicity of term itself, suggestive of a multiplicity of deviant social practices. Denise Levy and Corey Johnson contend that the word queer “embraces the multidimensionality of human existence” (131). Through her use of the term, which entails wider possibilities for sexual orientations, Cather accommodates what twenty-first-century readers can readily recognize as the characters’ asexuality.9 But as a conventional heterosexual marriage serves as a de facto authentication of a man’s proper socio-cultural role, Claude— who is rendered effeminate by his behavior and circumstance—seeks to assert his masculinity in the heteronormative Nebraskan community as well as find intellectual companionship and domestic warmth via marriage. Claude, curiously, chooses to get married when he is summoned back from his intellectually stimulating and romantically fulfilling life to perform detestable manual agricultural tasks in his dreary house. Cather opens the Enid section in the novel with Claude: he experiences feelings of “loneliness,” “being unrelated to anything,” and “not mattering to anybody” (99). He feels “homesick” for Mrs. Erlich (58). Whereupon, he decides to see Enid Royce because “old friends were the best” (101). Afterwards, on his mother’s reassurance that marriage would “restore his soul,” he decides to do the “first natural, dutiful, expected thing” (122). In his marriage to Enid, he seeks the romantic friendship and domestic warmth that he had with Mrs. Erlich. Enid’s lack of traditional femininity and domesticity is clear as soon as she meets Claude, as is her overt religiosity. According to Hermione Lee, Enid is “vegetarian, pious, prohibitionist, [and] sexually frigid,” as well as a “dismal embodiment of sanctimonious mid-western nonconformism” (175). Enid is “cool” and “sure of herself under any circumstances,” which is why she “dr[ives] a car so well”—“way better than him,” Claude observes (Cather 107). Walking to her house, Claude also reminisces the need for “sentimentality” in the Royce family and remembers that Mr. Royce “had not found many things in his life to be sentimental about” (102). The Royce family does not indulge in any professional, personal, or carnal emotions or pleasure. Upon learning about Claude’s desire to marry Enid, Mr. Royce warns Claude about his daughter’s avoidance of meat (123). Enid has a similar attitude toward corporeal sexual consumption as she does towards meat consumption. 88 Iqra Shagufta Cheema Overall, the diction throughout this section is connotatively pregnant with the lack of pleasurable spiritual, physical, or intellectual activities, which indicates Enid’s lack of interest in sex. None of the Royce women show interest in traditional romantic and sexual activities, albeit varyingly. Mrs. Royce’s relative uninterest is hinted at obliquely: she has some “hidden grief,” some “consuming regret” that leads her to live “differently” from other women (Cather 103). She is known for her “culinary accomplishments” and her “faultless” bread that facilitates the “nourishment” of her family, but “a man” could not “look forward to [them] with pleasure” or “satisfaction,” which suggests a similar stoic and utilitarian disposition regarding other womanly family duties (103). Enid—who lacks even these culinary inclinations, however bland—has a particular uninterest foreshadowed by her sister Carrie’s decision to become a missionary in China. As with Enid’s, what the twenty-first-century reader can recognize as Carrie’s asexual tendencies are entwined with, subverted by, and reinforced by the complex and contradictory nested expectations of gender and religion.10 While motherhood is valued in organized religions, female sexuality as such is condemned. The expectations of pre-marital virginity and absolute abstinence outside of marriage runs up against the simultaneous expectation that women marry and perform their traditional sociocultural reproductive roles with all requisite diligence—and these contradictory expectations are inscribed upon Enid’s very physiognomy. Cather writes that the “pallor of [Enid’s] skin, submissive inclination of her forehead, and her dark, unchanging eyes” are reminders of “something ‘early Christian’” (104). When Claude starts building his house for Enid, his mother reaffirms that “Enid is a good, Christian girl” (143). Their minister, Mr. Smith, also sees the promise of a “virtuous and comely Christian womanhood” in Enid (120). Her religiosity and enthusiasm for missionary work make her, for Shaw, a “Freudian cliché of repressed sexuality” (79). This supposed repression finds expression in her attraction to Claude, such as it is. Claude’s effeminate tendencies and general queerness appeal to Enid. In her marriage with Claude—in whom she