Willa Cather by Kathleen Norris

"No romantic novel ever written in

America, by man or woman, is one
half so beautiful as MY ANTONIA."
-- H. L. Mencken

In the mid-1970s, not long after I had moved from New York City to Lemmon, South Dakota, I attended a 90th
birthday party for a woman who had been one of the original homesteaders in the area, having immigrated from
Sweden with her parents in 1909. The Lutheran church basement was decorated with crepe-paper streamers, and
one table held family photographs -- color snapshots of the great-grandchildren, wedding photographs from the
1950s, daguerreotypes of stern-faced ancestors in the Old Country. Most of the woman's children were in
attendance; I knew the ones who ranched in the area, but not those who had moved on to Oregon, Washington,
California. In the course of our conversation, my husband asked her how many children she'd had, and the
woman laughed nervously and said, "Oh, dear, I don't remember. Some died so young. Sixteen, maybe ... 14.
Eleven lived."

Such stories seem anachronistic in present-day America, but the monumental rigors of pioneer life are still a
vivid memory for many on the Plains. Willa Cather's MY ANTONIA is about the hardy people who risked their
lives and fortunes in a harsh new land; Cather had the great good fortune to have lived among the first generation
of white settlers in 1880s Nebraska, and she gives witness to their time and place in such a way that American
literature will never forget them. MY ANTONIA, following O PIONEERS! (1913) and THE SONG OF THE
LARK (1915), completes the trilogy of Cather's best-known Nebraska novels. Critic H. L. Mencken thought MY
ANTONIA to be the most accomplished and, reviewing it in 1919, shortly after it was published, he wrote, "Her
style has lost self-consciousness; her feeling for form has become instinctive. And she has got such a grip upon
her materials. ... I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the Western prairies more real ... and I know
of none that makes them seem better worth knowing."

It was risky, in the early part of this century, to presume to write fiction about ordinary, rough-hewn people
engaged in the rigors of dry land farming in frontier Nebraska. The prevailing literary style was for overrefined,
predictable, plot-driven novels with characters who held fast to European pretensions and standards of gentility.
Along with writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather was seen by some contemporary
critics as an answered prayer. Writing about O PIONEERS!, which had established Cather's national reputation
when it appeared in 1913, one critic stated, "Here at last is an American novel, redolent of the Western prairies."

Louise Bogan, who termed Cather an American classic in THE NEW YORKER, treasured the authority of
Cather's voice, her having "learned all there was to know about the prairie, including how to kill rattlesnakes and
how prairie dogs built their towns." Above all, Bogan praised Cather for not being one of those "writers of
fiction who compromised with their talents and their material in order to amuse or soothe an American business
culture." Refreshed by Cather's evocation of pioneer life, Bogan said admiringly that Cather "used her powers ...
in practicing fiction as one of the fine arts."

Cather herself complained in a 1922 essay that "the novel, for a long while, has been over-furnished." Intent on
telling the truths of a particular time and place, she made her own prose as spare as the land about which she was
writing, and became a pioneer in American fiction. While Europe figures in MY ANTONIA as a lost Eden, or a
repository of terrible secrets that haunts the immigrants in their new land, the novel is solidly grounded in
America, its language the uncluttered idiom of the farmers and townspeople of Webster County, Nebraska. For
example, young rural women in Boston or New York who moved into town to earn wages to help support their
families on the farms were commonly called "servants." Cather, however, knew that in Nebraska they were
called "hired girls," and that's what she calls them in MY ANTONIA.

Cather's Nebraska novels vibrate not only with the spoken language of ordinary people but also with the visual
images that help a reader truly to see a place. In MY ANTONIA Cather moves smoothly and spectacularly from
the small detail to an exalted vision of the landscape and its possibilities. Not long after 10-year-old Jim Burden
arrives in Nebraska, having been orphaned in Virginia, he mulls over his grandmother's solemn instruction never
to go to the garden without a stick for clubbing rattlesnakes. Then he muses: "Alone, I should never have found
the garden. ... I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not
be very far away ... if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into
them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass."
Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873, near the town of Winchester, Virginia, in the North Neck region of
the state, where her ancestors had farmed since the late 18th century. She was the first of seven children. Cather
was nine when her family moved to Nebraska, following her father's parents and his brother, who had emigrated
to the frontier during the 1870s. Cather's family left behind a large and prosperous farm, a house that Cather
remembered as roomy and cheerful, and, of course, the lush foliage of Virginia. Her family settled on a farm
near Red Cloud, Nebraska, which had been founded in 1870, and by the time Willa Cather arrived, it had a
population of about 1,000, a school, and a small opera house.

The near-treeless countryside could not have been less like Virginia, and the drastic change took a toll on the
young Willa Cather. In a newspaper interview following the publication of O PIONEERS!, Cather said that the
new landscape had evoked a sense of "erasure of personality." In MY ANTONIA, Jim Burden says of his first
glimpse of Nebraska, "There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries
are made." During the 20-mile trip by horse-drawn wagon from town to his grandparents' farm, Jim looks out at
the starry night and says of his deceased parents, "I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on,
carrying me I knew not where. ... Between that earth and sky I felt erased, blotted out."

Jim Burden serves Cather well as a narrator of the land. As he is settling in with his grandparents, he notes with
wonder that theirs is the only wooden house for miles around, and that their neighbors live in houses made of
sod. His sense of being obliterated by the landscape remains strong: "Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach,
there was nothing but rough, shaggy red grass, most if it as tall as I." But he begins to find beauty in the sea of
grass, its red "the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so
much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running." In an elegant phrase that became
Cather's epitaph -- it is etched on her tombstone -- Burden comes to accept the power of the land over him,
asserting, "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

Cather said in a 1921 interview that the years from eight to 15were particularly formative in any writer's life;
clearly, for her, it was the experience of moving to Nebraska and absorbing its pioneer culture that first inspired
her as a writer and gave us the most beloved of her novels. At the age of 11 Cather obtained employment
delivering mail to the farms around Red Cloud, which gave her unparalleled access to the talk and the lives of
her immigrant neighbors. The knowledge she gained about them, however, set her apart from the other English-
speaking settlers. In a 1923 essay entitled "Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle," she says of her own people
that they were kind to their neighbors from Europe but also "provincial and utterly without curiosity" about the
Old World cultures from which these people had come. MY ANTONIA reveals the subtle ironies of a social
milieu in which, as noted in Doris Grumbach's 1988 foreword to this novel, the Czechs, Swedes, and
Norwegians "were looked down upon for their poverty but were lonely for a culture which was, in many cases,
richer than their American neighbors'."
Antonia Shimerda's father is a tragic case in point. A cultured man, a violinist, he cannot bear the weight of the
hardships he encounters in Nebraska -- living with his family in a crude dugout and taking turns wearing the one
overcoat they own. Lacking the skills to manage a farm, he clings pathetically to his Old World wardrobe,
emerging from the earthen dugout in a coat and "a knitted grey vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark
bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin." Mr. Shimerda was a common type among
Plains homesteaders. My own great-grandfather Heyward, a proper Englishman, once refused to evacuate a
South Dakota parsonage that was on fire until he was fully dressed.

Jim Burden notes that Antonia is the only one of the Shimerda family "who could rouse the old man from the
torpor in which he seemed to live." When Jim examines a gun brought over from the Old Country, he finds Mr.
Shimerda looking at him with "his faraway look that always made me feel as if I were down at the bottom of a
well." Jim senses that his grandmother, too, is "so often thinking of things that were far away." This
homesickness is an important link between the native-born American homesteaders and the more recent
immigrants; it helps them bridge their differences. When Shimerda, overcome by emotion, suddenly kneels and
prays before the Burdens' Christmas tree, Jim's grandfather somewhat nervously bows his head, "thus
Protestantizing the atmosphere." After Shimerda has taken his leave, thanking the Burdens and blessing Jim with
the sign of the cross, Jim's grandfather tells him simply, "ŚThe prayers of all good people are good.'"

This scene underscores a reality of frontier existence: circumstances of deprivation and isolation often deprive
prejudice of the ignorance and distrust that it needs in order to thrive. By the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was active
on the Plains, preaching a virulent anti-Catholicism, but in both O PIONEERS! and MY ANTONIA, Cather
offers us a glimpse of a more innocent time. Even now, in the remotest places on the Plains, places that the larger
society does not notice or care about, I've found that country people can often bridge cultural gaps with ease;
they know that theological or ideological distinctions matter far less than the needs of the people at hand.

In writing about a novel such as MY ANTONIA, which has long been considered a classic of American
literature, I am temped to play the devil's advocate and ask a simple question, one that any 15-year-old assigned
to read the novel might ask: Why read it NOW? What possible relevance can it have for life in urban,
postmodern America? One can point, of course, to the many small delights of observation that give the book its
rich texture, the "nimble air" of spring that releases the settlers from the fierce grip of winter, or Burden's
observation that on a quiet night "it seemed as if we could hear the corn growing ... under the stars one caught a
faint crackling ... where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green." There are also people we recognize: the
suspicious Mrs. Shimerda, unable to recognize that what she considers her peasant canniness is a self-defeating
form of paranoia; the pompous and cruel Wick Cutter, "full of moral maxims for boys," who rapes his hired
girls; and the hateful Mrs. Cutter, whom Cather describes, memorably, as having a face "the very colour and
shape of anger."

But MY ANTONIA also holds an important place in American immigrant fiction; it taps into a communal sense
of America as an admixture of rich heritages. Many people now alive, my own family included, share the story
of the English, Scottish, and Irish immigrants who came to the Great Plains by way of New England or Virginia
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I suspect that Willa Cather would be fascinated by contemporary novels
about more recent immigrants by the Asian-American and Hispanic writers who are currently enriching
American literature. No doubt some of these writers have learned much from Cather about what it means, as a
novelist, to have fidelity to a time and a place. MY ANTONIA concerns, as do many of these recent books,
coming of age in a new place and culture; it also explores childhood affections, dreams once held dear, in the
light of an adult awareness of displacement. Cather herself epitomizes an all too American displacement; her
best writing years, including the period in which she wrote her first three Nebraska novels, were spent in New
York City, where she had gone in 1906 to work as an associate editor at MCCLURE'S, one of the most popular
magazines of the day.

In many ways the world of MY ANTONIA is still with us, a neglected but significant part of America. While
Cather witnessed the drastic changes that were occurring on the Plains in the transition from the 19th to the 20th
century, from the first to the second and third generations of immigrants, a writer now living on the Plains would
note another kind of change: like most small towns in the region, Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska, has been losing
population ever since she wrote about it. Its population surged to nearly 2,000 in the 1890s, and is down to some
1,131 people today.
In a prophetic 1923 essay on Nebraska, Willa Cather noted with unease that the children of the immigrants, the
second generation to farm the Plains, "were reared amid hardships, and it is perhaps natural that they should be
very much interested in material comfort, in buying whatever is expensive and ugly." She saw rural Nebraskans
succumbing to the enticements of manufacture, the beginnings of a consumer society, and commented, "The
generation now in the driver's seat hates to make anything, wants to live and die in an automobile, scudding past
those acres where the old men used to follow the long cornrows up and down. They want to buy everything
ready-made: clothes, food, education, music, pleasure." She wonders if the generations of the future will be
fooled. Will they believe, she asks, "that to live easily is to live happily?" A relevant question for any thoughtful
person in a consumer society, but one that has special resonance for those who still farm and ranch on the Great
Plains and ponder the transition from families engaged in agriculture to corporations practicing agribusiness.

The cities of America contain a Great Plains diaspora, full of people who, like Jim Burden, left the small towns
and farms of their youth for an easier life, who felt that they had to leave in order to make their way in the world.
Like him, they are haunted by the past and by the painful ambiguities of their relationships with the friends and
relatives who remained on the land. A lawyer in Fargo, North Dakota, the first in his family to graduate from
college, told me recently that his family back in western North Dakota was enormously proud of his success, and
would never forgive him for leaving. I picture this diaspora as people distractedly watching CNN in city
apartments, but containing deep within themselves a vision of the long, "sunflower-bordered roads" in farm
country that had seemed to Jim Burden "the roads to freedom."

The doctrinaire socialist and Marxist critics of the 1930s came to see Cather's work (as well as that of Sherwood
Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and other writers depicting small-town America) as reactionary. Granvillle Hicks, in a
devastating piece entitled "The Case against Willa Cather," decries her turning away from "contemporary life as
it is," which he clearly envisions to be "our industrial civilization." His argument holds only if you are willing to
dismiss the rural and small-town people of the Great Plains as unreal or irrelevant, to see their lives as not
worthy of a writer's attention, an attitude long prevalent in American literature which has only recently begun to
change.

It is precisely Cather's allegiance to her subject, her thoroughly realistic picture of the lives of Nebraska
homesteaders even as she employs what one critic derisively termed "heroic idealism," that makes MY
ANTONIA so remarkable. Her famous image of a plow, "magnified across the distance by the horizontal light,
[standing] out against the sun," is anything but romantic when taken in the context of Antonia Shimerda's
difficult life. Visiting her after an absence of 20 years, after tragedies and disappointments have come to them
both, Jim Burden finds Antonia at the center of a thriving family, enormously proud of the fruit orchards she has
brought out of nothing. The reader knows what her victories have cost her, and stands amazed with Burden as he
says, "Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life."

Cather's depiction in MY ANTONIA of the situation of rural and small-town women constitutes another form of
realism that many of her contemporary critics missed. The vulnerability of young women, especially poor
country girls, to sexual betrayal, to scandal and censure in late-19th-century society, informs much of the book.
Cather also makes a sophisticated commentary on the distinctions that began to emerge between country people
and town people in her youth. Burden's disappointment with town life, where "the scene of human life was
spread out shrunken and pinched," in comparison to life on the farms surely reflects Cather's own experience.
When she was 12 years old, her family moved from their unsuccessful farm to Red Cloud, where her father set
up a loan and mortgage business.

Cather's nonconformity was much gossiped about in Red Cloud -- she frequently dressed in men's clothing and
had the outlandish ambition to become a doctor; she also studied Latin in her attic study. Like Antonia, who had
thought nothing of having Jim feel the biceps she'd developed from doing heavy labor on the farm, Cather did
not hesitate to work outdoors in "a man's job" -- delivering mail on horseback. On moving into town, she, like
Jim Burden, no doubt noted with scorn that a town girl's soft muscles "seemed to ask but one thing -- not to be
disturbed." When Jim describes the "guarded mode of existence" in town as "like living under a tyranny," he
speaks a truth about humanity that we know all too well in the late 20th century. The well-guarded conformity of
the many not only stifles the independent spirit, it can destroy it. This aspect of the novel may offer a guide to
placing MY ANTONIA in the current debate on diversity in American culture.

"Practicing fiction" proved to be Cather's means of survival, her way through a world that both rewarded and
castigated her intelligence and independent spirit. Critics have often commented on the fact that Jim Burden, in
many senses, stands in for Willa Cather: she, too, came to Nebraska from Virginia as a child; she, too, eventually
lived and worked in New York City. Cather's appropriation of a male narrator was considered daring at the time.
In recent years some feminist critics have called it reactionary; others have termed it a liberating act in the days
before American women even had the right to vote. I see it as a splendid subversion, amplified in MY
ANTONIA by Cather's creation of strong, memorable female characters.

It has less often been noted that Cather also incorporated large elements of herself into Antonia, a character
known to be based on Cather's childhood friend from the Nebraska countryside, Annie Pavelka. Cather was a
notorious tomboy, and surely Antonia reflects Cather's sentiments when she says, "Oh, better I like to work out-
of-doors than in a house!" She tells Jim, "I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to
be like a man." But it is worth noting, too, as it says much about Cather's genius for creating a believable, late-
19th-century frontier woman, that Antonia also pursues motherhood with the same innocent vigor. In some ways
MY ANTONIA is a perfect illustration of Virginia Woolf's insight that all writers must be androgynous, willing
and able to express both the male and the female. With Jim and Antonia, Cather is "practicing fiction" at the
highest level, inventing characters who are like her and not like her, who are and are not their real-life models.

The bold curiosity and independent spirit that did not gain Cather approval in Red Cloud society is of course
necessary for an artist, and it is likely that her scorn for the popular art of what she called "adjective and
sentimentality" made Willa Cather unpopular with peers and elders alike. The frustrations of Cather's teenage
years in Red Cloud seem to have found release in the columns she wrote for the NEBRASKA STATE
JOURNAL from 1893 to 1896, when she was a student at the University of Nebraska. An 1894 piece all but
scorches the page: "The Bohemians make large pretensions, it's a part of their business. But they have great
standards, that saves them. ... In Philistia there are no standards and no gods. Each house has its own little new
improved portable idol and could never be convinced that it was not just as good as any other idol. Here the great
standards of art avail nothing."
In an 1895 essay entitled "The Demands of Art," Cather makes a revealing statement about the vulnerability of
the artist. "When one comes to write," she says, "all that you have been taught leaves you, all that you have
stolen lies discovered. You are then a translator, without a lexicon, without notes. ... You have then to give voice
to the hearts of men, and you can do it only so far as you have known them, loved them. It is a solemn and
terrible thing to write a novel." Cather was then 17 years away from publishing her first novel; she would spend
10 years in Pittsburgh teaching high school and working as a journalist before moving to New York. There she
had more hack work ahead of her at MCCLURE'S before the advice of another woman writer, Sarah Orne
Jewett, would take hold in her. "You must find a quiet place," Jewett wrote Cather in 1908. "You must find your
own quiet center of life, and write from that."

