The Mountain Lion
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 First edition | |
| Author | Jean Stafford |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace |
Publication date | 1947 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 248 |
The Mountain Lion is a novel by Jean Stafford first published in 1947 by Harcourt & Brace. The novel was republished in 1953 in The Interior Castle (1953), which also includes Stafford’s first novel, Boston Adventure (1944), and her short story collection Children Are Bored on Sunday (1953).[1][2][3]
“Poor old Molly! I loved her dearly and I hope she rests in peace. —Jean Stafford in author's note to The Mountain Lion (September 21, 1971)[4]
Eight-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother Ralph live in a Los Angeles suburb where they are sheltered by their mother after they are left weak by scarlet fever. One summer, she relents to allow them to visit their Uncle Claude's ranch in Colorado, on the condition that they are not to go horseback riding or engage in "perilous amusements". Although fearful, the pair resolve to use this opportunity learn more about the world they have been missing. They return each summer for several years, providing a contrast between their dull suburban school years and the challenges of ranch life as the children grow into adults.[3]
Reception
Orville Prescott, in the New York Times detects elements of a “controlled and conscious work of art” that largely eclipses Stafford’s first novel, Boston Adventure (1944).[5]
Its characters are painfully real, interesting as individuals and significant as representatives of various attitudes toward life. Its story moves swiftly, quietly, surely to a tragic conclusion, which is surprising and yet somehow inevitably appropriate. ..convincing evidence that Miss Stafford has both the creative imagination and the artistic self-discipline to become one of our most interesting novelists.[6]
Novelist Irving Howe praises Stafford's improved handling of her narratives: "In The Mountain Lion Miss Stafford solved one of her most troublesome problems, how to control her rich style so that it would allow the action to emerge tensely and cleanly."[7]
Theme
Stafford examines the American West and her ambivalence towards its icons, as well as social traditions of the East.[8] Biographer Mary Ann Wilson writes:
The Mountain Lion [is] her most extended treatment of the western theme...Stafford demythologizes the Old West by making it the locus of distinctly unheroic actions and frequently comparing it to the East...to the detriment of both.[9]
Literary critic Blanche H. Gelfant in The Massachusetts Review writes:
The Mountain Lion…surveys the American scene, East and West, to find everyone everywhere reduced to caricature. Stafford presents us with our familiar stereotypes, which is a way of preserving our prejudices, and her own.”[10]
Gelfant considers the novel "a brilliant and destructive tour de force..."[11]