finds a tolerant, somewhat lesser man—she sees an opportunity to safely perform her (a)sexuality while “keep[ing] herself free” to later join Carrie in China (Cather 110). At the same time, Claude sees Enid as a housekeeper and a less-threatening woman, with whom marriage would Willa Cather’s One of Ours 89 bestow an air of traditional masculinity upon him without imposing unwanted sexual demands. Neither will the arrangement affect either’s expectations for raising a family: while seeking shelter from a heavy storm, Enid refuses shelter on the grounds that its occupant has “a lot of children” (112). Claude’s dislike for babies is later made evident in a three-paragraph description of how he utterly despised holding a baby (289–92). Despite the apparent promise of domestic harmony in such an arrangement, the nuances and complexities latent within the umbrella concept of asexuality reveal that it perhaps takes more than a mutual lack of sexual interest to sustain a romantic relationship. To be sure, the couple’s initial (and only) physical encounter proceeds inauspiciously. Enid initially refuses Claude’s marriage proposal because “marriage is for most girls, but not for all”; but then she expresses her affection for him and says: “you know I care for you. I have never made a secret of it” (Cather 127–28). Afterwards, she “lets [Claude] kiss her.” But instead of experiencing a rush of pleasure or anticipation, “melancholy clutched the boy’s heart.” He broods that the “world is too rough a place to get about in,” and wonders if there “was nothing in the world outside to answer his own feelings.” Claude is surprised by his own feelings after the kiss because he “hadn’t thought it’d be like this” (128). Instead of the expected rush of pleasure in this happy moment, he realizes his inability to feel pleasure from a sexual act. In return, Enid does not feel a thing. She is, however, quite capable of passion. Upon learning that Claude and his friend Ernest read atheistic books, Enid expresses her dislike for their ideas and pointedly asks Claude if he is an atheist, a “free thinker” (Cather 106). Her father detests her missionary ambitions and tells Claude that such ideas would not “do a woman any good” (124). Although Claude thinks that women’s religiosity and faith is the “natural fragrance of their minds,” Enid’s religious views divide the two even before their marriage (107). Enid takes Claude to the Reverend brother Weldon for a pre-marriage missionary session. Wherein, both Enid and Weldon find Claude’s beliefs foolish, disdainful, and unrespectable. Weldon intentionally mispronounces Claude’s name as “Clod” to amuse himself and thereby registers his disinclination to help Enid (109, 171), while Enid confides in Weldon that her marriage is a ruse intended to eventually facilitate her relocation to China (110). For his part, Claude wonders as to why “sensible women” like his mother 90 Iqra Shagufta Cheema and Enid liked Weldon. He, oblivious to Enid’s determination, scoffs that he, “an atheist,” could give Enid “stronger reinforcement” than her religious mentor Weldon, whom Enid found of “great help” (111). Wholly aside from a question of sexuality, Enid begins their marriage in a religious-based conspiracy against Claude. The situation does not improve with time. Enid’s uninterest in her wifely duties is directly proportional to her rising interest in missionary activism. Enid is appalled by Claude’s indifference to “the burning question” of religious moral issues like sex (174). Eventually, she neglects her domestic duties in order to impose celibacy on her chickens. Dawson sees Claude eating “cold supper by himself” in Enid’s recurrent absences and declares Enid “a fanatic” who is not “content with practicing prohibition on humankind” that is why she “has begun now on the hens” (167). Self-reliant and confident, Enid needs Claude neither for her material, nor sexual or traditionally expected maternal needs. In a telling moment, the two are caught in a storm. As the weather worsens, Enid takes charge. She drives “calm and motionless,” while Claude “anxiously” looks at the storm clouds (Cather 112). Surprised by both her “resourcefulness” and stubbornness, Claude fails to gauge that Enid is “amiable but inflexible” (113–14). She acknowledges that staying at Rice’s place would have been “the sensible thing,” but “only [she] didn’t want to” stay there (113). In this episode, all of Enid’s traits like determination, inflexibility, independence, uptightness, asexuality, and un-domesticity are evident. She is certain and clear about the things she wants in life—and a man is not one of those things. Hence, she will not provide Claude either cerebral or romantic companionship. Without the distraction of