Louise Bogan puts Willa Cather's achievement in perspective when she writes approvingly that while Cather's
first novel, ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE, opens in Boston, her second, O PIONEERS!, begins with a scene of a
high gale in Nebraska. "For Miss Cather, the wind was at last blowing in the right direction," Bogan concludes.
"From then on ... she remembered Nebraska." A large part of that remembering for Cather meant calling forth in
herself that love she had spoken of in her youthful manifesto on the demands of writing, but it took her some
time to shed her self-consciousness and to develop the artistic mastery that H. L. Mencken found so striking in
MY ANTONIA.

Even more than in MY ANTONIA, the land itself is the main character of O PIONEERS!, but in Cather's second
Nebraska novel, THE SONG OF THE LARK, it figures hardly at all; instead, Cather takes a hard look at what it
takes for a woman artist to emerge from the constrictions of small-town society. Its heroine, the ambitious and
resourceful Thea Kronborg, pursues her career as a singer despite a disapproving family and men who
underestimate her. Her triumph is singing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In MY ANTONIA, as Cather returns to rural Nebraska, she contrasts it not only with local small-town society
but also with the larger world that the railroad reaches. The heroic vision of the first generation of Nebraska
homesteaders that marks O PIONEERS! has been tempered by Cather's wariness of the "progress" that came
barreling along with the advent of the 20th century. A sense of loss permeates the novel, the sense that, as Cather
wrote in 1923, in Nebraska, "the splendid story of the pioneers is finished, and ... no new story worthy to take its
place has yet begun."

The epigraph from Virgil that Jim Burden employs as a motto for recounting his childhood friendship with
Antonia in the Nebraska countryside -- "Optima dies ... prima fugit" (The best days are the first to flee) --
epitomizes the elegiac tone of the novel, and helps to explain the way the book unfolds. Episodic rather than
plot-driven, MY ANTONIA is a continual revelation of stories that linger in the memory. In many ways the
novel is a perfect evocation of childhood. The task for Jim Burden in recounting the past is not to dwell in it, but
to use it to celebrate the present, however reluctantly. The reader comes to understand that both Jim and Antonia
have done well not to triumph over circumstance but to keep both memory and hope alive within its bounds.

The task for Cather, as novelist, is to describe the past in such a way that it is truly evoked, with a minimum of
nostalgia or sentimentality. This she does in part by making indelible the vigor, the very voice of Antonia
Shimerda; we see Antonia running barefoot in her garden, gripping plow handles behind a team of horses,
gathering her children to her side. "We all liked Tony's stories," Jim Burden tells us, adding that "her voice had a
peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky, and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it.
Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart." Perhaps the memory is so vivid to the grown-up Jim
because he hears so little anymore that is from the heart. As a successful legal counsel for the railroad, long
settled into a disappointing marriage, Jim has learned not to expect so much from those around him.

But his friendship with Antonia remains, and it is one that might strike the modern American reader as
something of a miracle. In our mobile society, not many of us can lay claim to such lifelong relationships. I find
it significant that Cather's Nebraska masterpiece has such a friendship at the heart of it, a remarkable friendship
between a man and a woman of different cultures and classes, a childhood affection that helps the adult Antonia
and Jim reconcile themselves to Nebraska, to the past, and to life itself. "You really are a part of me," Jim
confesses, almost despite himself, at his reunion with Antonia after a lengthy separation. Wisely, he and Cather
let Antonia sum it up: "She turned her bright, believing eyes to me and the tears came up in them slowly. How
can it be like that, when you know so many people, and when I've disappointed you so? Ain't it wonderful, Jim,
how much people can mean to each other? I'm so glad we had each other when we were little.'"

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/cather_w.html
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/authors/about_willa_cather.html

Biography of Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Willa Cather

Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley (a small farming community close to the
Blue Ridge Mountains) in Virginia. She was the eldest child of Charles Cather, a deputy Sheriff, and Mary
Virginia Boak Cather. The family traces its ancestors to Ireland, from which they settled in Pennsylvania in the
1750's.

In 1883 the Cather family moved to join Willa's grandparents William and Caroline and her uncle George in
Webster County, Nebraska. At the time her family included Willa's two brothers Roscoe and Douglass, a sister
Jessica and her grandmother Rachel Boak who lived with them. A year later they moved to Red Cloud, a nearby
railroad town, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. The family never became rich or influential,
and Willa attributed their lack of financial success to her father, whom she claimed placed intellectual and
spiritual matters over the commercial. Her mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying
to turn Willa into "a lady", in spite of the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls and cut her hair short and
wore trousers. While living in the town Willa met Annie Sadilek, whom she later used for the Antonia character
in My Antonia. Many of Willa's characters are inspired by people she met in her youth. Another notable example
is Olive Fremstad, an opera singer, who inspired the character Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark.

Willa graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1890. She soon moved to the state capitol in Lincoln in order to
study for the entrance at the University of Nebraska. At this time Willa was actually interested in studying
medicine. In Red Cloud she had spent time with and learned from a local doctor, and she dreamed of becoming a
physician. But, when one of Willa's stories for a writing class got published, she discovered a passion for writing
had been fermenting within her. In college, Willa spent time editing the school magazine and publishing articles
and play reviews in the local papers. In 1892 she published her short story "Peter" in a Boston magazine, a story
that later became part of her novel My Antonia. After graduating in 1895, she returned to Red Cloud until she
was offered a position editing Home Monthly in Pittsburgh.

While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages. Between 1901 and 1906, Willa worked as a
high school English teacher. During this time she wrote the stories that would be published in her first collection,
called the Troll Garden (1905). These stories brought her to the attention of S.S. McClure, owner of one of the
most widely read magazines of the day. In 1906 Cather moved to New York to join McClure's Magazine,
initially as a member of the staff and ultimately as its managing editor. During this time she met Sara Orne
Jewett, a woman from Maine who inspired her to later write about Nebraska. In 1912, after five years with
McClure's, she left the magazine to have time for her own writing. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge,
also in 1912, Cather visited the Southwest where she was fascinated by the Anasazi cliff dwellings.

In 1913 O Pioneers was published and in 1917 she wrote My Antonia while living in New Hampshire. By 1923
she had won the Pulitzer Prize for her One of Ours, and in this year her modernist book A Lost Lady was
published. At the time her novels focused on the destruction of provincial life and the death of the pioneering
tradition.
Perhaps overwhelmed by so much success, Cather suffered a period of despair reflected in the darker tones of the
novels written during this period. Despite her problems, she wrote some of her greatest novels during this period,
such as The Professor's House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

From early on in her career, Cather was blessed not only with widespread popular success, but also with
astonishing critical success. Each of her books was met with widespread praise and admiration. This pattern
began to change in the 1930s with the advent of Marxist Criticism. Marxist critics suggested that Cather did not
understand or show concern for modern social issues, and they made fun of the romanticism which infused her
stories. Whether or not Cather was affected by such criticism, these years were made more difficult by the death
of her mother, brothers and her good friend Isabelle McClung. Cather maintained an active writing career,
publishing novels and short stories for many years until her death on April 24, 1947. At the time of her death,
she ordered her letters burned. Though thousands of letters escaped destruction, Cather's will prevents their
publication. Willa Cather was buried in New Hampshire; in Red Cloud, the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial
Foundation was created to honor her memory.

About My Antonia

First published in 1918, My Antonia is a modernist novel. Modernism was a literary movement that began at the
very end of the nineteenth century and continued until the end of the 1930s. It reached its peak during the 1920s,
and it was characterized by a tone of experimentation. Authors innovated with narrative voice and structure,
often foregoing linear plots in favor of more creative forms of narration. There was also a greater emphasis on a
character's interiority - his thoughts, motivations, and unique consciousness. While My Antonia follows a
conventional plot structure (with the exception of the frame narrative of the introduction), it is full of the rich,
complex symbols and detailed character development that characterizes the modernist novel.

Modernism was a movement that encompassed both sides of the Atlantic (hence the term Anglo-American
modernism). However, My Antonia presents a distinctly American vision of modernism. Often, modernist works
evoke a sense of disillusionment with modern society, a feeling of fragmentation and despair at the increasing
trends towards industrialization and urbanization. At other times, they present an idealized view of pre-
industrialized, still innocent society (a literary trend called primitivism). My Antonia follows the second path and
offers a vision of the idyllic world of the American West. Although by the time of the novel's publication, the
frontier had already been mostly settled, Cather idealizes the American frontier and depicts it as a perfect
alternative to the modern, corrupt world that we now live in. Cather glorifies frontier values of independence,
hard work, and asceticism, and she implicitly contrasts it to the competition and isolation of modern society.
Because Cather praises the country in favor of the city, the novel can also be considered a pastoral novel.

While Willa Cather lived a very discreet life, modern biographers note that her long-time companion was a
woman, in what was most likely a lesbian relationship. At the time of the novel's publication, it probably would
have been scandalous for her to have written My Antonia in the voice of a woman. It is interesting to think about
the novel in the context of Cather's biography and to consider how it might have been different had she written in
a voice closer to her own.

Summary and Analysis of Introduction

Summary:

The first-person introduction is written in the voice of a childhood friend of Jim Burden, who is the narrator for
the remainder of the novel. The anonymous speaker in this introduction tells us that last summer, he
unexpectedly met his friend on a train and that they spent the journey reminiscing about their childhood in
Nebraska. It is hot and dusty on the train, and it reminds them of the weather growing up on the frontier.

According to the speaker, Jim Burden now works for the railroad in New York and is unhappily married to a dull
woman who is a patroness to a number of mediocre artists and writers. A quiet man, Jim loves the American
West that he grew up in and is able to pursue his passion through his work with the railroad.
That day on the train, they talk about a Bohemian girl that they both knew named Ántonia. For both of them, she
symbolizes their childhood on the frontier, and Jim mentions that he thinks about her quite a bit. He tells the
speaker that he has been recording his memories of the girl, and a few months later, he brings a folder containing
his writing to the speaker. He had just finished it the night before and says that it was written haphazardly, just as
he remembered it. Jim gives the folder to the speaker, but not before writing "My Ántonia" on the front of it.

Analysis

The introduction of My Ántonia is called a frame, or framing device. It is a preface for the novel, and it is written
in a voice other than the one that narrates the body of the text. It is called a frame because it provides a very
specific context for the novel itself, and it forces the reader to see the novel from a certain perspective. Because
it is written in the voice of an anonymous, relatively insignificant character, it creates a distance between the
reader and what he is about to read. In creating the folder labeled "My Ántonia," Jim was writing primarily to
himself, not to a larger audience. My Ántonia is like a private love letter to this Bohemian girl, and we therefore
don't really know anything about Jim Burden. We are intruding on his private correspondence and seeing
Ántonia through his eyes, but we don't have any real connection to him. My Ántonia thus becomes the story of
Ántonia, not of Jim. She is the central figure of the novel and the person we are supposed to admire as much as
Jim does.

What is crucial to remember is that Willa Cather, through her semi-autobiographical character Jim Burden, is
writing in the voice of a man. Though Cather bases the character Ántonia on a real person that she knew during
her Nebraska childhood, she chooses not to describe her from a female perspective. Cather is thus distancing
herself from both Ántonia and the male narrator of the novel, and the framing device of the introduction further
contributes to this narrative manuever.

In the introduction, the speaker's brief mention of the Nebraska climate will be further developed in the rest of
the novel. In the novel, place, and specifically the Western frontier, will become very significant in shaping Jim
Burden's view of the world and of himself. Setting will come to symbolize the feelings of growth, expansion,
and moral fortitude associated with modern America at the turn of the twentieth century.

Summary and Analysis of Book I, Chapters 1-10

Book I The Shimerdas

Chapter I

Summary:

The story begins with the narrator Jim Burden, age 10, travelling by rail across the country to Nebraska. Having
just lost both his parents in Virginia, he is travelling with a hired man Jake Marpole to live with his grandparents.
During the journey Jim reads the "Life of Jesse James," which he thoroughly enjoys. Jim first hears of Ántonia
(pronouced An´-ton-ee-ah, with the accent on the first syllable) on this journey, when a friendly conductor tells
him that a Bohemian immigrant family, which can't really speak English, is going to Black Hawk, Nebraska and
that they have a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl.

Jim travels all day through the huge expanse of Nebraska, and in the middle of the night they finally get off the
train. There Jim catches his first glimpse of the immigrant family. Soon Otto Fuchs, a hired man, comes to pick
them up. He looks like a cowboy desperado, and Jim is impressed. They get into a wagon, and Jim stares into the
night, seeing nothing but land and darkness. He feels like he has entered into a completely different, empty world
and that everything he has known before has been left behind.

Analysis

In this chapter we are introduced to Jim the narrator, but as we shall see, the novel is primarily the story of
Ántonia and of Jim's feelings towards her. Although we do find out certain details of Jim's past, the novel begins
when he first sees Ántonia and her family, not at some earlier point. Jim only has a story to tell‹his story‹after he
meets Ántonia, which is why a number of critics consider Jim to be a secondary figure, though it is his voice that
we hear throughout the novel.

It is interesting to note that Jim is reading the biography of Jesse James, a Western adventurer, at the same time
that he is embarking on his own frontier adventure. During the novel, the books that Jim reads often acquire a
particular significance when considered in the context of his life. Jim will compare real life with the fictional
world that he is reading about, and he will find reality infinitely richer and more exciting. In this case, he will
find Otto Fuchs and life in Nebraska much more interesting than anything he could possibly discover in the
world of fiction. Although Jim does not realize it at the time, he and Ántonia are embarking on a shared
adventure, and their lives will intertwine in complex ways. What begins as a casual encounter on a train will
become the beginning of a mutual journey in the American West.

In the novel, setting is extremely important, and Jim's first impression of the Nebraska frontier is that it is
extremely vast and empty. He feels like he is leaving civilization, and he is. Everything that happens to him in
Nebraska will be a new experience, and he will have to learn new rules and codes of conduct. He is leaving his
past completely, and he will have to become an entirely new person in the country. For this reason, he feels
"erased" and "blotted out" as he travels on the wagon to his grandfather's house.

Chapter II

Summary:

Jim wakes up in the afternoon in a small bed, with his grandmother smiling over him. She comments on how
much like his father he looks, and he follows her to the kitchen to take a bath. Their home is very pleasant and
clean, with flowers in the windows and plaster on the dirt walls. Jim's grandmother is energetic, with a strident,
high voice, and she always seems to be thinking of something far away. His grandfather is solemn and kind, with
a huge white beard and bald head. After supper, Jim is immediately befriended by Otto Fuchs, an Austrian
cowboy, who tells him stories, teaches him how to throw a lasso, and has bought him a pony named Dude.

Before bed, Grandfather reads in a resonant voice from the Bible for everyone in the household. The next day
Jim begins to explore his new environment. Outside, their frame house is surrounded by sod houses and dugouts,
and Jim looks out at the windmill, corncribs, and huge cornfield. There is red grass everywhere, and it seems like
everything is in constant motion. Jim accompanies his grandmother, who is carrying a cane as protection against
snakes, to the garden, and he feels like he is at the end of the world. After warning him about snakes,
Grandmother leaves Jim to play in the garden. He has a feeling of lightness and content and sits down to watch
the insects. He feels completely happy and at one with the earth.

Analysis:

My Ántonia is written in the past tense and from the perspective of an adult Jim. Everything in the novel is
therefore filtered through Jim's older and wiser adult personality and understanding. For example, in this chapter,
Jim's description of his grandparents is very respectful and reverent, and it is obviously written by someone who
has thought for awhile about what an important role that they played in his life. While the reader gets a very
good sense of how Jim's childhood experiences fit into the larger pattern of his life, however, we do not feel his
childish excitement and fearfulness at being in an entirely new place by himself. Jim seems a little bit too distant
and removed, a little bit too knowing and self-aware, than a child his age would be. However, it is due to
Cather's narrative ability that we feel this way‹that it seems like an older, adult man wrote these passages
describing his earlier life experiences. After all, it was Cather's intention to create this effect.

In this chapter Jim feels at one with nature as he sits in the garden and watches insects. He is completely content
and feels like this is how life should be. In describing Jim's communion with nature, Cather is romanticizing the
frontier, which is pure and innocent, free from the corrupting and crowding influences of the city, civilization,
and industrialization. Although she does not offer any overt criticism of the industrialized East that Jim leaves,
her vision of the frontier is meant to be seen as an implicitly better alternative. Jim's love for the country and the
freedom of the West will further develop as the novel progresses.
Chapter III

Summary:

On Sunday morning Otto, Grandmother, and Jim drive across fields of red grass to visit the new Bohemian
family that has recently settled in the area. They are the first Bohemian family to move to this area, and they
purchased their farm from another Bohemian man named Peter Krajiek. The farm and house are not particularly
good, and the family‹the Shimerdas‹paid too much for it. In addition, the father knows nothing about farming.
He was a weaver and a fiddler in his native land, is dignified and neatly dressed, and has white, skilled hands.
The mother has shrewd eyes, and when she sees Grandmother, she points to her dugout house and says it's no
good. She thanks Grandmother for bringing over bread and pies. The oldest son Ambrosch, age nineteen, looks
sturdy and has shrewd eyes.

