The Song of the Lark

The protagonist of The Song of the Lark, Thea, is the symbol through which Cather depicts the journey from raw talent to mature artistry.

Thea’s hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, is the first important developmental stage of her persona as an artist. The beautiful, expansive landscape stirs her first emotional responses to aestheticism, which she communicates through music. The blend of cultures in Moonstone also contributes to Thea’s development as an artist. She listens to music from Mexican and German cultures, which helps her see the various possibilities inherent in the musical experience. Moonstone’s diversity also helps Thea to learn how music and art can bring people from disparate stations of life and cultures together. In her adult years, Thea will recognize Moonstone’s influence on her identity as an artist, but in childhood, she feels a restless longing to be in larger spaces. Thea believes that more stimulation will lead to more artistic revelations, but ultimately, the natural beauty of Moonstone’s culture and landscape is fundamental to her identity.

An important shift toward discovering her artistic persona occurs when Thea switches from piano to voice. Singing comes more naturally to Thea, and she finds more space for creativity in singing. She is good at the piano, but Harsanyi deems her incurious about the piano. When Thea embraces her identity as a singer, she finds an art form that resonates with her internal artistry. Thea’s identity as a singer is symbolized in both the title of the novel and the painting she finds at the Art Institute in Chicago. Jules Breton’s 1884 oil painting depicts a farmgirl who is moved by the song of a lark. Thea embodies this painting because she is both the lark whose song inspires others and the young woman inspired by the song. Thea “told herself that that picture was ‘right.’ Just what she meant by this, it would take a clever person to explain. But to her the word covered the almost boundless satisfaction she felt when she looked at the picture” (96). Words cannot explain her connection to the painting. The image of language’s inadequacy in this instance captures the true connection to art—feeling, not intellect.

In Part 6, Thea is a successful singer, but she hasn’t fully come into her own as an artist. Part 6 depicts the constant struggle Thea has with her art—a struggle that defines the process of making art. Thea commits herself to every opportunity she gets to sing, knowing that the more she works, the more she’ll learn. Thea is interested in art for the sake of art; therefore, she never compromises her standards for performance. Though this often drives her to despair and exhaustion, she pushes ahead because she can’t help it—an artist naturally forges ahead. Cather ends her novel by informing the reader that Thea becomes a world-famous artist, but she ends the novel before the reader can experience that transition. Cather’s novel is about the formation of the artist. The Song of the Lark is about how an artist develops their identity, skill, and ambition. In The Song of the Lark, Cather emphasizes that becoming an artist is not necessarily about the product, but about the process.