In A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, two types of men are introduced to the reader: the old-fashioned man who belongs to the Old West, and the new man who is a product of the industrial revolution. Niel Herbert and Ivy Peters exemplify these two types of men; with their outlook on life and their actions, they are as fundamentally opposed to each other as the Old West was to the Industrial Revolution. Niel and Ivy's different visions of life – that of the Old West versus that of the Industrial Revolution – are as disparate as their appearances. Niel, with his "sharp features and] his gray eyes, so dark they seemed black under his long eyelashes," (Cather 33) represents the Old West and all its hopes and dreams, while Ivy with her red skin , dimples as hard as "a knot in the trunk of a tree" (21) and his eyes "fixed, unblinking" (21), is the realist of the next generation. Niel, Ivy's junior by several years, “had believed that man could live according to aesthetic ideals, and this belief is positive. However, he had not yet harmonized these ideals with human life” (Rosowski, A Lost Lady: The Paradoxes of Change, 59). It is this refreshing, if naive, faith in men's ability to rise above petty emotions, and particularly his veneration of Marian Forrester as an archetype of feminine goodness, that is slowly consumed in Niel as the novel progresses. When Niel returns to Sweet Water after spending time at university, he meets Ivy and from their brief conversation Niel realizes the difference between him and Ivy. The men of the Old West, Niel realizes, were “dreamers, big-hearted adventurers who were impractical to the point of magnificence; a courteous brotherhood, strong in attack but weak in de... middle of paper.... Although Niel realizes that Marian Forrester is not the pure ideal he has revered since childhood, the way he treats her not change – he remains courteous and gallant, as any man of the Old West would have done. Ultimately, the difference between these two characters can be summed up in a few words. Neil Herbert has that indefinable quality of life and action which belongs to all gentlemen, and Ivy Peters does not. Works Cited Cather, Willa. A lost lady. New York: Random House, Inc., 1972. Print.Dawson, Survey of American Literature by Dawn P. Magill. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, Inc., 2007. Print.Mainiero, Lina. American writers. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc., 1979. Print.Rosowski, Susan J. “A Lost Lady” by Willa Cather: The Paradoxes of Change. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 11.1 (1977): 59. JSTOR. Network. 07 March 2012