There is also a pretty little girl named Yulka, but Jim thinks that Ántonia is the prettiest, with big eyes and brown
hair and skin. Marek, another son, is mentally challenged and has webbed fingers. Suddenly Ántonia comes up
to Jim, and they run through the fields hand in hand, with Yulka following them. It is very windy, and after Jim
tells Ántonia his name and the word for "sky," they lie down next to each other in the middle of a field and stare
up at the blue sky. Ántonia tries to give Jim one of her rings, but Jim doesn't think it's appropriate and refuses.

Ántonia's father calls them back and stares deep into Jim's face. When they return to the dugout, he takes out a
Bohemian-English dictionary and gives it to Jim's grandmother. Extremely earnestly, he begs her to teach
Ántonia English.

Summary:

Since the Shimerdas do not speak English, they are dependent on anybody who speaks their language, and they
are thus taken advantage of by Krajiek. People who immigrate to the United States need a network of reliable
people who can help them accommodate to their new environment, and since the Shimerdas lack this, they are
unable to learn the basics of farming and keeping house on the frontier. Jim's grandparents do not really realize
this yet and attribute the Shimerdas' destituteness to either cultural differences or Mrs. Shimerda's overbearing
personality. They do not know exactly how much help the Shimerdas need, but they are prevented from finding
out because of differences in language and culture. The theme of cultural separation between new immigrant
families and "Americans" is a central one in the novel.

Despite their differences in language and culture, however, Jim and Ántonia immediately hit it off. Though the
narrator doesn't say that much about their first interaction, Ántonia seems to be the leader and the initiator in
their relationship. She grabs Jim's hand, speaks excitedly while he listens, and tries to give him her ring. Jim is
clearly fascinated by her and is content to follow her around and observe her, and this dynamic will continue to
be played out in the rest of the novel.

The chapter concludes with Mr. Shimerda begging Grandmother to teach Ántonia English. Mr. Shimerda
recognizes the value of education and is a learned man, and he wants his daughter to have a fair chance in
America. As the novel progresses, the role of education in Ántonia's life shifts a great deal, and it is important to
notice what factors account for this shift.

Chapter IV

Summary:

Jim reminisces about the countryside in this chapter. He recounts how he used to ride his pony Dude to the post
office and to give messages. During this time there are no fences, and Jim likes to ride on the roads bordered by
sunflowers. He hears that the Mormons had planted the sunflowers when they were fleeing to Utah, and he
therefore associates the roads with freedom.

There are very few trees on the landscape, and he and Ántonia like to go look at the earth-owls and prairie dogs.
He describes Ántonia as very opinionated and tells that every day he would give her English lesson and then they
would go eat watermelons in the garden. Ántonia would also help Jim's grandmother in the kitchen. According
to Jim, Mrs. Shimerda isa very poor housekeeper and makes bad bread. During their first few months in their
new home, the Shimerdas are dependent on Krajiek, who is the only person who they can speak to and who
gives them bad advice. Krajiek tells them not to go to the city, and he lives with them.

Analysis:

In the novel road imagery is very significant. At this point in the history of the United States, the roads in the
frontier are winding and follow the natural contours of the land. They go from point to point, but they do not
have the same sense of directness and urgency that city roads have. There are no fences or obstacles blocking the
roads, which are free to simply cut across the countryside in whichever way is most convenient. Roads thus
represent the freedom, vastness, and unlimited potential of the Western frontier. They take explorers, as well as
the persecuted Mormons, to entirely new places where the land is open and undivided and free from the laws and
biases of civilization. Jim is discovering new lands and a new life (with his grandparents and Ántonia) at the
same time that adventurers and pushing the new roads ever westward.

Chapter V

Summary:

Even though the Shimerdas are having trouble getting used to their new home, the two young girls never
complain and are always happy. One day Ántonia tells Jim that her father had met two Russian men, Peter and
Pavel, who speak a dialect similar to the Shimerdas. Pavel is tall, skinny, and wasted-looking; he makes excited
gestures, so people think he's an anarchist. Peter is short, fat, pleasant, and very friendly. The two men live
together and work together as farmhands.

Mr. Shimerda visits the Russians almost every day, sometimes with Ántonia, and one day he takes Jim along
with them. Peter is out washing laundry, and he shows them his cow, which he is very fond of. Pavel is not
home, and their house is very neat and organized. Peter gives them fresh melons, and they eat many of them
messily on the table. Looking at Ántonia, he sighs because he wishes he hadn't had to leave Russia, where he
could have a daughter just like her. Before Jim and the Shimerdas leave, Peter plays the harmonica for them and
gives them cucumbers and milk.

Analysis:

In this chapter the Shimerdas finally meet other immigrants that they can talk to. During the beginning of the
twentieth century, the type of people immigrating to the United States began to change. Whereas before most
immigrants had been of Northern and Western European origin, around the turn of the century, immigration
from Eastern Europe increased dramatically. These new immigrants were initially greeted with a great deal of
prejudice and were assumed to be inferior, both morally and intellectually, than their Northern and Western
European counterparts. My Ántonia reflects the changing face of immigration during this time period, as most of
the immigrant families are of Eastern European (and Scandinavian) origin.

As bachelors trying to survive together, Peter and Pavel form a household that though unconventional, works
well for them. The two men have a clean house that is decorated and organized, even though there are no women
around to take care of them. Jim is favorably impressed with how well put together their home is. In living
together, Peter and Pavel are redefining the typical American household and demonstrating how two single men
can effectively band together to survive the frontier.

Chapter VI

Summary:

One afternoon Jim and "Tony" are sitting outside in the sun for their English lesson. Tony begins talking about
badgers and how they are hunted by special dogs in her native country. It is almost winter, so all the insects,
except one, are dead. Tony picks the bug up and begins to speak to it in Bohemian, and it starts to chirp back at
her. She begins to cry a little bit because the bug reminds her of an old beggar woman she once knew who used
to sing songs for children. When they decide to go back, Ántonia puts the bug in her hair.

As they walk back, Jim marvels at the prairie surrounding them, covered in red grass and cornfields. Every day
they walked back through the fields, and the moment seems triumphant, "like a hero's death‹heroes who died
young and gloriously." They see Mr. Shimerda up ahead and run to overtake him. Ántonia confides that her
father is sick, and he shows them three rabbits that he killed for food and fur. As Ántonia shows her father the
bug from her hair, Jim looks at Mr. Shimerda's gun. With Ántonia translating, the father tells Jim that he can
have the gun when he grows up. The gun is a gift from a very wealthy man whose wedding Mr. Shimerda played
at. Jim wonders that the Shimerdas are always wanting to give away their possessions, and he is touched by the
old man's look of sadness and pity.

Analysis:

This chapter describes the near-perfect communion with nature that Jim and Ántonia have at this point during the
year before winter comes. They feel triumphant and comfortable in nature, and they appreciate all forms of life,
even the little grasshopper. Nature and humans are in harmony during the fall, and Jim feels like nature is
celebrating him for his life and vitality when he walks home in the sunset. In passages such as these, Cather is
once again idealizing the peaceful, wholesome life in the country. However, she does not maintain this fairy tale-
like tone through the entirety of the novel, as Mr. Shimerda's failing health implies.

Unlike his daughter Ántonia, Mr. Shimerda is not thriving in the countryside and is becoming depressed. He
does not have the luxury of being as carefree as his daughter, and he has to try to master and take advantage of
nature in order for his family to survive. Thus, he has to go hunting for rabbits to feed and clothe his family; he
must kill wild animals, unlike his daughter who wants to save even a little caterpillar. He has responsibilities that
Jim and Ántonia do not have, and as the weather changes and the elements become fierce, he will feel the effects
much more strongly.

As noted earlier, the Shimerdas have very different cultural values than the Burdens and other "American"
families. Jim does not understand why Mr. Shimerda wants to give him his expensive gun, and he thinks it is
foolish that the family is so generous. Raised in an American capitalist society, he values individual competition
and private ownership, and he does not see how Mr. Shimerda is not just offering him a possession, but also
lifelong loyalty and assistance.

Chapter VII

Summary:

According to Jim, Ántonia often treats him a little condescendingly, until one autumn adventure that changes her
opinion of him. One day Jim takes Ántonia on his pony so that she can borrow a spade from Russian Peter.
Afterwards, they go look at the ten-acre large prairie dog town. Suddenly, Ántonia screams in Bohemian and
points at a huge, coiling snake as big as Jim's leg. Jim rushes up to it and digs into its neck with the spade, while
it coils furiously around his feet.

After he kills it, Jim feels sick and is irritable. Ántonia comforts him and tells him how brave he is. They look at
the snake, who is five and a half feet long and twenty-four years old. Jim drags the snake behind him on the way
home and feels proud of having killed it. Otto Fuchs tells Jim that he is lucky to have killed the snake so easily,
and Ántonia tells how brave Jim was. Afterwards, Jim realizes how lucky he was to have had a weapon available
and how lazy and old the snake probably was at the time. Nevertheless, Ántonia treats him with more respect
from then on.

Analysis:

In our culture snake imagery almost always has Biblical overtones, so we should consider how this chapter
relates to the story of the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are inhabiting a paradise of
nature, surrounded by fruit, trees, and animals of all sorts. Eve, however, introduces sin into the world by
succumbing to the temptations of Satan, as incarnated in the body of a serpent. Like Adam and Eve, Jim and
Ántonia are living in a pure, untainted environment that has not yet been exposed to the greedy, corrupting
influence of the East. However, in their case, the threatening snake is destroyed. This snake represents the danger
and destructiveness of nature itself, and it indicates what a threatening, untamed environment that they are living
in. The Nebraska frontier is far from a paradise, as Jim and Ántonia learn during the winter. In addition, Jim is
able to destroy the snake not because of any moral fortitude, but simply out of luck. In fact, he feels sick and
panicky after killing the snake, not brave or proud.

In this chapter it is important to note how distanced Jim's narrative voice is from the action taking place. He
barely describes his own thoughts and feelings when attacking the snake, and he seems to act almost passively‹as
if he was drawn into the action without any volition on his part. He is barely present in his own telling of the
story, and instead, it is Ántonia's voice and emotions that come through most clearly. Even though Jim kills the
snake, Ántonia is the one who truly reacts to the its appearance. This narrative distance recurs throughout the
novel but is strikingly apparent in this particular passage. It strengthens the critical interpretation of the novel as
really being Ántonia's story, not Jim's.

Chapter VIII

Summary:

In this chapter Jim relates the story of the two Russian men, Peter and Pavel. During the autumn they are having
a lot of bad luck. Peter owes money to Wick Cutter, a ruthless money-lender from Black Hawk, and he is forced
to mortgage everything. In addition, Pavel injured himself while at work and is now bedridden. One day, Jim
goes with Mr. Shimerda and Ántonia back to Peter and Pavel's house. Pavel is very sick, and Peter is worried
that he will never get better. When they arrive, the wind is blowing loudly, and the coyotes are whining.
Delirious and emaciated, Pavel cries out, afraid of the coyotes. He takes medicine, but he seems resentful of
Peter, who is described as being simple and docile.

Pavel begins to rage and tell a story that Jim cannot understand and that frightens Ántonia. Suddenly, he begins
to cough up blood but then falls asleep again. On the way home, Ántonia tells Jim Pavel's story, and they talk
about nothing else for days:

Back in Russia, Peter and Pavel were groomsmen for a friend. After the wedding, there was a big party with a lot
of merrymaking, and then everyone got into sleds to go home. Peter and Pavel, with Pavel driving, were in the
sled with the bride and groom. It was a moonless night, and wolves began to chase the sleds. One sled veered out
of control and tipped over, and the wolves immediately pounced on them. More and more sleds tipped over, and
Pavel focused on keeping his sled under control. Soon, all the sleds had tipped over, and Pavel's middle horse
was having trouble running. Pavel told the groom that he must throw his bride out of the sled in order to make it
lighter, and then he knocked both bride and groom out of the sled. Peter saw nothing. Peter and Pavel were the
only two people who survived, and they were shunned by everyone in their village. They had to leave Russia and
saved enough money to come to America.

After telling his story, Pavel dies. Peter sells everything in the household and then eats all the melons that were
to be saved for the winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek come to take him to the train so that he can move
away to be a railroad cook, his beard is covered in melon juice. Mr. Shimerda is depressed after his friends leave
and frequently goes to sit in their empty log house. Ántonia and Jim keep Pavel's secret between them, and Jim
often thinks about it before he goes to bed.

Analysis:

In this chapter Jim hears the fairy tale-like story of Pavel and the wolves. Pavel's illness and death marks the
beginning of the winter hardship for the frontier inhabitants, and his story emphasizes how much at the mercy of
nature humans actually are. The wedding guests that Pavel talks about were helpless when chased by the wolves,
and similarly, the Shimerdas and the Burdens will be intensely vulnerably to the bitter, impersonal cold. After a
long and idyllic autumn, Pavel's death is the first of a number of winter tragedies.
Pavel's story is also significant because it brings Jim and Ántonia closer together. It is scary and exotic, much
different from the huge, empty prairie that surrounds them. Since they tell no one else Pavel's secret, it is
something that only they share. In addition, Pavel's story casts America as the land of opportunity‹the only place
where he and Peter can go to escape their past. Only in America can the two men begin anew and keep their
dramatic tale a well-hidden secret.

Pavel's death emphasizes how important human relationships are on the frontier. With Pavel's death, Mr.
Shimerda loses his one friend and can now only speak to his family and, brokenly, to the Burdens. He becomes
completely isolated from outside social contacts and loses the only people who can really offer him good help
and well-meaning advice.

Chapter IX

Summary:

In December it snows for the first time. A little way from the house, there is a circle in the grass where the
Indians used to ride their horses around, and Jim thinks that the pattern in the snow looks like a good omen. Jim
begins to ride around in the snow in a sleigh that Otto Fuchs makes him. One day Jim takes Ántonia and Yulka
for a ride. Though they do not have adequate winter clothes and are very cold, they are excited to be away from
their shabby home and scolding mother, and they go all the way to Russian Peter's house. The two girls want to
stay there forever.

When they go back, it becomes unbearably cold, and after dropping the Shimerdas off, Jim drives back alone and
catches quinsy, which keeps him in the house for two weeks. Jim is cozy indoors and reads "The Swiss Family
Robinson" to his grandmother. During the winter, the family's life revolves around eating food and keeping
warm. Sometimes they sing and eat popcorn or taffy around the fire.

Jim greatly admires Otto and Jake. Otto has done all sorts of work, while Jake is barely literate and often violent,
although very soft-hearted. Both are very hard workers. Otto tells a funny story about how he had to accompany
a woman on the boat to America and how he got a very bad reputation because she had three babies on the way
over.

Analysis:

At first the winter is very pleasant and non-threatening, and Jim likes to admire the winter landscape and drive
his sleigh around. The Indian circle in the grass reminds the reader that though the fields are empty and
undeveloped, they have a long history that stretches way back before white settlers came west. Though Jim's
family and the Shimerdas are new settlers in Nebraska, the land had been inhabited by Native Americans for
centuries before. While Jim thinks that the Indian circle is a good omen, it is also a sign that the white settlers
never know the land as well as they think they do‹that it will surprise them and that it will endure long after they
are gone.

When Jim, Ántonia, and Yulka visit Russian Peter's house, they talk about staying there forever. Although Jim
mentions the episode casually, it is clear that the little rendezvous had a lasting impression on him. In fact, his
tone during the entirety of Book I is one of happy contentment, and he is very much infatuated with Ántonia,
though he doesn't overtly say so. He recounts their shared adventures in a tone of simple delight which makes it
obvious that those simple, innocent experiences are ones that he wishes could have gone on forever.

After Jim gets sick, he reads "The Swiss Family Robinson," which is about an idealized, traditional family that
lives an adventurous, happy life together in a treehouse. As in the first chapter of the novel, Jim finds this
fictional world much less interesting than the one that he is actually living in. In addition, though Jim is an
orphan and therefore has a less than ideal family situation, he is clearly very happy living with his extended
family: his grandparents, Otto, and Jake. Jim does not long for a mother and father, but instead rejoices that he
has found new, caring people to spend this epoch of his life with.

Chapter X
Summary:

For several weeks Jim doesn't hear anything from the Shimerdas because he's inside sick. One day Otto says that
he saw Mr. Shimerda hunting, wearing the one winter coat that the whole family shares. Apparently the family is
so poor that they eat prairie dogs, so the next day Grandmother decides to bring over food and chickens. When
they arrive, Mrs. Shimerda speaks accusingly to them in Bohemian and shows them how little food they have.
The dugout house is dingy and sad.

When Jake brings in the food, Mrs. Shimerda begins to weep. Grandmother is appalled to discover that the girls
sleep in a small cave in the dirt wall, and Mr. Shimerda, with Ántonia translating, explains that in the old country
they were a very respectable family. They still have some money left, and once it is spring, they will be ready to
build a nice farm. They are just having trouble their first winter. Grandmother gives them some advice.