quasi-religious fanaticism, Claude’s asexuality is different. While he shares Enid’s aversion to corporeal desire, he remains enmeshed in romantic expectation. In her soothing “tranquil, fragrant presence,” he wishes that she “wouldn’t talk to him” and just “sit there” to “let him look at her” (Cather 117). “Her presence” restores his “equilibrium,” so he wants to be “infinitely tender” and “infinitely patient,” and hopes never to “waken her up.” He will, as he puts it, “love . . . her while she is unconscious like a statue” (122). It is this ideal, inaccessible, and even unconscious lover that appeals to Claude’s asexuality. He had, after all, more conscious available options—specifically, in Gladys. Celia Kingsbury opines that Claude “misses an opportunity for happiness” by choosing Enid over Willa Cather’s One of Ours 91 Gladys (137). Gladys is an intensely corporeal being who finds everything that Claude does “exciting” (211). She has a “magnetism that draws people to her,” she even visits the inhospitable Royce house regularly (103). Unfortunately, as Jonathan Goldberg notes, Claude’s and Gladys’s romantic desires are incompatible (91, 92). Gladys’s warmth, her excitement about Claude, and her popularity in the community poses a threat to the Claude’s chief aim in a marriage. For Gladys, men like Claude, who had “imagination and generous impulses” were all “weak,” “inefficient,” and “failures” (129). But she expects Claude to rise up and not be “weak” and “inefficient” anymore. But Claude is incapable of fulfilling her expectations. On the contrary, by choosing the independent and inaccessible Enid, Claude safeguards the secret of his “failures.” Because sociocultural and religious expectations about sex differ for genders, the narrative focuses on Enid’s femininity instead of her sexuality, whereas Claude’s sexuality and masculinity are intertwined. Though Cather hides any distinct meaning in what Shaw describes as her “non-traditional and ambiguous” narrative (74), Claude perceives his asexuality as a threat to his own masculinity. In a dream, he, with “no clothes on,” talks to Enid through “chattering teeth, afraid lest at any moment she might discover his plight” (131). His asexuality is the “plight” he does not want discovered by his wife-to-be. Claude points to his asexuality in words like “fault,” “sickness,” and “sick feeling in his soul” whenever talking about or to Enid. Despite other characters’ speculations, Claude and Enid never complain about their unconsummated, sexless marriage. But Claude, like other community members, still thinks that Enid is duty-bound to provide him romance and domestic warmth. Claude wears his perfectly “washed” and “ironed” shirts with utmost satisfaction (172), but his faith in “the transforming power” of marriage (145), as Guy Reynolds observes, “founders against his wife’s austere beliefs” (105). Claude wonders if it is “after all his fault” (Cather 173), but Dawson blames Enid’s independence for their unhappy marriage because “a wife with a car” was like having “no wife at all” (166). While Enid’s motivation is self-actualization, Claude’s is social affirmation and recognition. When Enid ends what Lee describes as their “dreary, frustrating marriage” by suddenly leaving for China to look after her sick sister (175), he still worries about “how it’d look to people” if she leaves him (Cather 179). Her departure marks the 92 Iqra Shagufta Cheema end of Claude’s attempt at reclamation of his heterosexual masculinity whereby he is left completely lost, unhappy, and purposeless. He had married Enid for romance and to establish his heterosexual masculinity, but Enid’s “rejection of Claude,” as Lee explains, is a “lethally quiet, banal scene of humiliation” that further aggravates his sense of inadequacy (180). But fortunately for him, war occurs. While Claude wishes to wake up with his masculine “defeats forgotten,” Ernest gabs about “preparation, organization, concentration, inexhaustible resources, inexhaustible men” (135). When Ernest—as enthusiastic about the prospect as his name suggests—asks Claude if he would go to the war, Claude rejects the possibility straightaway. Upon Claude’s refusal, Ernest mocks his lack of manliness by commenting that Americans “brag like little boys” (136). Though Claude questions Ernest’s impatience with him for not “pretend[ing] to feel as Ernest did,” he later decides to join the war (136). This sense of masculine insufficiency provides what James describes as “a precondition for a war experience that enable[s] him to come into his own as a man” (93). Since Mr. Wheeler, the Nebraskan community, and then Enid refuse to confer masculinity upon Claude, Ernest’s demotion of Claude to a mere boy is the moment that pushes him into