In One of Ours the main character, Claude, is confronted with life changing decisions in his social and personal lives. He does not conform to many of the ideals, which his family lives by and therefore has become an outcast at home. However, Claude's personal struggles do not reside strictly within the confines of his household. His troubles carry on through the story and become especially apparent in his sexual life. At times, Cather portrays Claude as man who is crippled in his sexuality and is this act is demonstrated with the way he handles himself with women. Calude's two main goals in this book are his quest for achievement and his quest for sexual fulfillment. Throughout his quest for achievement he tries to gain approval from his family by acting in a manner that does not suit his personality. His family shuns him and treats him as an outcast; this rejection from his family hampers Claude in his quest for sexual fulfillment. Claude chooses the wrong women in order to help him gain acceptance from his family and Cather does a good job of taking all of the women in Claude's life and placing them into two distinct categories: safe and dangerous women. Claude had several issues with every woman he encounters and ends up discriminating against the women with whom he could have strong relationship and opts for women he feels are "safe" for him. By definition, these safe women tend to be older in age, unattainable and have mother-like qualities. The reason for his radical behavior is the fact that there are two sides to Claude as Susan Rosowski points out; "On the one hand there was Claude, a sensitive youth burning with desire to find meaning; on the other, there was his world-intractable, immediate, alien" (Rosowski 97). This argument in itself can be easily argued, but the facts are there to back up the theory. At first it s hard to see why Claude is the way he is however, upon further review Cather makes the reader very aware that most of the issues in Claude's life can be traced back to his childhood.