Before they leave, Mrs. Shimerda measures out a pint of some pungent, earthy substance to give to the Burdens.
On the way back, Grandmother comments on how lacking in sense and resources the Shimerdas seem. When she
looks at what Mrs. Shimerda gave her, she doesn't know what it is and throws it out. Jim tastes a bit of it, and
only much later in life realizes that the food was dried mushrooms that the Shimerdas carried over from their
homeland.

Analysis:

In this chapter Grandmother finds it a little hard to reconcile two conflicting cultural values: the American
appreciation of individualism and self-sufficiency on the one hand, and a Christian commitment to goodwill and
caretaking on the other. So when she visits the Shimerdas, she feels as if they should be able to take care of
themselves, but she also feels guilty that they are so impoverished and wants to help them. She repeatedly says
that the Shimerdas lack common sense, but at the same time she fails to realize that they are immigrants to a new
country and have no experience with farming. She wants to give them things to help out, but she is irritated when
Mrs. Shimerda acts as if she deserves help. In the end, she does help them, despite Mrs. Shimerda's demanding
atttitude and inability to quickly adapt to the family's new environment.

It is interesting, but not particularly surprising, that a lot of the cultural distance between the Shimerdas and the
Burdens is played out in issues surrounding food. In an earlier chapter, Grandmother criticizes Mrs. Shimerda for
making bread that she perceives as being gray and sour, and in this chapter she is distrustful of the powdered
mushrooms that the other woman gives her. As is often the case, differences in culture are often most noticeable
in terms of what people eat, and though a good woman, Grandmother is no stranger to cultural prejudice.
Although the adult Jim is aware of this lack of understanding surrounding Bohemian culture, in recounting his
childhood experiences he is careful to maintain a distant, reserved, and nonjudgmental tone. He does not criticize
his grandmother for not understanding the Shimerdas' customs, and he even reveals his own failures in
understanding them. The adult Jim presents both perspectives, and once again, it is due to Cather's narrative skill
that she is able to believably manage this narrative juggling.

Summary and Analysis of Book I, Chapters 11-19

Chapter XI

Summary:

Jake is supposed to go to Black Hawk to make the family's Christmas purchases, but it snows so much that it is
decided that he shouldn't go. The family has a country Christmas instead and makes everyone's gifts. With
Grandmother's help, Jim makes picture books for Yulka and Ántonia. On the day before Christmas, Jake brings
the Shimerdas their Christmas gifts and returns with a Christmas tree. The family decorates it with gingerbread,
popcorn, and candles. In addition, from a trunk containing all his cowboy possessions, Otto takes Christmas
paper figures sent to him yearly from his mother in Austria.
Speaking in the present, Jim relates that he can still see Otto and Jake exactly as they looked then. Though they
looked fierce on the outside, he knew that they were actually very vulnerable. They only knew how to fight, and
though Otto loved children, he was destined to become a hardened, childless laborer.

Analysis

In this chapter Cather idealizes simple country living. Since it snows so much that Jake cannot go to town, they
celebrate Christmas without any artificial city contrivances, and they have a great time. Their Christmas gifts
come from the heart, instead of being tokens of an overcommercialized society. They enjoy each other's
company and conversation, something that is perhaps a rarity in today's modern civilization. By presenting such
scenes of peace and harmony, Cather offers a subtle version of social criticism. Her views represent a quiet
alternative to the bustle of modern industrialized society, but she is understated and balanced, never dogmatic, in
her approach.

In depicting Jake and Otto as gruff, yet kind-hearted workers, Cather is going against the stereotype of the
cowboy as hardened, ruthless desperado. She may, however, be creating a different kind of cliché. Instead of
being naturally rough, they become so because of their environment. They are forced to become violent and
unemotional because of the difficulties of living solitary lives in the West, while at heart they are still dutiful
sons and gentle, kind men. In naturalist novels (and My Ántonia has elements of naturalism in it), characters are
shaped by their environment, and Otto and Jake therefore become who they are not because of innate, inner
qualities, but because their circumstances and physical surroundings determine the course of life they will take.

Chapter XII

Summary:

On Christmas morning, Jim wakes up, and the whole family listens to Grandfather solemnly and simply make
morning prayers. Grandfather's prayers always reflect his present thoughts, and Jim asserts that it is through
them that one got to know his thoughts and feelings. That day they all do miscellaneous chores and play games,
and Otto laboriously writes his annual Christmas letter to his mother. In late afternoon Mr. Shimerda comes over
to thank them for all the gifts they gave his family. After escaping from the dreary dugout, he welcomes the
Burden's home as an oasis of peace and order. He rests there and is completely content.

When Jim lights the Christmas tree, Mr. Shimerda kneels in prayer in front of it. As Protestants, Grandfather and
Grandmother are a little uncomfortable but say nothing. Mr. Shimerda stays over for dinner and watches
everyone's face intently. While leaving, he thanks Grandmother and makes the sign of the cross over Jim. After
he leaves, Grandfather says, "The prayers of all good people are good."

Analysis:

This chapter is a continuation of the previous two chapters and builds on the theme of country harmony, as
opposed to city discord. The Burdens live a simple life, with simple prayers, and they have everything they need
simply by being together. City diversions would simply disrupt the cozy family circle they have created on the
frontier.

It is curious that neither Jim nor his grandparents comment on the fact that Mr. Shimerda celebrates Christmas
with them, rather than with his family. It becomes apparent exactly how much he values their company only in
later chapters, when we discover how unhappy he is with his own home life. Mr. Shimerda's eagerness to spend
Christmas with the Burdens indicates just how peaceful and idyllic the Burden household is, and while Jim may
be exaggerating the happiness he felt as a child, he is not overstating the truth by very much.

Though Jim's grandparents may not be the most progressive people in the world, they are remarkably tolerant of
the Shimerdas' customs and religion. Even though they are not entirely comfortable with Catholicism, they do
nothing to offend Mr. Shimerda for his differing religious practices. Through her portrayal of such open-
mindedness, Cather seems to be advocating a climate of general tolerance for different people and different
customs. However, as we shall see in later chapters (Book II, Chapter VII), even Cather does not maintain a
universally progressive stance with regard to cultural and racial diversity. Though she is trying to advance a
particularly enlightened social vision, she is nevertheless a product of her times and cannot entirely break free
from contemporary social prejudice.

Chapter XIII

Summary:

During the week after Christmas, the snow starts to thaw for awhile, and Ántonia and her mother come over to
visit. Mrs. Shimerda had never been to the house before, and the entire time she looks at everything enviously
and complains that the Burdens have so much more than she does. She asks Grandmother for a pot, which she
gives to her. Jim is annoyed by Mrs. Shimerda, who lacks humility despite her misfortune. Ántonia explains to
Jim that her father is sick and depressed at having left the old country. He misses playing the fiddle with his
friends, and he had not wanted to come over originally. Mrs. Shimerda wanted to come to America because she
thought that Ambrosch would be able to become rich here. Ambrosch is considered the most important person in
the Shimerda family, and even Ántonia is in awe of him.

For three weeks it seems like it is almost spring. The bulls get into a fight across the fence between them and
have to be separated. On January 20, Jim's eleventh birthday, however, a huge blizzard starts. It was the biggest
storm in ten years, and Otto and Jack have to dig tunnels through the snow to get to the barn and the henhouse.
All the water is frozen, and as soon as they finish the chores, they have to start over with them again. Jim calls
that day very strange and unnatural.

Analysis:

The Shimerdas do not understand why the Burdens, who are rich, do not help them out more in adjusting to their
new life, and this makes them seem arrogant and demanding. However, the problem seems to be more of
communication than anything else. The Shimerdas do not know how to survive and prosper in their new country,
but they also do not know enough English to ask for help and advice. Neither lazy nor unclean, they are simply
unknowledgeable about farming life. However, the Burdens do not understand how destitute and lost their
neighbors are, and they help them out of charity rather than anything else.

Despite all that Mrs. Shimerda heard in her homeland, she is not finding America to be the land of opportunity
right now. The family is encountering difficulty and hardship quite unlike anything they had expected, and
Cather's portrayal of them de-romanticizes the myth of America as the promised land. However, as we shall see
in later chapters, once the family gets used to their new life, through hard work they are able to get ahead and
become successful.

Though the novel is set around the turn of the twentieth century, Jim is surprised that the Shimerda family
revolves around Ambrosch, the oldest son. Even though it is customary at this points in American history for
sons to be given all of life's opportunities, he seems to think it remarkable that Ántonia defers to her brother.
However, seeing as Willa Cather was a very successful, independent woman, perhaps Jim's seemingly naïve
attitude functions more as social commentary rather than character development.

Finally, in this chapter, the Burdens witness the largest snowstorm in a decade, and winter begins to unleash its
full force on the Nebraska frontier. Now nature becomes something that the family has to contend with, rather
than simply admire and enjoy.

Chapter XIV

Summary:

On the 22nd Jim wakes up excited because it sound like there is a crisis going on downstairs. Otto and Jake look
exhausted and cold, while Ambrosch is asleep on the bench. Grandfather tells them that Mr. Shimerda is dead
and that Otto and Jake had gone over in the middle of the night with Ambrosch. At breakfast, Otto says that
nobody heard a gun going off and that Ambrosch discovered his father because the oxen were behaving
strangely. Mr. Shimerda had washed and shaved beforehand, had arranged his clothes neatly, and then shot
himself in the mouth with a shotgun while lying down. According to Jake, however, Krajiek's axe fits precisely
into the gash in Mr. Shimerda's face, and Krajiek was skulking around and acting guilty. The family argues a
little about what happened, but there is nothing that they can do until a coroner arrives.

Otto goes to Black Hawk to fetch the coroner, and Ambrosch devoutly prays the entire morning. Finally,
Grandfather, Grandmother, Jake, and Ambrosch all leave to bring the Shimerdas clothing, while Jim is left alone.
Jim is excited to be responsible for all the chores and thinks that the life of Robinson Crusoe is boring in
comparison to his. He imagines that Mr. Shimerda's ghost is resting in the house before it goes away to his
homeland. He is not afraid and just thinks very quietly about him.

When the family returns, Otto tells Jim that Mr. Shimerda is frozen solid outside in the barn and that the
Shimerdas take turns praying over his body. Ambrosch wants to find a priest immediately so that his father's soul
can get out of Purgatory. Jim knows that Mr. Shimerda's soul will not be stuck in Purgatory and realizes that he
was just very unhappy in life.

Analysis:

Winter finally brings a horrible tragedy to the Shimerdas and the Burdens: Mr. Shimerda's suicide. While it may
seem inexplicable why a loving, caring father, as Mr. Shimerda most decidedly was, would leave his family
helpless and bereaved in the middle of the worst winter in ten years, his action is understandable when
considered as a last, desperate attempt at communication. While Mr. Shimerda was unable to make his family
prosper, by killing himself he is making one final plea for help. His neighbors will literally have to take care of
his family now and help them survive the winter and coming spring. They will know that the Shimerda situation
is dire and will realize exactly how much assistance the family needs. Paradoxically, by killing himself and
depriving his family of their head of household, he is ensuring that his wife and children will be thoroughly
taken care of.

While Jim is very respectful of Christianity and organized religion, in this chapter he experiences a feeling
stronger than any religious sentiment he ever feels: the sense that Mr. Shimerda's ghost is present in the house.
He knows that Mr. Shimerda is homesick and through death, wanted to return to his homeland and the pleasant
places he knew in life, like the Burden household. This sensation is so strong that Jim adamantly disbelieves
Ambrosch's assertion that his father's soul is trapped in Purgatory. His awareness of Mr. Shimerda's presence in
the house indicates how the closeness and depth of emotion between Jim and the Shimerdas.

Chapter XV

Summary:

After returning from Black Hawk, Otto tells them that a coroner will arrive shortly but that it is impossible for
the priest to come. He brings with him a young, strong, and confident Bohemian man named Anton Jelinek, who
tells Grandfather that it is very bad that a priest is unavailable. Jelinek tells about how, during a war with the
Austrians in his native land, he helped the priest carry the Sacrament around to dying men. Everyone except
them got really sick with cholera, and ever since he has appreciated the power of the Sacrament and wishes that
Mr. Shimerda could receive it.

Jelinek starts to break a road through the snow to the Shimerda's house, while Otto, who is the only cabinet-
maker in the neighborhood, begins making a coffin. Otto is a good carpenter, and the sawing and planing noises
are pleasant in the house. The postmaster Mr. Bushy and some neighbors drop by to talk about the news, and Jim
is excited because he is not used to people being so unusually talkative. Later in the day the postmaster returns to
tell Grandmother that the Norwegians refuse to let Mr. Shimerda be buried in their graveyard. Grandmother is
upset and vows to start a more "liberal-minded" American graveyard in the spring.

The coroner decides that Mr. Shimerda did in fact commit suicide, even though Krajiek is continuing to act like a
guilty man. Krajiek probably just feels bad for being so ruthless and unhelpful. During dinner the family talks
about how Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch want Mr. Shimerda to be buried at the southwest corner of their land,
which will someday become a crossroads. Nobody really understands, but they assume that there must be some
Bohemian superstition about burying suicides at a crossroads.

Analysis:

In the previous chapter, Jim is impressed by how devout Ambrosch is, and in this chapter he meets another pious
young Bohemian, Anton Jelinek. Even though Grandfather does not understand the value of the Catholic
sacrament, he listens attentively when Jelinek tries to explain how much he respects his faith. Despite their
religious differences, Grandfather and Jelinek are actively engaging in mutual discussion and learning something
about the other's culture in doing so. Such depictions of tolerance and respectful engagement by Cather help
advance her view that harmonious engagement is something one should actively strive for. In contrast, the
Norwegians exhibit a very tactless intolerance in refusing to allow Mr. Shimerda to be buried in their cemetery.

When Otto makes Mr. Shimerda's coffin, it makes the entire house seem very pleasant and cheerful. Instead of
being depressing, the coffin-making is very productive and expends a lot of creative energy. Rather than simply
creating the box that contains Mr. Shimerda in his death, Otto is fashioning a resting place for him in his new
life. In this way, Mr. Shimerda's death can be seen as a beginning, rather than just an end.

Chapter XVI

Summary:

On the fifth day Mr. Shimerda is buried, but Jake and Jelinek have to chop him away from the pool of frozen
blood surrounding him. When Ántonia sees Jim for the first time since her father's death, she clings to him so
tightly that he seems to feel her heart break. Once the neighbors arrive, it's time to start the funeral. Outside all
the children except Yulka, who is too young to understand, cross themselves over their father's body. The coffin
is closed and placed on a wagon, then taken to the grave.

Mrs. Shimerda asks Grandfather to make a prayer, and Jim says that it was so remarkable that he still remembers
it now. At Grandmother's suggestion (to make the funeral seem less heathenish), Otto begins to sing "Jesus,
Lover of my Soul," which Jim still associates with the funeral and the "white waste" of snow there.

Jim relates that years later, the grave is still there, surrounded by a fence and marked by a cross. However, the
roads do not pass over the grave but instead swerve around it. Jim thinks of the grave as an island and is glad that
wagons have to pass by it and realize that it's there.

Analysis:

When Ántonia runs up to Jim sobbing, once again it is her emotions that come to the forefront of the narrative.
Through Ántonia's behavior and reactions, we get a sense of how deep a tragedy Mr. Shimerda's suicide really is,
and we realize how close the affective ties between Ántonia and Jim are. Jim appreciates Mr. Shimerda's death
more on an intellectual, abstract level, whereas through Ántonia's grief, we appreciate the emotional depth of her
and her family's despair.

Though the funeral is simple and performed somewhat haphazardly, it is poignant and still affects Jim as an
adult. The fact that it lacks ceremony, ritual, and an official person to preside over it is a reflection of the kind of
life that new settlers have to make on the frontier. In other words, new settlers like the Burdens and the
Shimerdas do not really have any precedent or set procedure to follow, in the funeral as in other aspects of life,
and they have to fashion an entirely new way of life out of remembered bits of their past. For example, Otto
sings the first hymn that comes to mind when asked to do so and Grandfather improvises his prayer, yet the
ceremony as a whole is intense and perfect the way it is. The act of creating something that is new and unique,
though possibly a little disjointed and disorganized, renders the product beautiful.

Chapter XVII

Summary:
Finally spring comes, and Jim says that the coming of spring in Nebraska is much different than anything he had
experienced in Virginia. Spring is everywhere, and you can just tell that it's there. People are burning their
pastures before the new grass starts to grow, and the smell pervades the prairie. Neighbors are helping the
Shimerdas a lot and extending them credit, so now they have a new log house, a windmill, and farm animals.

One day Jim visits the Shimerdas to give Yulka her English lesson since Ántonia is now busy working in the
fields. Mrs. Shimerda is very suspicious of everyone and thinks that people are trying to cheat her. When
Ántonia returns from plowing the fields, Jim is amazed at what a strong, young girl of fifteen she has become.
She is proud of how much work she can do and says she doesn't want to go to school because she is happy to be
working with Ambrosch like a man. Jim worries that Ántonia is becoming boastful like her mother, but then he
notices that she is secretly crying. As he helps her with some chores, she makes him promise to tell her the things
he learns in school and not to forget her father, who also went to school.

