Cather's Shadows On The Rock

Cather novels usually bring the idea of her age and her personal happiness and sufferings. Shadows on the Rock is of no exception. Her first visit to the city of Quebec and its history and its Roman Catholicism and its European tradition kindles her imaginative power. It became the inspiration for her novel, Shadows on the Rock. The story of Euclide Auclair, an apothecary , clearly pictures many effects of Old and New World Origins. The family is the primary source of this novel. For Madame Auclair, Household goods were household Gods. In this novel Cather exposes her talent by giving more importance to the household things like sofa and fireplace. This novel is the composition of all the incidents that includes in the daily life of Quebec. There are so many incidents in this novel, each and every incident is seen by Cather and it is illustrated through Auclair’s Family .

Critic’s View
Critics like John Chamberlain, Kenneth C. Kaufman, complained and showed their disappointment. Kaufman noted, “ Through her eyes we see, as through a peep hole, a gigantic stage where Titans play their destine roles and come to heroic ends. The effect, according to Carl Van Doren, in the New York Herald Tribune Books, was to create a domesticated novel. Obliged by her method to forego heroism at first hand, Van Doren
The story begins in 1697, in the city of Quebec, Cather tries to bring to our eyes its inhabitants, values, ideals and beliefs that prevailed there. The people in the city struggled and tried hard to accept the transformation from the Old World to the New World. Cecile following her father, came to understand, that she has to prepare herself to be in France. Cather displays her mood in this novel, she had a great pain, because she lost her father and her mother ws also affected by stroke. In her letter published in “The Saturday Review of Literature” she asserted