Although an inflamed tendon in her hand hampered her writing, Cather managed to finish a substantial part of a novel set in Avignon, France. Her remaining papers reveal that she had titled the unfinished manuscript "Hard Punishments" and placed it in the 14th century during the papal reign of Antipope Benedict XIV. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. That same year, she executed a will that prohibited the publication of her letters and dramatization of her works. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, a prestigious award given for an author's total accomplishments.