Jim stays for dinner but is not having a good time. Ántonia and Ambrosch quarrel about who can do more work,
Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch wrongly accuse Grandfather of trying to cheat them, and it is apparent that
Ántonia has lost her gentle, ladylike ways. Jim is sad because Ántonia is always working and has no time for
him anymore. He knows that Ambrosch is overworking her and that people are gossiping about it, and he
imagines how sad her father would be if he were alive.

Analysis:

After the death of Mr. Shimerda and the hardship of winter, spring, life, and rebirth come to the land. Everything
is blooming, and the Shimerdas are learning how to farm the land and are beginning to thrive. Thus, Mr.
Shimerda's death just becomes a part of the life cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The burning of the grass
becomes a symbol of the ever-changing life cycle.

Jim's attitude towards Ántonia during this time in her life is very ambivalent, though he doesn't acknowledge it
in his narrative. Mostly he feels bad that Ántonia is working the land, cannot spend as much time with him as she
used to, and is losing her girlishly feminine ways. At the same time, however, in his physical descriptions of her,
he greatly admires and eroticizes her physical strength and masculine vitality. Even though he resents the fact
that Ántonia is being forced to do a man's work, he cannot help finding her strong, athletic body very attractive.
As usual, however, Jim never explicitly states his feelings, which are nevertheless apparent and implied.

Although Ántonia is helping her family to thrive by working the land, she is simultaneously sacrificing the
opportunities she herself might have had. In an earlier chapter, Mr. Shimerda begged Jim's grandmother to teach
Ántonia English, but in this chapter, she is being forced to give up education and all the life possibilities that it
entails. Ántonia seems to recognize this when she tries to hide her crying from Jim, but she is determined that
her family will succeed in America, no matter what the personal cost. Though Jim and his grandmother seem to
realize exactly what Ántonia is giving up, there is really not much that they can do about it.

Chapter XVIII

Summary:

Jim starts school and tries to get back at Ántonia by becoming friends with his classmates, even though he thinks
they're boring. He is resentful that Ántonia seems to worship Ambrosch, while she treats him with mild disdain.
He recounts how the Burdens and Shimerdas were further estranged that spring.

Jim and Jake went to the Shimerdas to retrieve a horse-collar that Ambrosch had borrowed but not returned.
Ambrosch is surly and gives Jake a collar in very poor condition. The two men get into a scuffle, with Ambrosch
fighting unfairly and Jake knocking him down. Ántonia screams hatred at them, and Mrs. Shimerda threatens
with the law. While leaving, Jim and Jake express their distrust of foreigners and say they're just not the same as
other people. Grandfather simply laughs at the story and tells Jake to go to town and pay his fine. Jake happens
to sell a pig at the same time, and the Shimerdas mock him because they think he needed to sell it in order to
have enough money to pay the fine.
Despite the feud, the Shimerdas are always respectful to Grandfather, who gives them a lot of helpful advice and
helps them when they have a problem with their horse. Ambrosch and Marek have started working for wages,
and Grandfather decides to pay Ambrosch and Ántonia to help out on the farm. When he goes to the Shimerdas
to ask, he graciously gives Mrs. Shimerda the cow that she has purchased on credit, and she falls to her knees
and kisses his hand. Afterwards, the feud between the two families is forgotten, although Mrs. Shimerda wants
to have the last word.

Analysis:

As the beginning paragraph of this chapter suggests, Jim at times structures his life around Ántonia, even if she
is not directly involved or even present. For instance, he makes friends at school seemingly out of spite at
Ántonia; in other words, he engages in normal human activity, but always with Ántonia in mind.

This chapter paints Ambrosch as a brutish, somewhat selfish creature that the reader simply cannot sympathize
with. While this characterization may or may not be true, it does lead the reader to feel sorry for Ántonia, who is
under Ambrosch's thumb and has to obey him. Jim's reaction to the Shimerdas in this chapter is somewhat
uncharacteristic. While Ántonia's anger can be attributed to her intense feelings of family loyalty and devotion,
Jim's prejudiced insults seem strikingly out of place, especially as they are directed primarily at Ántonia.
However, as might be expected, they are probably just his pent-up feelings of frustration and resentment at no
longer being the main object of Ántonia's affection.

Chapter XIX

Summary:

In July the heat comes, and the corn grows fabulously. Jim notes that his grandfather has already predicted that
in the future the American Midwest will produce enough corn for the rest of the world. During this time Ántonia
is mostly working in the kitchen with Grandmother, but she also goes outside to work with Jim in the vegetable
garden. She prefers to work outside like a man and is proud of her arm muscles.

One day there is a big thunderstorm, and Ántonia and Jim go outside to watch it. It is pleasant, and Jim asks her
why she can't always be herself and why sometimes she tries to be like Ambrosch. She answers that if she lived
with Jim in the Burden household, life would be easy and she would be different. However, she predicts that life
will be hard for her and her family.

Analysis:

Though she has to give up her education, Ántonia is finding that working as a man has its advantages. She seems
more independent, carefree, and sure of herself, and she appreciates the sense of added physical strength that she
is acquiring. Jim doesn't like her so much because she acts boastful and arrogant like Ambrosch; however, it is
interesting social commentary that these qualities, which are accepted or taken for granted in men, seem out of
place to Jim when they occur in Ántonia.

This last chapter of Book I recounts the last moment of closeness that Jim and Ántonia share together in the
country. Afterwards, things will change, and the two will no longer be innocent children exploring the country
for the first time. Though their meeting is idyllic and it seems to Jim that Ántonia is like she used to be as a
child, they are both older and wiser than they were when they first came to Nebraska. Ántonia is aware that her
future will be difficult, and she does not have the same sense of unlimited potential that Jim still retains.

Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapters 1-9

Book II The Hired Girls

Chapter I

Summary:
After Jim lives in the country for three years, his grandfather, who feels like he is getting too old and that Jim
needs to go to school, decided to move to Black Hawk. The Burdens sell their farm to the Widow Steavens and
buy a house at the very edge of town. Otto decides to go West, and Jake follows him, even though the Burdens
think he is too kind and trusting to live on the frontier. Jake and Otto help the Burdens move to the town, and Jim
only hears of them once after that, when they are working in a mine.

Black Hawk is a nice, clean little town with a river that reminds Jim of the country. Soon the Burden family feels
like town people, and Jim learns boyish ways at school. Country neighbors coming to town would generally stay
with them at their home, although Ambrosch only came alone, wouldn't stay long, and wouldn't tell them much
about his family. Mrs. Steavens, however, tells them news of Ántonia, whom her brother hires out like a man
and whom everyone liked. Grandmother gets Ántonia a place to work with the Harlings, who live next door to
them in Black Hawk, so she doesn't have to be hired out again for the fall.

Analysis

In this section of the novel, Jim and his family make the transition from country to city. However, even though
they are changing locale, they still see the people they knew in the country. Ántonia and other country girls come
to the city, where there is more opportunity for them to work. Though Jim misses the country, he seems to
realize that he must move to the city in order to eventually get ahead in the world. He can only get an education
and meet important connections if he's living in the city, and city life thus entails more responsibility than his
carefree, harmonious existence in the country did. However, it is important to remember that city life is essential
only if one is attempting to attain a certain kind of financial and worldly success.

Like a man, Ántonia begins to work for wages in the fields. Whereas before people were gossiping about her
because she was doing so, now the farmers respect her for her industry and reliability. By working in the fields,
Ántonia is able to gain the respect and independence that men her age do. Her productivity becomes the measure
of her worth, regardless of her gender. Though Ántonia's working as a farm laborer is perhaps unconventional,
her success suggests that women should be allowed to make the same choices as a man can. By depicting
Ántonia as a strong, determined woman, Cather is asserting that there should be no limitations set on a woman's
potential.

Chapter II

Summary:

Jim begins this chapter by describing their Norwegian neighbors, the Harlings. Mr. Harling is very successful
and frequently away on business, and his wife generally runs the household. She is short, sturdy, and jolly. There
are three Harling children around Jim's age: Charley, Julia, and Sally the tomboy. The oldest daughter Frances
helps her father with his business and is trusted around the countryside because of her understanding of financial
matters.

When the Harlings' cook leaves, Grandmother persuades Mrs. Harling to hire Ántonia. Mrs. Harling goes to visit
the Shimerdas to get an impression of Ántonia and her family. Afterwards, Jim and the grandmother go hear
what Mrs. Harling has to say. Mrs. Harling likes Ántonia and tells about how grumpy and demanding Ambrosch
was. Ambrosch wanted all of Ántonia's wages to go directly to him, but Mrs. Harling mandates that a certain
amount will be set aside for Ántonia's own use. Mrs. Harling comments on how pretty Ántonia is, and Jim and
Grandmother are pleased at the praise. Grandmother then tells a brief history of the Shimerda family.

Analysis:

Jim's world at this time is an essentially female-dominated space, as he spends a lot of time with strong,
independent women: his grandmother, Mrs. Harling and her daughter Frances, and, of course, Ántonia. Jim
sympathizes with these women, who he clearly admires and respects. Mrs. Harling is responsible for running her
household in her husband's absence and creates a lot of joy in the lives of Jim and her children. Though she does
not have any real occupation, her role as a mother (and surrogate mother to Jim) is worthy of respect and much
appreciated by Jim. Mrs. Harling's daughter Frances takes care of the finances of many people around the
country, and though she is a woman, is very much trusted. These two Harling women exemplify female strength
and initiative, and for this reason, Cather's work can be considered progressive and pro-feminist. Women like
Frances can have the responsibilities usually granted only to men, but such a lifestyle should be a matter of
personal choice. If women like Mrs. Harling choose to raise a family, they should be celebrated for doing that
too, as it is clearly a pursuit to be admired.

In contrast, Ambrosch, the Shimerdas' male head of household, is selfish and not worthy of respect. His behavior
towards Ántonia emphasizes how generous and wise the Harling women, as well as Ántonia, really are.

Chapter III

Summary:

Ántonia soon comes to work for the Harlings, and Jim and Grandmother are very happy to see her. Ántonia likes
working in town and learning English, and she plays with the children a lot. Jim is jealous because Ántonia has a
crush on Charley Harling and is always trying to do nice things for him.

The Harling household is always very pleasant, except when Mr. Harling is at home. He likes to have everything
quiet, and he makes Mrs. Harling devote all her attention to him. Later Jim realizes how important Mrs. Harling's
presence in their lives was. Jim thinks that Mr. Harling is an arrogant man and walks around feeling powerful all
the time. Whenever Mr. Harling is not around, the house is loud with a lot of music. Mrs. Harling is very serious
about playing the piano.

Analysis:

In this chapter Cather offers a dramatic example of how marriage can be stifling to women. Although the
previous chapter sets Mrs. Harling up as someone to be admired, in this chapter all her good qualities become
invisible when she is forced to minister to her husband. Even though she is a cheerful person who enjoys life and
loves music, she becomes simply her husband's caretaker when he is around. Though Cather is not condemning
the institution of marriage, through passages such as these, she is implying that marriage is a bad, confining thing
for women when it is not based on a relationship of equality. In addition, since it is easy for women's needs to
become secondary to those of her husband, marriage should be a personal choice, not an inevitable destiny. This
theme of questioning marriage is further developed in the chapters concerning Lena Lingard.

Ántonia loves playing with the Harling children, and her attitude towards them will acquire greater significance
in the last section of the book. At the end of the novel, when Jim goes to visit Ántonia and her huge brood, he
will note that her interactions with her children mirror those with the Harlings. In addition, Ántonia will tell him
that working for the Harlings and taking care of the children was excellent preparation for her life as a mother.
Though Jim does not realize it at the time, Ántonia's life with the Harlings is essentially a dress performance for
her future life as the mother of many.

Chapter IV

Summary:

While Ántonia is making a cake for Charley and being teased because of it, a young girl from the country named
Lena Lingard appears at the door. She is prettily dressed like a town girl, and Ántonia doesn't recognize her at
first. Lena is going to work in town for Mrs. Thomas the dressmaker. Mrs. Harling warns Lena to be serious
about her work and not go gallivanting around town like a lot of the country girls do when they come to town.
As Lena leaves, she asks Ántonia to come visit her. Ántonia is not particularly friendly to her.

Afterwards Ántonia explains that she felt uncomfortable because Mrs. Harling might not have approved of
Lena's being there. Jim then proceeds to recount the town gossip surrounding Lena. As a country girl, Lena was
wild and extremely pretty, yet gentle and feminine. An unlucky man named Ole Benson, who was married to
Crazy Mary, became enamored of her and used to sit in the fields all day watching her plow in her rags. After
being urged to go to church, Lena finally appears one day, looking grown up and very beautiful. After the
service, Crazy Mary screams at her threateningly in front of everyone. Crazy Mary continued to harass her by
chasing her around in the fields with a knife, and one day Lena tried to escape by hiding out at the Shimerdas.
Afterwards, Mrs. Shimerda scolded her, but Lena mildly said that it wasn't her fault and that she couldn't stop
Ole Benson from sitting where he wanted to.

Analysis:

In this chapter we are introduced to Lena Lingard, who knows what she wants to do with her life. She sees
marriage as a hindrance and a burden, and she is determined to remain unmarried in order to become a
successful dressmaker. She believes that by remaining single she will be able to answer to herself only and to
better support her mother, and she ends up doing just that. She is able to surpass her bad reputation through
determination, hard work, and independence, though no one expects her to succeed. When Jim meets Lena later
in college, he casually dates her and even believes that in doing so, he is saving her from pregnancy and a stifling
marriage.

Like Ántonia, Lena is a child of the country. She farms the land, which nurtures her until she grows into a
voluptuous and fertile young woman. And it is fitting that Ole Benson becomes obsessed with her as she is
working the soil, alone in her fields. For part of what makes Ántonia, Lena, and the other immigrant girls so
appealing is that they are so much a part of the land. However, unlike Ántonia, Lena tries to break free of the
pull of the land and achieves a measure of worldly success.

Chapter V

Summary:

Jim frequently meets Lena downtown, and they used to walk home together and talk. Lena tells him about a
hotel called the Boys' Home where she and Tiny Soderball (another hired country girl) would listen to the
entertainment being put on for traveling salesmen. The traveling men would give Tiny gifts.

One day Jim meets Lena and her young brother Chris going Christmas shopping. Chris shows all the presents he
got for his family members and tries to decide which handkerchief to get his mother. After Chris goes back
home, Lena tears up a little bit and confesses how homesick she gets.

Analysis:

In this chapter we see the toll that Lena's independence takes on her. She desperately misses her family, but she
must remain alone in town, without her family as a base of support, if she wishes to make enough money to learn
a trade.

We also get a sense of the distractions that the town holds for young girls like Lena. While going to visit
traveling salesmen must surely be interesting for bored young women, it is also something that could threaten
their future if they're not careful. In searching for diversions, young women like Lena run the risk of falling in
love, getting pregnant, or acquiring bad reputations. Thus, while Lena has the freedom to pursue her own goals,
she also faces a number of difficulties that independent single men simply do not.

Chapter VI

Summary:

It is winter again, and it seems like the cold, bleak light of the winter is the light of truth. Winter is like
punishment for the summer. The streets become more and more deserted, as people run from building to building
and stay in their warm homes. Jim would often stop in at the Harlings, and if Mr. Harling wasn't at home, all the
children would play charades and Ántonia would make snacks for them. Ántonia tells a story about a day at
work when she was throwing hay into a bin. A tramp came over and offered to help out. After working for
awhile, he waved at Ántonia and then jumped headfirst into the bin, which chopped him up. Frances remembers
the story also and how the only thing found on the tramp was a poem.
Ántonia and Mrs. Harling are very similar in nature: they are honest, independent, and strong people who like
children and who take pride in keeping a good household.

Analysis:

During winter, people have to try hard just to survive, and they are able to focus only on the bare necessities, like
keeping warm and eating enough food. For this reason, Jim calls the light of winter the light of truth. In winter
there are no illusions; all is stripped away in the name of basic survival.

Jim wanders the streets alone and doesn't speak to anyone since everyone is preoccupied with keeping warm.
Although there are more people in the city than in the country, it is just as easy, and perhaps even easier, to feel
alone in the city. In the country, there was only Jim, his grandparents, Otto, and Jake, so they all appreciated
each other's company, but in the city, because there is less need to become attached to particular people, people
end up feeling perhaps more isolated.

However, Jim finds his refuge of coziness and warmth with the Harlings, who function as a surrogate family for
Jim. There he can play with a lot of children his own change and feel the maternal presence of both Mrs. Harling
and Ántonia. As noted earlier, Mrs. Harling represents the strength of maternal femininity, and she also functions
as a role model for Ántonia.

Chapter VII

Summary:

Jim is bored of winter by March. During that month the only exciting thing that happens is when Blind
d'Arnault, a negro pianist, comes to play at the Boys' Home on a Saturday night. The atmosphere is free and
relaxed, particularly because the proprietor, the snobbish and proper Mrs. Gardener, is not present. Blind
d'Arnault comes in to play for the men, and Jim describes him in racialized terms. Jim thinks he is the happiest-
looking person he has seen since leaving Virginia.

