Going on eleven, Willa began school in Red Cloud and quickly became aware of how her speech differed from that of her classmates. She worked diligently to eliminate her southern accent. In addition, biographer Edith Lewis reports that “when the other children gave their names at roll call, she hastily improvised for herself the family name of Sibert [her own middle name].”
In June 1890, sixteen-year-old Cather graduated in a class of three from Red Cloud High School. The other two graduates were male and were expected, according to the reporter for the Red Cloud Chief, to go on to do great things. All three graduates gave speeches at their commencement, and this same reporter expressed surprise at the power and logic of Cather’s speech—an example of her era’s belief that rationality and logic were exclusively masculine qualities.