joining the war to prove that he is a man. One of Ours has received criticism both for its obscure characters and for Claude’s sudden decision to join the war. While Reynolds opines that “the moment of transition” between Enid and War chapters causes the “structural problem” in the novel (109), Steven Trout reasons that the “mixture of contradictory discourses, jarring thematic juxtapositions, and conflicting perspectives” cause the “notorious ambiguity” in the novel (147). Richard Hariss writes that Claude attempt to “die out of a sense of honor, patriotism, and duty” in the war, is “the most irrational act” (85, 84). Similarly, Erik Ingvar Thurin observes that Claude’s restlessness disappears in the war because “he [finds] something to die or perhaps live for” (243). But Claude does not express or seek any greater purpose; he remains preoccupied with his solipsistic intellectual pursuits and emotional dilemmas. Julie Olin-Ammentorp offers the most insightful and detailed reading to suggest that the novel incited criticism because of its “failure in adopt[ing] a sufficiently negative view of the war” (125). She observes that the novel “glorif[ies] war” as a “noble endeavor” but does so “with a sense of bitterness and Willa Cather’s One of Ours 93 betrayal” and “a strong sense of irony” (130). Hence, it problematizes the relation between “combat and masculinity” (134). Further commenting on the “strong association of war and masculinity” in One of Ours, Olin-Ammentorp notes that war historically has held the potential to “transform boys into men” (131). When read in the backdrop of Ernest calling Claude a boy, this comment verifies that the war does masculinize Claude in the eyes of his family and community. While she acknowledges that the “near-miraculous power” of war to “change the lives of Claude and men like him” is problematic, she observes that Claude, the soldier, has “an adult presence that he previously lacked” (132). People respect Claude’s uniform and its authority, accepting him as a new, strong, more masculine man—a real man. Upon his first visit home, Ralph, Mr. Royce, his parents, and even townspeople came to welcome “Lieutenant Claude Wheeler” (Cather 203, 218). Mr. Royce thinks that soldiers learn to carry themselves differently that is why Claude appears “taller” and manly (204). Since Lieutenant Wheeler deserves a better wife, Mr. Royce resents Enid for adding little to “the warmth and comfort of the world” (204)—Enid’s decisions suddenly assume higher stakes and global consequences. Instead of a “weak” and “inefficient” “failure,” Gladys also sees Claude as a “vivid, confident figure” (212). Claude does not seek to be saved anymore; he has become the savior. When he learns that some boys had harassed an old German woman, Claude threatens her “tormentors” and vows to “make it hot” for anybody who bothers her (200–2). Lieutenant Claude Wheeler graciously accepts this bestowal of a newly-found traditional masculinity. Inwardly, Claude considers heteronormative masculinity a bigger problem than the war by commenting that no war could make this world as ugly as it would be if men like Bayliss controlled it (Cather 339). Claude’s disgust of heterosexual masculinity develops when Mr. Wheeler murders the cherry tree. Retrospectively, the soldier Claude even finds the “nervous tension” of his years in America “incredible,” “absurd, and childish” (332). Despite his mother’s reassurance that marriage would “restore his soul,” Claude still sought to “get rid of the sick feeling in his soul” after marriage (122, 101). Eventually, in the war, he believes his soul is restored. Claude finds the intellectual companionship and camaraderie in the soldiers, many of whom are, as Reynolds observes, “archaeologists, musicians, and dilettantes” (115). 94 Iqra Shagufta Cheema Although his relationship with fellow soldiers have been read as suggestively gay, Claude is better understood as an asexual heteroromantic who shares only a platonic intellectual bond with these men. Claude also belongs to the “children of the moon” who have “their unappeased longings and futile dreams” (Cather 171). In these soldiers, he finds this cerebral companionship that he did not find in normative America. His desire for domestic warmth and romance ensured by female presence torments him in the war. Upon learning that Fanning, a seriously injured fellow soldier, only remembers the books he has read, but “the women [including his mother and fiancé] are clearly wiped out” from his memory, Claude comments: “maybe he is fortunate in that” (272–73). Even in madame Joubert’s house, he thinks it is “good to lie again in a house that is cared for by women” (282). Constantly longing for female company, Claude only develops