After swaying back and forth on the piano bench, the mulatto plays negro tunes. Jim recounts Blind d'Arnault's
story: When he was three, he lost his vision. His mother named him Samson and hid him away because he was
ugly and dim-witted. Samson used to go listen to his mistress Miss d'Arnault practice the piano, and one day he
stole into the house and began to play the piano. When he was discovered, he had a violent fit, but afterwards his
mistress let him play the piano. Samson became a negro prodigy who played barbarously but in a way that was
somehow more real.

Blind d'Arnault senses that there are girls dancing in the other room, and the men open the doors and invite
Ántonia, Lena, and Tiny, who are listening on the other side of the wall, to come in. The girls are pretty, and
Blind d'Arnault plays until they have to close the hotel.

Analysis:

Despite Cather's progressive attitudes towards women, marriage, and religion, she does not have the most
enlightened attitude towards African-Americans. In this chapter her depiction of Blind d'Arnault makes him into
an exotic, primitive spectacle. Everyone looks at him with wonder and awe, but they find him fascinating in a
somewhat condescending and patronizing way. Blind d'Arnault is not an equal, but rather a performer who takes
elements of his culture and transforms it into palatable entertainment for his spectators. This scene recreates a
form of entertainment popular at the time: the Negro burlesque. For the white spectators, Blind d'Arnault is a
member of a race that they find somewhat threatening, yet exciting. His race becomes neutralized as
entertainment, however, when he performs, and he becomes a harmless, childlike object that his audience can
gape at without fear of danger.

Though Jim enjoys Blind d'Arnault's piano-playing, he doesn't consider it real art or music. Instead, it becomes a
perversion and a distortion of the traditional musical genres. Although his music is praised for being more "real,"
this "realness" is associated in the minds of the audience members with primitiveness, childishness, and lack of
sophistication. While Cather may indirectly be praising African-American culture for being free of artificiality
and formality, she is nevertheless presenting it as being at the earlier stages of cultural development.

Finally, Blind d'Arnault's piano-playing is described in highly sexualized terms. It is analogous to the act of
copulation, with Blind d'Arnault characterized as being aggressive, with animal instincts and desires. Such a
description conforms to negative stereotypes of the African-American male as hypersexual and driven by lustful
passions, never by intellect or emotion.

Chapter VIII

Summary:

Jim and the Harling children feel the happiest and most content that spring just playing in the garden. They do
not yet know that the summer will change everything. In the beginning of summer, some Italians (the Vannis)
come into town and set up a dancing pavilion in a vacant lot. They begin giving dancing lessons to children, and
people start to gather and congregate around the lot. Now there is something for people to do and somewhere for
them to socialize. Dancing becomes a city-wide craze, and every Saturday night there is a late-night dance. Jim
goes all the time, as do many girls and boys from the country. At this point, Ántonia, Lena, and Tiny become
known as "the hired girls" and are always at the dances too.

Analysis:

Although the dancing craze catches on very quickly, dancing during this time period is generally associated with
frivolity, moral decline, and loose women. When Jim mentions the Vannis' arrival in Black Hawk, he does not
indicate that dancing was met with any disapproval. However, the cultural stereotypes associated with dancing
do emerge as more and more people begin spending time at the dance halls.

At this point in the novel, however, the dance halls fit well into the social order. They provide a space for the
young people to interact and exist as the primary form of entertainment for a very bored town populace.

Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapters 10-15

Chapter IX

Summary:

Jim describes the social situation of the hired girls in this chapter. The hired girls from the country had generally
made sacrifices in order to help their families survive their first year or two in a new country, and they were
therefore less educated than their younger siblings. They were, however, wise, mature, and physically vigorous,
and were thus different from typical Black Hawk women. Black Hawk women never exerted themselves
physically and were more refined, but they were less attractive to Black Hawk men than the hired girls. Though
their families might be poor, these American girls were not allowed to work for wages, as the Bohemian and
Scandinavian girls did. As a result, the Bohemian and Scandinavian families quickly became prosperous, but
they were still faced with small-town prejudice in Black Hawk.

The Black Hawk men were expected to marry Black Hawk women and live very proper lives, but they were
tempted by the independent, free-living hired girls. The country girls were therefore considered something of a
social menace, but Black Hawk men were actually more desirous of respectability than anything else. At the
Saturday night dances, the town boys and country girls could interact. One man named Sylvester Lovett had an
obvious crush on Lena, but he refused to do anything about it and married an older widow instead. Jim feels
contempt for Sylvester.

Analysis

This chapter provides an interesting example of the limitations of social mobility. Because the town girls have
money and respectability, they are paradoxically limited in their life possibilities. They are not expected or
encouraged to choose vocations for themselves, and they are just expected to get married. Their options in life
are limited to becoming a wife and a mother. On the other hand, the country girls who are born poor have much
more open to him. Since their families do not have the luxury of allowing them to stay at home, they have to go
out into the world to work, and they there discover the myriad of possibilities open to them. They are thus able to
actually choose a vocation, make money, and more fully engage in worldly pursuits.

While the hired girls are able to break free of traditional male-female constraints, they do so at a price: they lose
social standing and respectability. Indeed, determined town girls, if they chose, could very well become
employed, but they would risk a number of social privileges. Country girls have nothing to lose and only
financial remuneration to gain. However, though their farm labor makes them more attractive than town girls,
they will never be completely accepted.

The country girls do not really threaten the social order because social pressures prove stronger than male desire.
While their presence does stir things up somewhat, the status quo inevitably triumphs.

Chapter X

Summary:

Ántonia starts going to the dances all the time, and people begin to talk about her. Boys start hanging around the
house at all times, and one night Mr. Harling happens to see a boy jumping over his fence. Ántonia explains that
an engaged man had tried to kiss her after walking her home and she had slapped him. Mr. Harling tells her that
she is hanging out with loose women and that she is getting the same reputation. He forbids her from going to
the dances, and the next day Mrs. Harling backs him up. Ántonia decides to leave to go work for Wick Cutter
instead. Mrs. Harling warns her that Wick Cutter will likely get her pregnant, but she is unable to change her
mind. Mrs. Harling is bitter that she let herself grow attached to Ántonia.

Analysis:

After awhile, dancing is seen not just as an innocent pastime, but as a sign of moral lassitude and debauchery.
Ántonia starts getting a bad reputation because she likes dancing, even though she is not especially flirtatious to
men. Although Ántonia does become more irresponsible with her household duties, we should remember that
dancing has been the one positive outlet that she has found in all her time in America. Up till now, she has done
hard work in the fields and been hired out for wages. Dancing is the sole source of fun and pleasure that has
entered her life.

In addition, music is very important to Ántonia. Her father was a musician in his native Bohemia, and as a child,
she is sad when he refuses to play his fiddle anymore in America. Dancing provides a connection to her musical
past, and while it is just an innocent diversion, it is also a lot more.

Chapter XI

Summary:

Wick Cutter the money-lender is a sketchy philanderer who likes to gamble, and he had gotten two Swedish
servant girls pregnant. He and his wife fight constantly and viciously. Mrs. Cutter is a sharp and scary-looking
person who obsessively paints china. The Cutters fight about the question of inheritance, and each blames the
other for remaining childless. They never separate, however, and seem to find each other interesting. Jim
remarks that Wick Cutter is a unique rascal but that Mrs. Cutter is just a prototypical shrew.

Analysis:

This chapter provides another example of domestic disharmony‹another example of a marriage gone awry. As
discussed earlier, the theme of marriage as a potentially confining arrangement is one that is developed
throughout the novel.
"Wick Cutter" is an especially sinister-sounding name, and it adds to the characterization of the Cutters as a
particularly vicious and stingy couple. The name is particularly symbolic, as in the last section of the novel, we
discover exactly how violent and "cutting" Wick can be.

Chapter XII

Summary:

Ántonia becomes obsessed with going dancing, and she starts wearing clothes that she copies from high-society
ladies. Every afternoon Jim and his friends would watch Ántonia, Lena, and Tiny go downtown, and sometimes
Jim would catch up with them and take them to an ice-cream parlor. He thinks Ántonia is still the prettiest, but
he knows that people think he's a little "queer" because he's only interested in these older country girls. He
refuses to join the Owl Club and socialize with town people his own age.

Jim is bored at Black Hawk. He starts hanging out at Anton Jelinek's saloon, but Jelinek asks him not to because
his grandfather would disapprove. He wanders the streets of Black Hawk since there is nothing to do, and he is
angered by the hypocrisy and timidity of the people living in their houses. He starts sneaking out of his house to
go to Saturday night dances at the Firemen's Hall, where the "foreigners" go to dance. There everyone wants to
dance with Lena and Tony. Dancing with Lena is like waltzing home to something, while dancing with Tony is
like setting out on an adventure.

One night Jim walks Ántonia home. She is appalled when he kisses her, even though he says Lena lets him do
the same with her. Ántonia tells him not to get mixed up with any of the immigrant girls, particularly Lena,
because he is smart and needs to go make something of himself. Jim is proud of Ántonia and considers her a real
woman: she is his Ántonia. Jim frequently has sexual dreams about Lena, but never about Ántonia, although he
wants to.

Analysis:

At the time of the novel's publication, the word "queer" was beginning to have the same kind of connotations
that it does now, and Cather would undoubtedly have been aware of its secondary meaning. If so, how is Jim
queer? He doesn't like girls his own age, is a little bit antisocial, and hangs out with older girls who are not really
part of his social stratum. Whether or not Jim might be a modern-day homosexual is somewhat irrelevant, but
what is clear is that Jim does not display a "normal" attraction to girls his own age. Perhaps Cather intends the
word "queer" to emphasize Jim's total lack of interest in girls his own age and background, but solely in order to
underscore his total fixation on Ántonia and girls like her. He is therefore "queer" by focusing only on one girl at
the expense of all others.

Marriage threatens the life possibilities of not just girls, but also boys. While Lena asserts that she doesn't want
to get married because she wants to be a successful dressmaker, Ántonia warns Jim not to get mixed up with the
Swedish girls for a similar reason. Ántonia fears that he may fall in love with someone like Lena, get married,
and then never leave Black Hawk. In warning Jim not to flirt with Lena, Ántonia has Jim's long-term interests in
mind.

Chapter XIII

Summary:

Jim's grandmother is crying one afternoon because she has heard that he has been going to the Saturday night
dances. He promises not to go anymore since she is so sad that he may be growing up to be a bad boy. As a
result, he has a very boring spring and does extra reading to get some college requirements out of the way.

Frances Harling tells Jim that her mother does not disapprove of him but just wonders why he prefers to spend
time only with older, country girls. Frances thinks it's because he's more mature than most boys and because he
knew Ántonia and her friends in the country and romanticizes them.
Jim gives a speech at his graduation, which Mrs. Harling is very proud of. Ántonia and her friends run up to him
afterwards and also praise him. Ántonia was reminded of her father during the speech, and Jim confesses that it
was dedicated to him. Ántonia hugs him tearfully, and Jim says that that was the most poignant moment of his
life.

Analysis:

Jim is shunned and treated as if he really were "queer" because he only likes spending time with older country
girls like Ántonia. He doesn't have any friends, becomes depressed, and wants to get out of Black Hawk as soon
as he can. The situation is apparently so serious that Frances Harling brings it up with Jim one day. Though she
sees why Jim focuses all his energy on Ántonia and her friends, she does not see why he makes all the effort. Her
comment that he romanticizes them implies that he is making more of them than is necessary‹that there is really
nothing overwhelmingly special about them. For the first time, we thus get a glimpse of what people other than
Jim really think about Ántonia and the other hired girls. Frances Harling does not think that there's any special
mystique surrounding them, which makes Jim's love and admiration only seem more sincere and genuine.
Ántonia in particular is especially important to him, and though his opinion is necessarily subjective, it makes his
relationship with Ántonia that much more personal.

Chapter XIV

Summary:

After Commencement Jim begins studying Latin seriously for college. Only once during the summer does he
take a break to go pick elders with the hired girls. Arriving at the river first and going swimming, he realizes he's
going to miss Black Hawk and the country. The girls arrive when he's still in the water, and he gradually makes
his way over to where they are. He comes up on Ántonia by herself and finds her crying because a certain type of
flower is making her homesick. When she asks whether he thinks her father is back in the old country, Jim tells
her how he felt her father's spirit in the house the day he died, and Ántonia feels better. She tells him how her
father honorably married her mother, who was a servant, when she got pregnant and how her father's family
never forgave the two of them. Jim is happy because Ántonia seems exactly the same as she did when he first
met her and he tells her he will one day visit her homeland.

Lena appears, looking like she does in Jim's sexual dreams, and he leaps up to help her pick elders. In the hot
afternoon, they all sit around and talk. Ántonia becomes irritated when Lena behaves flirtatiously towards Jim.
The girls discuss how it is difficult for older adults to make the transition to a new country and how difficult it is
to be the oldest child when more babies keep arriving. They play a game called "Pussy Wants a Corner," and
then Jim tells them about how Coronado the Spanish explorer came as far West as Black Hawk. As they sit in
silence, the clouds disappear, and all of a sudden, they see a distant black figure on the horizon. Jumping up to
see what it is, they realize that someone had left a plow standing in the field, and it looks molten red and glowing
against the backdrop of the sun. The image only lasts for a moment as the sun continues to set.

Analysis:

In the previous chapter Jim dedicates his commencement speech to Ántonia's father and calls the hug she gives
him the most poignant moment in his life. In this chapter, he learns the story of the marriage of Ántonia's parents
and promises to go visit her native village. In all these ways, Jim is becoming a part of the Shimerda family
history and sharing Ántonia's past with her. While he is possibly just trying to become emotionally closer to
Ántonia, he is also searching for the nuclear family that he never really had. While Jim did have his parents for
ten years of his life and his grandparents after than, he never really had siblings or parents to guide him through
the difficult years of his childhood. The Shimerdas are like his surrogate family, providing him with the rich
cultural heritage and family scandals that were never a prominent part of his own life.

While Jim obviously loves Ántonia and considers himself emotionally and spiritually bonded to her, his feelings
towards Lena are primarily sexual. He desires her sexually because though she is not Ántonia herself, she is very
much like her. In addition, Ántonia seems beyond the realm of sexual desire, and her relations with Jim seem
always chaste and innocent, though sometimes intense. Jim cannot think of Ántonia in a sexual light because she
is more than just the beloved to him; she is a maternal, feminine presence in his life that cannot be limited simply
to the role of lover.

The image of the plow has symbolic importance. It represents the shared past of Jim, Ántonia, and the other
girls, but it is also a symbol for the future. At this point in time, right before many of them are going to leave
Black Hawk and begin new lives, the plow is a reminder that the land that they grew up on will never really
leave them and will always remain a part of them. A symbol of fertility and growth, the plow represents the past
that created and nurtured them, as well as the new life that they themselves will create. Finally, the image of the
plow is a legacy to them. Though they may leave their childhood farms, Jim, Ántonia, and the hired girls have a
responsibility to the land to maintain and protect it.

Chapter XV

Summary:

At the end of the summer, the Cutters leave Black Hawk on a business trip, and Ántonia comes to the Burdens to
complain about feeling uneasy. Mr. Cutter had put all the silver and important documents under Ántonia's bed
and told her that she had to sleep there in order to keep them safe. Worried that Mr. Cutter is playing some sort
of trick, she gets Jim to sleep at the Cutters in her bed, while she stays with Grandmother.

On the third night, Jim awakes to find Mr. Cutter trying to grope him. They get into a fight, with Mr. Cutter
beating Jim fiercely about the face. Jim runs back home and in the morning feels disgusted, ashamed, and angry
at Ántonia. He refuses to see her or a doctor and is worried about word getting around town.

When Ántonia and Grandmother go over to the Cutters' house to pack up Ántonia's belongings, they find her
room in a disarray. They also find Mrs. Cutter, who is indignant because her husband intentionally put her on the
wrong train so that he could come back to Black Hawk for an intended rendezvous with Ántonia. Jim notes that
Mr. Cutter came up with a needlessly complex plan specifically to outrage Mrs. Cutter, and he comments that it
was obviously Mr. Cutter's greatest joy to make his wife upset.

Analysis:

This section of the book ends on a rather sinister note of violence and messed-up sexuality. It is not a promising
conclusion to Jim's life at Black Hawk, and it provides an interesting sequel to Jim's earlier characterization as
"queer." Though Jim and Ántonia never become sexually involved, in this chapter Jim gets to sleep in her bed.
However, this switching of beds confuses Wick Cutter, who mistakes Jim for Ántonia. Cutter starts to grope Jim,
and after the two get into a fight, Jim feels ashamed, doesn't want anyone to see him, and is worried that the
situation will incite a lot of gossip. After being considered "queer" for devoting all his attention to Ántonia, this
story would, if word got about, insinuate that Jim was queer for another reason‹namely, for being involved with
men. While doesn't mind the first connotation of the word, in this case he is resentful of Ántonia for once again
making him seem "queer."

This episode of marital infidelity and aggressive sexuality is a fitting beginning for the next segment of Ántonia's
life, which is not the happiest for her. In the Wick Cutter scenario, Ántonia is blameless and at the mercy of a
rascal, and she is similarly not responsible for what happens to her during the next few years of her life.

