“The Sculptor’s Funeral” is a short story belonging to the Naturalist literary genre. Naturalist literature furthers the notion that people’s fates are determined by forces outside of a person’s control, such as biology, social class, and the environment. While protagonists may try to assert agency in their lives to achieve freedom or success, Naturalist stories often end with harsh and pessimistic depictions of people trapped by their circumstances.
In “The Sculptor’s Funeral,” for example, Cather seemingly demonstrates that it is possible for people to free themselves of their traumatic upbringings if they leave their hometowns (specifically leaving judgmental and rigid rural communities for modern and liberal urban ones), as seen in the great success that Harvey finds as an artist after moving to Boston.
That said, Steavens’s reflections on what Harvey was like in life demonstrates that he carried his childhood trauma with him—as he tells Jim at the funeral, even out East Harvey was “distrustful” and “always gave one the impression of being detached.” Likewise, as much as he wanted to escape his judgmental community and physically abusive mother, Harvey still ends up back in his hometown in the end, as his body is brought back there for the funeral. The funeral-goers then indiscriminately criticize him for not living up to their communal expectations. In this way, Cather demonstrates that even in death, people are still trapped by the families and environments from which they come.