intellectual—not homoromantic or gay—connection with some of the soldiers. Amongst those, he is the most intrigued by and interested in David Gerhardt, his mind, and his artistic interests. His intimacy with David has particularly been the site of homosexual readings of Claude’s character. Marilee Lindemann observes that unclear distinction between homosexuality and homosociality of the soldiers causes the central plot complexity in One of Ours. Although the “construction of homosociality is undeniably homophobic,” Cather “opens up a different set of queer possibilities,” opines Lindemann (74). Lee comments that Claude and David’s relationship “transcend[s] erotic homosexual feelings” (181); but Claude, a heteroromantic asexual, does not have any homosexual or homoromantic feelings towards David. Claude and David never have any connotatively sexual intimacy nor use sexually charged vocabulary during their conversations. At his school in Lincoln, Claude sought someone to “admire,” “envy, emulate, wish to be.” Retrospectively, he believes he “always had a faint image of a man like Gerhardt in his mind” (Cather 332). In Gerhardt, Claude finally finds a male model to emulate to solve his masculine crisis which was caused by Mr. Wheeler’s cruelty and insensitivity. Amongst all the fellow soldiers, Claude found something particularly “out of the ordinary” in David (165). Despite initially feeling jealous and intimidated by “a mature, self-confident adult” and “an accomplished violinist” in David, Claude “marveled at [his] spirit and endurance” (288). He repeatedly tries to “get David to talk about” his music Willa Cather’s One of Ours 95 and his artistic interests (301). The war is the “period of happy youth” for Claude wherein he finds the intellectual companionship and masculine approval that he had always sought (331). While he found intellectually compatible friends in the war, Claude still seeks the romantic company of women. Though he indulges in brief romantic pursuits, heteroromantic asexual Claude never engages in any sexual encounters even during the war. He reminisces about his first night in France when he saw “the country girl in the moonlight bending over her sick soldier” (Cather 269). On his way back, he, nostalgically, hears Oscar playing “home, sweet home” for the last waltz (355). Claude almost loses himself at Mlle. De Courcy’s house, where he feels just like he felt at Mrs. Erlich’s—completely understood without having to assert his masculinity (312). His “face glowed with pleasure.” When she says that “only the feelings matter,” Claude silently agrees and thinks that he had been “trying to say this ever since he was born” but it had made his “life both bitter and sweet” (312). He is heteroromantic because he only wants to share romantic feelings with somebody, unlike other soldiers who seek sexual encounters. Desperately, he makes futile romantic promises to women during the war. He promises Mlle. Olive that he will see her “after the war” and leaves her house knowing that he left something at her house that “he would never find again” (317). Victor, another soldier, persuades Claude to go “in quest of amorous adventures,” but Claude refuses to go “nutting” with him (267–68). He also thinks he will “never go home after all,” because there was no “chance for the kind of life he wanted at home” (327–28). These instances complicate the arguments for Claude’s homosexuality or conventional heterosexuality. One incident that scholars have read as homoerotic and homosexual is when David touches Claude’s arm to draw his attention while they talk about their fallen soldiers (Cather 351–52). But their dialogue in this episode further destabilizes the homosexual or homoerotic readings of Claude’s sexuality. When David observes that they are “the only men in the company who haven’t got engaged” and who do not have any women, Claude admits that he “like[s] the women of [that] country” (355). Instantaneously, he reminisces about “the country girl in the moonlight, bending over her sick soldier” (355). This episode shows that Claude is not gay and that he desires heteroromantic attachment and emotional intimacy. 