Summary and Analysis of Book III

Book III Lena Lingard

Chapter I

Summary:

At the University in Lincoln, Jim meets Gaston Cleric, who is his mentor in the Latin Department and who
arrived at the same time he did. Jim stays in Lincoln during the summer studying Greek, and he spends a lot of
time socializing with Gaston, who helps effect his mental awakening. During that time, the University is still
very new, and it is full of earnest young men from the farms and enthusiastic, young instructors. Jim lives in a
small cramped apartment where Gaston used to come visit him to talk about poetry and Italy.

Gaston talks very vividly and poetically, and Jim imagines that he might have been a poet if he didn't waste so
much creativity talking to other people. Jim particularly remembers one conversation they had about Dante's
admiration for his teacher Virgil. Although he admires Gaston, Jim knows that he cannot be a scholar because he
loves the people and places of his past so much. He has very vivid memories of them sometimes.

Analysis

With Gaston Cleric, Jim has the second close relationship of his life. While this section of the novel is entitled
"Lena Lingard" and he does become romantically involved with her, he is close to her primarily because she
reminds him of Ántonia and his childhood. His relationship with Gaston is entirely separate from Ántonia and
his life in the country, and it is centered around intellectual pursuits.

Although Gaston is his instructor in the Latin Department, their relationship goes far beyond a simple teacher-
student one. Gaston is his mentor and introduces him to new worlds of knowledge, and they have an intimate,
intense relationship of equals. Just as Virgil inspires Dante, so does Gaston awaken Jim to scholarly pursuits and
the world beyond Black Hawk. However, Jim feels tied to the land and his childhood friends much more
strongly than he does to his scholarly pursuits. Jim's intense love of Latin and Gaston Cleric pales in comparison
to the pull that Ántonia and the land has on him. In a sense, even this epoch of Jim's life, seemingly unrelated to
Ántonia, is a way for him to discover the other possibilities that life has to offer and to see how they compare to
his idyllic childhood experiences.

Chapter II

Summary:

One day during September Jim is sitting in his room reading Virgil and thinking about one particular line which,
translated, means, "I was the first to bring the Muse into my country." He thinks about how Gaston may feel like
that about his New England hometown when suddenly, Lena Lingard appears at his door. He doesn't recognize
her at first because she is smartly dressed in city clothes and looks grown up. Lena tells him that she is now
living in Lincoln as a dressmaker and is beginning to save enough money to build her mother a house. Jim is
impressed that she has been able to do so well all by herself.

Lena mentions Tony, and Jim is eager to hear about her. According to Lena, Tony is now Mrs. Gardener's
housekeeper, has reconciled with the Harlings, and is engaged to Larry Donovan, whom she adores. Jim says he
doesn't like Larry Donovan and unself-consciously remarks that he should go back to Black Hawk to look after
Ántonia. Lena tells him that Ántonia is always bragging about him being so smart.

Before she leaves, Lena gets Jim to offer to take her to the theater sometime, and she tells him that she has to
write a letter to Ántonia all about what he's doing. She whispers suggestively into his ear about his maybe being
lonely and then leaves. Jim is happy after she goes because she reminds him of all the hired girls. He realizes that
poetry like Virgil's would never exist unless there were girls like Lena. As he sits down to read, the sexual dream
about Lena seems like an actual memory, and a line of poetry, translated "The best days are the first to flee,"
acquires special meaning.

Analysis:

When Lena comes to visit, their conversation not surprisingly centers around discussion of Ántonia. Though she
flirts with Jim, Lena seems to acknowledge that he and Ántonia have a special, primary relationship that she can
never really interfere with. Jim seems to feel the same way when he suggests going back to Black Hawk to look
after Ántonia and when he feels jealous of Larry Donovan. Though Jim thinks that he is attracted to the
flirtatious Lena, in reality he just desires the memories of his lost childhood that she evokes. He is in love with
the carefree, independent attitudes of the country girls and with Ántonia in particular, and he imagines that by
being with Lena he can recapture the innocence and excitement of playing with Ántonia as a child.

At the beginning of the chapter, Jim thinks of Gaston Cleric bringing the Muse into his own country, and his
thoughts at the end of the chapter once more return to the poetry of Virgil. If fresh, country girls like Ántonia and
Lena are the inspiration for poetry, then in a sense they are the ones who are responsible for bringing the Muse
(aesthetic beauty and poetry) into the Nebraska frontier. Ántonia's entry into the country is a source of
inspiration (poetic, moral, intellectual) for Jim, as his words at the end of the chapter imply. Though Jim loves
the country and his childhood, it is Ántonia's presence that made it beautiful and a thing to be cherished.

Chapter III

Summary:

Lena and Jim start going to plays together, with Lena insistent that she pay her own way. With excitement, they
go see a new play called "Camille," set to the opera "Traviata" and written by Alexandre Dumas' son.
Immediately, Jim is enthralled by the play. He loves the scenery and even now feels hungry when he thinks
about the staged dinner. He admires the wittiness of the men and women in the play, and he is captivated by the
famous actress who plays Marguerite, even though she is old and lame.

During intermission Jim is proud of Lena and realizes that they are both mature adults. Jim and Lena weep as the
sad love story plays on before them. Even though the actress who plays Marguerite is melodramatic and
ungraceful, Jim feels for her, as she dies in the arms of a man who no longer loves her. After Jim walks Lena
home, he continues to mourn for Marguerite's fictional death because he thinks her story is timeless. He notes
that whenever that play is performed, it is April.

Analysis:

Though the plot of the play is somewhat hard to follow in this chapter, it appears that Marguerite was having
some sort of intrigue involving a father-son pair. She seems to be in love with the elder Duval, also called
Varville, and in the beginning of the play, their love is idyllic and peaceful. By the end of the play, however, the
younger Duval, Armand, feels betrayed by Marguerite and rejects her, throwing money at her like a whore. We
can surmise from the last paragraph of the chapter that Marguerite dies a tragic death because of her frustrated
love.

Even with this sketchy outline, however, we can discern why the play affects Jim so profoundly. In watching the
play, he sees a story of perfect love lost that he connects with his own relationship with Ántonia. He sees his
childhood relationship with Ántonia as being part of a near-perfect life that he has lost forever and can never
fully recreate. Though Marguerite is played by a woman who is not really beautiful anymore, her physical flaws
only make her seem more human and more real to him. Her despair at having lost the love of her life is Jim's
own unspeakable sorrow, which is why he thinks that the play is timeless and universal.

For the first time in Jim's life, he finds the world of fiction as compelling as real life. In the past, the adventure
novels he read always paled in comparison to the life that he was leading. Now, however, he finds that a
different kind of adventure story‹one of love‹can not only replicate the feelings he feels in real life, but can also
provide a framework for understanding them.

Chapter IV

Summary:

Although Lena is not aggressive or high-strung, she is doing very well in her dressmaking business. People come
to her because of her sense of style, even though she often gets behind schedule and over budget. Jim frequently
sits in her parlor to wait for her, and they like to eat Sunday breakfasts together in a cozy nook at her place. Lena
has a dog named Prince, and they both play with him a lot. Jim likes how Lena speaks colloquially and how
pretty she looks in the morning. One day Lena explains that Ole Benson (the man who used to sit and watch her
in the fields) was basically harmless and just liked to look at her to forget his troubles and as entertainment. He
would talk to her in Norwegian, and they would look at his many tattoos because there was nothing else to look
at in the fields. Lena tells Jim that Ole married Crazy Mary because he wanted her to keep him in line.

Two men in Lena's apartment are in love with her at the time: a Polish violin-teacher named Ordinsky, and her
landlord, the Colonel, who liked to frequently renovate her rooms for her. Once Ordinsky, who usually glares at
Jim in the hall, comes in to ask Lena to help him mend some clothes he's wearing. When Lena goes out of the
room, Ordinsky warns him that his intentions had better be noble, and Jim assures him that they are and that he
and Lena have known each other for a long time. Afterwards, Ordinksy is friendly to him.

Jim begins to be lax in his studies and spends all his time playing with Lena, Prince, Ordinsky, and the Colonel.
Gaston notices and asks him to join him at Harvard, where he has been offered a teaching position. Grandfather
approves, and Jim is somewhat sad and tries to convince himself that by dallying with Lena, he is preventing her
from burdening herself with marriage.

He goes to see Lena, and they talk about how Ordinsky and the Colonel have crushes on her. Lena tells him that
she will never marry because she doesn't want to be accountable to anyone and because she has had enough
family life after helping to raise all her younger brothers and sisters. When Jim tells her he is going away, Lena
says that maybe she shouldn't have begun their little fling by coming to visit him that one day, but she confesses
that she always wanted to be his first sweetheart, especially because Ántonia always told her not to.

Jim leaves Lincoln, visits his grandparents and Virginia, and then joins Gaston Cleric in Boston.

Analysis:

In this chapter Jim and Lena start dating, and though they enjoy each other's company, there does not seem to be
the kind of emotional or romantic attachment that one would except from a first romance. To be sure, Jim and
Lena do spend a lot of time together, so much so that Gaston Cleric worries that Jim is no longer concentrating
on his studies. Jim is clearly infatuated with Lena because of her beauty and finds it extremely pleasant to spend
time with her, but there is none of the heartfelt, self-revelatory soliloquizing that occurs whenever he thinks
about Ántonia. Lena simply does not open him up to self-discovery in the same way that Ántonia does.

In addition, Ántonia plays an indirect role in Jim and Lena's relationship, as Lena herself admits at the end of the
chapter. Lena becomes interested in Jim primarily because Ántonia keeps telling her that he is inaccessible to
her. In other words, Ántonia and Jim's relationship is the central one that Lena wants to disrupt. While Jim is sad
to leave Lena, we get the sense that he accepts the closing of this chapter of his life. In contrast, his relationship
with Ántonia never ends, though he may not see her for years at a time.

Lena refuses to get married because she wants to be independent and thinks that a man will simply drag her
down. Such a view was quite radical at the time of the novel's publication, and Cather seems to endorse it by
portraying Lena in a favorable light. Indeed, Jim and many of the hired girls never marry and instead follow
individual paths to success. While Cather seems to suggest that marriage should be a matter of individual choice,
she does not necessarily assert that remaining single is the better option. In the sections of the novel that follow,
we will see how Ántonia's marriage prevented her from achieving financial success in life, but Cather suggests
that motherhood and childbearing has its distinct advantages and rewards also.

Summary and Analysis of Book IV

Book IV The Pioneer Woman's Story

Chapter I

Summary:

After graduating from Harvard two years later, Jim goes home for a visit before starting law school. He sees the
Harlings and his grandparents, who look exactly the same. He is told that "poor Ántonia" had a baby after Larry
Donovan ran off and is now living at the farm with Ambrosch, where she is barely heard of. Jim is heartbroken
that Ántonia is now an object of pity in the town. In contrast, Lena Lingard is now a very respectable, successful
dressmaker in Black Hawk.

Apparently, Tiny Soderball is running a sailors' lodging house in Seattle, and people insinuate that it will soon
become a brothel. What actually happens is that Tiny becomes the most successful person from Black Hawk:
After hearing about the gold rush in Alaska, Tiny sells the boarding house and travels to Dawson City, where she
sets up a hotel and cooks for hundreds of homeless, single men. A Swedish man named Johnson leaves his land
claim to her after she nurses him before his death, and she begins buying, trading, and selling other land claims.
After ten years, she amasses a fortune and moves to San Francisco, where Jim later meets up with her. By this
time, she is "hard-faced" and reserved, bored with everything except making money, and only cares about the
Swedish man Johnson and Lena Lingard, who she persuades to move to San Francisco. Tiny says that Lincoln is
too small for someone like Lena. Tiny is satisfied with her life, but essentially bored.

Analysis

In Books IV and V, Jim describes what happens to various of the hired girls. Through this narrative voice,
Cather subtly critiques the various definitions of success, as embodied in the fates of the different immigrant
women. In this chapter Jim learns that Ántonia had a child out of wedlock, and he measures her by the same
standard as the town folk do. Feeling pity for her and lamenting her lost potential, he compares her to Lena
Lingard and Tiny Soderball, who despite their bad reputations as young women, have managed to become
wealthy and well respected.

However, Tiny Soderball does not seem particularly happy or content when Jim meets her. Jim senses that all
she cares about now is making money, and though he does not fault her for this, pities her for her lack of feeling
and personality. To Jim, Tiny does not seem like a complete, engaging person, and her monetary success is
thereby subtly undermined.

Jim doesn't seem to think that either Ántonia or Tiny have lived ultimately successful, rich lives. While Ántonia
has an illegitimate child, is poor, and still works the land, Tiny is close to only two people and is jaded and bored
with life. Despite their difference in income, at this point neither of them have lives that Jim is particularly
envious of. In order to be truly successful, a person needs something else, and at this point Jim does not know
what that is.

Chapter II

Summary:

Jim takes his grandparents to have their picture taken, and while at the photographer, sees an elaborately framed
portrait of Ántonia's baby. He decides that he must see her and is happy that Ántonia is not too ashamed to hide
her baby from public view.

Larry Donovan is a passenger conductor for the railroad and acts like a superior, underappreciated individual. He
spends a lot of time getting women to sympathize with his sad plight, and he convinces them that he is much
better than he really is.

Jim goes to Mrs. Harling and tells her he wants to know about Ántonia's aborted marriage. She tells him to go
ask the Widow Steavens, who knows the entire story and loves to talk.

Analysis:

Though Jim is disappointed in Ántonia's current mode of life, he does not feel disdain or contempt for her.
Rather, he still feels a great deal of affection for her and is pleased that she feels no shame about having a child
out of wedlock. By displaying her baby's portrait so prominently, she is indicating to Jim that she is still as
strong and independent as ever and will do what she wants regardless of what people say, just as she did when
she was working in the fields for Ambrosch. It is this quality that perhaps Jim most admires in Ántonia, though it
is also the quality that sometimes causes him pain and distress.

Chapter III

Summary:

On the way to see Widow Steavens, Jim looks at the country and seems to remember every single aspect of it.
Mrs. Steavens asks him to stay the night, and after dinner she begins to tell Ántonia's story:

The summer before she was supposed to be married, Ántonia used to come to the Widow Steaven's house and
sew her fine wedding linen, singing happily in Bohemian. Larry Donovan would write letters to her while
working on the railroad, and he told her that they would have to move to Denver. When it came time for her to
meet him, Ambrosch did the right thing and gave her a very nice dowry. In Denver, she sent a couple of
postcards saying that they would get married soon, after Larry got his promotion.

One day, though, Ántonia came back on a wagon, and the next day Mrs. Steavens went to visit to see what had
happened. Ántonia tells her that Larry had gotten fired and only lived with her in Denver until her money ran
out, and then he left to go to Mexico to cheat railway passengers. Ántonia did not try to get a civil marriage
because she didn't want to support him. Mrs. Steavens cries when she hears the story because she thinks Ántonia
is a good girl (unlike Lena Lingard).

After her marriage fiasco, Ántonia starts working in the fields all the time and doesn't visit anyone. Mrs.
Steavens worries about her and visits her as much as she can. One day Ántonia reminisces about her childhood
with Jim and her father, and she says that she feels like she won't live very long so she's just trying to enjoy the
fall. During the winter Ántonia wears men's outerwear. When she goes into labor, Mrs. Shimerda comes running
to the house saying that Ambrosch is behaving like a devil, and Mrs. Steavens goes over and warns Ambrosch
not to touch the child. Now the baby is a year and eight months, and Ántonia, a good mother, loves it dearly.

Analysis:

In the first paragraph of this chapter, it becomes clear exactly how important the land is to Jim. After seeing the
world and all that it has to offer, the country still has a kind of harmony unattainable elsewhere. It is as important
to him as an actual person, and indeed, in the novel it seems to acquire a life of its own. Jim is seeing the country
from an adult perspective for the first time, and the fact that he sees it in much the same way as he did when he
was a child renders the power and pull it has timeless and universal.

After being disgraced in her marriage, Ántonia shuts herself off from outside society and tries to regain her
independence by working the land as she used to. In being jilted, Ántonia was helpless and at the mercy of
another person. As a young girl, she discovered masculine independence and strength by plowing the ground,
and after her marriage scandal, she returns to plowing as a way to rebuild the confidence she once had. She
works industriously, begins wearing man's clothing, and starts talking about farming all the time. In this way, she
hopes to compensate for the dependency she experienced in waiting for Larry Donovan to marry her. In other
words, Ántonia returns to the land because it has nurtured and strengthened her in the past, and she hopes that it
will do the same again now.

Chapter IV

Summary:

Jim goes to see Ántonia the next day and finds her looking strong and healthy, though a little wornout. She is
only twenty-four. Jim tells her everything about his life: how he plans to study law in New York City and how
Gaston Cleric had died last winter. Ántonia is sad that Jim is leaving Nebraska for good, but she knows she won't
lose him because she still feels the presence of her father on the farm.
She tells Jim that she wouldn't like big cities and that she wants to live and die in the country, which she knows
and loves. She wants to make sure that her daughter has more opportunities than she did. Jim tells her that he
wishes that Ántonia could have been "a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister‹anything that a woman
can be to a man" because she is so much a part of who he is. She is surprised because she feels like she
disappointed him, but she is glad that they had such important shared memories when they were little.

