Mrs. Forrester is the most affected of all. Changes happen irremediably to the whole town. People remaining in the old word are further and further drawn apart from people going along with the new order, till there is no way of communication between the two left. Business is treated from a much broader angle, companies develop in a higher speed in terms of tome and space. "Cather's A Lost lady is written towards the end of the Age of Reform, as Hofstadter termed it. This is an age when the small-town gentry, the bankers and lawyers, are being swept aside by the inevitable growth of a national rather than a regional elite. They feel their status collapse during the 20th century as the national ceiling on wealth rises significantly."(Smith, J.N, (www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/lostlady/about.html)

There is also the nuance between black and white, which role is played by Neil Herbert, the nephew of judge Pommeroy, another representative of the old world about the disappear. Neil is the young man who still has the chance to chose. He can afford to say no a carrier driven by the sole purpose of accumulating money first and foremost. Thus, instead of becoming a lawyer in a new world, like his esteemed uncle in the old one, Neil decides to study for becoming an architect. Being a young intelligent man, Neil still manages to survive without having to compromise, but he has to whiteness the compromises made by those around him, especially by the woman he once put on a pedestal. He cannot experience the changes in the society he is living in himself without loosing something. He chooses not to interfere in the destiny of the one he is in love with, but his neutral state is costing him anyway. The changes in his friends' lives and the ones in the world are affecting him as he is not living in a glass house. "In A Lost Lady, Niel Herbert inhabits a...

Elmo."(Romines, Ann. "Admiring and Remembering the problem of Virginia").
The parallel between what a man compared to what a woman looses in times of big changes is obvious. Neil Herbert decides to study for a carrier for which he still can stay neutral in terms of compromise, whereas "Marian Forrester refuses to immolate herself on the funeral pyre of a pioneer past."(Rosowski, Susan J., Willa Cather's Subverted Endings and Gendered Time)

Bibliography

1. Cather, Willa. "A Lost Lady." Vintage; Reissue edition (June 16, 1990)

2. Romines, Ann. "Admiring and Remembering The Problem of Virginia." The Willa Cather Archive. "Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination"

Cather Studies, Volume 5.Edited by Susan J. Rosowski London & Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Retrieved: 7 Aug., 2006. http://libtextcenter.unl.edu/examples/servlet/transform/tamino/Library/cather?&_xmlsrc=http://libtextcenter.unl.edu/cather/scholarship/cs/vol5/cat.cs005.xml&_xslsrc=http://libtextcenter.unl.edu/cather/xslt/cather_cs_romines.xsl

3. Rosowski, Susan J. "Willa Cather's Subverted Endings and Gendered Time." Cather Studies, Volume 1. The Willa Cather Archive. Edited by Susan J. Rosowski Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. retrieved: 7 Aug., 2006

http://libtextcenter.unl.edu/cather/scholarship/cs/vol1/endings.html

4. Smith, J.N. author of ClassicNote. Completed on February 25, 2000, copyright held by GradeSaver.

A www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/lostlady/about.html