96 Iqra Shagufta Cheema In the war, Claude finds alternate ways of expressing his masculinity as an asexual. He believes in the restoring power of the war. While David thinks that the war has caused the “destruction of beautiful and historical things,” Claude believes that it “has only scattered things” (Lee 187). In Lee’s reading, the war turned the “feminine, mothered, unhappy virgin” Claude into a “tall, muscular, red-headed pioneering soldier, protector of defenseless women and children, faithful companion, and brave warrior” who did not need sexual conquests to assert his masculinity (180). During the war, he feels that he is reliving “the period of happy youth” that Mrs. Erlich had told him about but which he never experienced as a young boy. Claude gets endorsement for his masculinity simply by virtue of joining the war and without having to perform aggressive and violent traditional masculinity. Though neither David nor Claude derive any pleasure from violence, David is still more ready to go in the battlefield whenever needed. When the messenger conveys that the Colonel wants “two men who can take charge,” David and Hicks exchange glances and volunteer to go—while Claude hesitates. Later, he wonders if David “doubted his nerve” (Cather 349). He remains neurotically worried about others’ perception of his masculinity. Claude’s enigmatic perception of his masculinity and his constant need for affirmation arises from his asexuality in a heteronormative social structure. Asexual Claude makes most decisions in his life because of this fear of emasculation and under the pressure for heterosexual performance. His brief romance with Peachy Millmore, longer romance with the older Mrs. Erlich, and his futile marriage with Enid were all his attempts at finding the romantic connection, without having to perform traditional heterosexual masculinity. His need to ascertain his masculinity causes the structural problem in the novel. When Enid leaves, so does Claude’s chance of proving himself as a man. But war offers him a second chance. Claude and Enid’s uninterest in sexual activity is most comprehensible when read through a coherent concept of asexuality. Through this reading, Claude is established as a heteroromantic asexual whereas Enid is an aromantic asexual. Asexuality, a relatively newer sexual orientation, provisions a nuanced and better reading of the ambiguous portrayal of Claude and Enid’s characters in One of Ours. University of North Texas Willa Cather’s One of Ours 97 Notes 1. The term “queer” could potentially be employed to refer to asexuality or gay sexual preference. Asexuality’s inclusion under queer remains contested to date. Therefore, while I understand and acknowledge the etymological problems and sociosexual baggage associated with the term “homosexuality,” I use “homosexual” and “homosexuality” in this paper for purposes of clarity and to draw clear distinctions between various romantic and sexual preferences. 2. There are multiple biological, medical, psychological, sociological, and demographical studies to define asexuality, which employ varying factors, methods, and criteria to define the term. I would like to point that asexuality emerged in intellectual sexual discourses only almost a decade ago, and awaits more scientific, critical, and sociocultural research. See Houdenhove et. al and also Cerankowski and Milks’s edited collection. 3. The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) is the world’s largest online asexual community as well as an archive of resources and discussion forums about asexuality (“Welcome”). 4. The earliest use of the word asexual is in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey in his book The Satanic Bible where he used it pejoratively, along with hetero-, homo-, and bisexuality. The first positive use is by Frances Chapman in his article YOUR-OWN-LABEL. 5. See Bogaert, “Toward 241; Brotto et al.; Poston and Baumle; Chasin 2013; Van Houdenhove et al.). 6. See also mod j. 7. Canning explores the complexity of inclusion of asexuality into umbrella term “queer.” He notes that asexuality can potentially undermine other sexual identities (passim). 8. CJ DeLuzio Chasin and Ela Pryzybylo respectively introduced the terms “sexualnormative” and “sexusociety” to highlight the omnipresence of sex in societies. In this essay, I use these terms interchangeably. 9. Though the inclusion of asexuality into queer remains contested to date (see Van Dijk; Chasin; Love), Paul Willis suggests that “queer” can be employed “as a critical standpoint for tearing apart dominant ways of knowing about sex, gender, and sexualities” (183). 10. Scholars on asexuality note religion is a recurrent factor in asexuals, though its role varies with gender. Though asexuals represent a “disproportionally high number of atheists” (Brotto et al. 613), religious dictates about controlled sexuality contribute to sexual identity and its performance, especially in women. The AVEN survey also reported that asexuals include both religious and non-religious people as among 300 asexual participants, 53.8% identified as non-religious, 98 Iqra Shagufta Cheema whereas 25.6%, as Christians of different sects. Tori Bianchi comments that asexuality aligns with religious expectations of resisting or ignoring sexuality. 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