They walk across the fields together, and Jim feels the pull of the earth and wishes that he were little so he could
just stay there forever. Jim tells Ántonia that he will return, and she says that even if he doesn't, she will still be
able to feel his presence.

Analysis:

When Jim sees her again, Ántonia seems very much a part of the land. She talks about wanting to stay there
forever, even though people keep leaving and she is left alone. In a sense, she cannot leave the land that she
came to as a stranger. It has become tied to her existence, though it treated her so harshly her first year there.

For the first time, Jim tells Ántonia how much she means to him, and perhaps it is because he realizes how much
Ántonia and the land are intertwined. When he tells her that he wishes she could have been "anything that a
woman can be to a man," he is speaking in mythic terms. He wishes that she could have been Woman to his
Man: that is, nurturer, caretaker, mother of life. He does not specify which woman/man relationship he wishes
they could have had because he believes they had all of them simultaneously. Ántonia was sweetheart, wife,
mother and sister to Jim; she is his female complement because they grew up together in a new, undiscovered
country. Only in such an unsettled, empty environment, without all the rules and customs of society as precedent,
could Ántonia embody all the mythic qualities of womanhood: she can represent primitive, fundamental ideals of
femininity without the hassles and constraints of modern life.

Ántonia is the "pioneer woman" of this section because she brings new life‹and the Muse‹into the land. Like the
land, she is fertile, strong, and resilient. In essence, she is an earth mother, as the last section of the novel makes
clear.

Summary and Analysis of Book V

Book V Cuzak's Boys

Chapter I

Summary:

After twenty years, Jim goes to visit Ántonia again. He had sent her pictures of Bohemia when he went to visit,
and he had visited Tiny and Lena in San Francisco, who told him that Ántonia had remarried a Bohemian man
named Anton Cuzak, had a hard life, and had about ten or eleven children. Jim was afraid to see the effects of
twenty years on Ántonia but finally decides to go see her.

While walking up to Ántonia's house, he is greeted by a number of her children in succession, and right before
meeting her, he feels terrified and nervous about seeing her. He recognizes her immediately, but she takes awhile
to figure out who it is. When she does, however, she is very excited. She then introduces all her children to Jim.
Her favorite is twelve-year-old, mischievous Leo, who was born on Easter. Jim finds that though Ántonia has
lost some of her teeth, she is still full of life and energy.

Ántonia and all the children show Jim their cave full of all kinds of fruit and their orchard, full of trees that
Ántonia and her husband Anton watered individually. Everything is peaceful, alive, vibrant, and harmonious.
Ántonia tells Jim that she worked hard all her life to help her husband, who had no experience farming. She is
happy in the country and never gets depressed the way she did in the city. She is glad she lived in the town
because there she learned how to cook, keep house, and raise children.
Jim takes a walk with the two older boys, Ambrosch and Anton. He is impressed with how well-made and
upright they are, and he tells them to always respect their mother because he used to be in love with her and
knows how special she is. They tell him that their mother talks about him a lot. Afterwards, there is a lively and
pleasant supper, followed by musical performances by the children. Then they all look at old photographs, and
Jim realizes that Ántonia's relationship with her children is very much like her relationship with him and the
Harling children years ago. Ántonia provides stories and entertainment.

Jim goes to sleep in the haymow with two of the boys. As he lies awake, he sees a succession of images of
Ántonia and realizes that "she lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as
universal and true." She "reveals[s] the meaning in common things," and Jim thinks of her as "a rich mine of life,
like the founders of early races."

Analysis

In this chapter Jim sees Ántonia in her ultimate incarnation as an earth mother, the bringer of new life.
Everywhere life surrounds her: in her innumerable children, in the plethora of fruits and trees surrounding the
house, in the myriad of farm animals running around, and in the playful interactions of her and her children.
Expecting to see a tired, worn-out woman, Jim is surprised at how energetic and full of life Ántonia is among her
brood of children. Instead of draining her energies, her children seem to feed it, and their enthusiasm is
contagious as Jim discovers firsthand.

Jim admires all of Ántonia's children, and the strong, manly boys in particular. Ántonia is not raising a gaggle of
uncontrollable children; instead, Jim sees her as the mother of a new race of people who love the land, each
other, and life itself. As Jim realizes as he falls asleep, Ántonia captures universal human attitudes in herself and
brings them out in other people: she is Woman, and though she may not be the most financially successful
person, she is the richest in life and love. After pitying Ántonia for so long for not making more of herself, he
realizes that she has achieved her ultimate destiny and is repaying the land, which nurtured her in her youth, with
new life, her own innumerable offspring. Jim realizes that Ántonia has achieved a success much more lasting
than Tiny's or Lena's.

Though Jim is not physically present during twenty years of Ántonia Œs life, he is very much present in her
imagination and those of her children. It is obvious that Ántonia talks about him a lot to her children and that she
cherishes his memory. Similarly, Jim holds Ántonia's memory dear, which is paradoxically why he puts off
seeing her for so long. Jim and Ántonia have an emotional attachment that stretches across time and distance and
which guarantees that their story will never really end. They continue to exert an influence on each other, though
their actual physical interaction is actually quite limited. For this reason, the story of Jim's life is also the story of
Ántonia's.

Chapter II

Summary:

When Jim wakes up, he secretly watches Leo, who seems to have a devil-may-care attitude about everything.
After breakfast, Ántonia tells him how sad she was when her oldest daughter Martha got married and had to
move away, and then her husband arrives from his little holiday in town. "Papa" looks worn, yet lively, and he
starts talking about the street fair that he went to. Jim observes the pair and finds their relations to be very
friendly, with Ántonia being "the impulse, and he the corrective." Cuzak bestows little gifts on his children, who
he seems to find amusing and nice. Ántonia and Cuzak talk about the Bohemian news, and Cuzak interrogates
Jim about the singer Maria Vasak after he finds out that Jim has seen her perform.

During dinner Rudolph tells Jim the story of what happened to the Cutters. Apparently, Wick Cutter shriveled up
as he got older, while his wife got a nervous palsy that made her shake all the time. They continued to fight
about inheritance, especially because Nebraska had recently passed a law guaranteeing a woman a third of her
husband's property. One day Wick Cutter bought a pistol and began shooting at targets in the yard. One day a
gunshot is heard, and the neighbors rush into the house to find Mrs. Cutter shot through the heart and Wick
Cutter shot through the neck, but still momentarily alive. He confesses that he killed his wife but states that he is
still alive and conscious. Later, the coroner finds a letter saying that he shot his wife and that since he survived
her, any will she made is invalid. Apparently, his fortune amounted to a hundred thousand dollars.

After dinner Jim and Cuzak go take a walk, and Cuzak tells Jim how he came to America and decided to marry
Ántonia. He admits that it has been hard work on the farm and that he often misses city life and gets lonely.
However, he says that Ántonia has such a warm heart and that he can also have fun with his older sons. When
they return to the house, Cuzak comments about how he can't believe he has lived in America for twenty-six
years already.

Analysis:

In this chapter Jim is able to meet Cuzak and spend some time with him. A lot of the chapter is simply spent with
Jim observing how the family interacts with each other. For the first time, Jim witnesses a scene of complete
domestic and marital harmony. While Lena, Tiny, and himself forgo marriage in favor of independence, Ántonia
seems to have found a relationship based on equality and mutual respect. Her marriage is far different from the
Harlings', in which Mrs. Harling was forced to minister to her husband's needs. Ántonia and her husband play
with their children and have an easy camaraderie with each other. Ántonia helps with the farming‹the work that
made her feel strong and independent as a young girl‹and she lets her husband go off to the city sometimes when
he misses town life.

The Cutter story emphasizes what a peaceful and idyllic situation Cuzak and Ántonia have. The Cutters represent
the extreme of marital discord and unhappiness, and the fact that their marriage ends tragically gives hope that
the one between Cuzak and Ántonia will last for a long time. The symbolic irony of the Cutters' last name is
apparent in the retelling of their story.

Chapter III

Summary:

The next day Jim says goodbye to Ántonia and all her children. Leo and Ambrosch run ahead to open the gate,
and Leo disappears before Jim can say goodbye. Ambrosch explains that he's either sad that Jim's leaving or
jealous of his mother's affection. Jim is sad to leave Ambrosch, who is very manly, and he promises to come
next year to go hunting with him and Rudolph.

Jim spends a disappointing day in Black Hawk. He doesn't know anyone there anymore, so he spends the day
talking to Anton Jelinek and then to an old lawyer friend about the Cutters. Only when he takes a walk outside of
town does he feel completely at home with the sky, the prairie vegetation, and the cornfields. He plans to spend a
lot of time with the Cuzak boys and is glad that there are a lot of them, including Cuzak himself. While walking,
he happens to come upon the first road north out of Black Hawk‹the road that went to his grandfather's farm and
the Shimerdas'. The road is barely visible and has been plowed under everywhere else. Jim remembers that this
is the road that he and Ántonia took after being on the train that took them both to Black Hawk for the first time,
and he can suddenly remember very specific physical sensations of being on the train. He feels like he is coming
home to himself, that his life has run in a circle back to the beginning, and he thinks the road has been one to
Destiny, both for himself and for Ántonia. He knows that the road will bring Ántonia and him together again,
and he feels no regret for what might have been because they both still have the past.

Analysis:

Jim plans to spend a lot of time playing with Ántonia's sons and Cuzak. Why does he only want to spend time
with the boys and not with the girls? This section is titled "Cuzak's Boys," not "Cuzak's Children." In an earlier
chapter, Jim tells Ántonia that he wishes she could have been "a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my
sister‹anything that a woman can be to a man." If Ántonia fills all these roles in Jim's life, then in a sense, he is
one of her boys too. He is included in the title of "Cuzak's Boys," and in wanting to play only with Ántonia's
sons, he is imagining himself as part of that group of children.
The novel concludes when Jim finds the old dirt road that went to his grandparents' farm and realizes that he has
come full circle. Though Jim has followed other paths in life, he once again returns to the land and to Ántonia.
The old dirt road brings him back to Ántonia, the earth mother, and once again he becomes her little boy.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/antonia/canalysis.html

Analysis of Major Characters

Jim Burden
Intelligent and introspective, Jim is well qualified to be the narrator of the story. His thoughtfulness gives him
the ability to portray himself and others with consistency and sympathy and to convey the sense of a lost
Nebraska with an evocative, poetic accuracy. Furthermore, his romantic nature and strong attachment to the
people of his youth and to the Nebraska landscape give his narrative a sense of deep commitment and a longing,
nostalgic quality that colors his story. The wistful nature of Jim’s memoir highlights the novel’s emphasis on the
past as something personal to the individual who remembers it, which Jim acknowledges in choosing to call his
memoir “My Ántonia” rather than “Ántonia.” Jim is not claiming ownership of Ántonia; he is indicating that the
story of Ántonia contained within his memoir is just as much a product of his own mind and heart as it is of the
past.
Over the course of the novel, Jim ages from a ten-year-old boy into a middle-aged man, and
grows from a shy orphan into a successful lawyer for the railroad companies, acquiring an impressive education
along the way at the University of Nebraska and Harvard. In spite of the great changes that he undergoes, Jim
remains a consistent character. He always has interest in others but is content to spend time alone; he often
assumes the role of the detached observer watching situations unfold. The word “I” appears in My Ántonia with
surprising infrequency, given the fact that the novel is a first-person memoir. Only at the end of the novel, when
Jim sets aside his reservations to reunite with the middle-aged Ántonia on the Cuzak farm, does he seem to move
past his passive role and make an active attempt to connect with the past he cannot forget.
Jim’s most important relationship in the novel, of course, is his friendship with Ántonia, and the fact that he
allows Ántonia to recede in his mind as an abstract symbol of the past is itself a strong illustration of Jim’s
introspective mentality. Rather than remaining close to Ántonia through the years, Jim allows himself to drift
apart from her, always preserving her special place in his heart by treating her memory with greater and greater
nostalgia as the years go by. Though the final segment of the novel—Jim’s reunion with Ántonia after twenty
years apart—is not presented as a staggering breakthrough, it nevertheless seems to be a great step forward in
Jim’s growth and maturity. He can at last contemplate re-creating a real relationship with Ántonia,
acknowledging that she still exists and is still herself even after the past that they shared has ended.
Ántonia Shimerda
Captured by Jim in his nostalgic memoir of his younger days, Ántonia gradually emerges from Jim’s emotional
presentation of her to become a believable, independent character in her own right. In fact, by the end of the
novel, Ántonia has perhaps made more of an impression on many readers than Jim has. Many critics argue that
Ántonia, despite the fact that she barely appears in the last quarter of the novel, is the real protagonist. Pretty,
vivacious, and extremely generous, Ántonia fascinates Jim. He feels that Ántonia is unusually alive, a sentiment
that he echoes even after meeting her as the mother of ten children at the end of the novel.
Throughout the novel, Ántonia is caught between her natural optimism and cheer and the extremely difficult
circumstances that she faces after her emigration from Bohemia and her father’s suicide in America. She is also
trapped by the cultural differences that make her feel like a perpetual outsider in Nebraska and lead, in part, to
her inability to love Jim as more than a brother: the Shimerdas go hungry, and their poverty forces Ántonia to
work as a servant girl; certain members of the Black Hawk community judge her harshly for her love of dancing;
her fiancé betrays her and leaves her to raise a child alone. Yet she never loses her quality of inner grace and
self-sufficiency. Ántonia always tries to make the best of her circumstances, but she refuses to sacrifice her
independence to improve her life. For example, she would rather work for the wretched Wick Cutter than follow
Mr. Hartling’s order to stop going to the dances.
Ántonia is based on an actual figure from Cather’s childhood—a girl named Annie Pavelka, like Ántonia an
immigrant and a hired girl in town whose father committed suicide. Cather admired Annie’s inner radiance and
her independence, and sought to capture those qualities in Ántonia. In the process, she created a character from
whom the heart of her novel developed: Ántonia symbolizes the past, possesses a deep rapport with her
landscape, and embodies the experiences of both immigrants and the Nebraska pioneers.
Lena Lingard

While Jim and Ántonia are by far the most important figures in My Ántonia, one should not overlook Lena’s
importance to Jim’s youth (the third book of the novel bears her name as the title, indicating the extent of her
impact on his life). Cather conjures Lena to contrast sharply with Ántonia: while Ántonia possesses an
independence that gives her quiet inner strength, Lena craves excitement and autonomy, refusing to marry any of
the men who fall in love with her beauty and charisma. Her choice to live in San Francisco is nearly as extreme
for someone from Black Hawk as Jim’s decision to move to New York.
It is no coincidence that Lena becomes important to Jim’s life at the moment he begins to transition out of
childhood and into adulthood. Just as Ántonia comes to embody Jim’s memories of childhood innocence and
purity, Lena, with her desire for sophistication and her precocious sexuality, comes to represent Jim’s emergence
as a young adult. Tellingly, Jim fantasizes sexually about Lena in a way that he cannot about Ántonia. Even as a
young man in Black Hawk, Jim already associates Ántonia with a lost past and invests her with an aura of
emotional purity that precludes sex. Lena continues to become more important to Jim as he attends college, when
they are both in Lincoln together. Though Jim never grants Lena an exalted place in his memory as he does to
Ántonia, she is still a pivotal figure in his growth from childhood to adulthood, and, given the importance he
gives her in his story, she may continue to figure more largely in Jim’s dream of the past than even Jim -himself
realizes.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Humankind’s Relationship to the Past
The central narrative of My Ántonia is a look into the past, and though in his narration Jim rarely says anything
directly about the idea of the past, the overall tone of the novel is highly nostalgic. Jim’s motive for writing his
story is to try to reestablish some connection between his present as a high-powered New York lawyer and his
vanished past on the Nebraska prairie; in re-creating that past, the novel represents both Jim’s memories and his
feelings about his memories. Additionally, within the narrative itself, characters often look back longingly
toward a past that they have lost, especially after Book I. Living in Black Hawk, Jim and Ántonia recall their
days on the farms; Lena looks back toward her life with her family; the Shimerdas and the Russians reflect on
their lives in their respective home countries before they immigrated to the United States.
The two principal qualities that the past seems to possess for most of the characters in the novel
are that it is unrecoverable and that it is, in some way, preferable to the present. Ántonia misses life in Bohemia
just as Jim misses life in Nebraska, but neither of them can ever go back. This impossibility of return accounts
for the -nostalgic, emotional tone of the story, which may have been autobiographical as well, informed by
Cather’s own longing for her Nebraska childhood. But if the past can never be recovered, it can never be
escaped, either, and Jim is fated to go on thinking about Black Hawk long after he has left it.
The other important characteristic of the past in My Ántonia is that it is always personal: characters never look
back toward bygone eras or large-scale historical conditions, but only toward the personal circumstances—
places, people, things—that they remember from their own lives. As a result, a character’s emotions are destined
to color his or her memories for the rest of his or her life, a fact that is made thematically explicit in the novel by
Jim’s decision to call his memoir “My Ántonia” rather than simply “Ántonia." In thus laying claim to Ántonia,
Jim acknowledges that what he is really writing is simply a chronicle of his own thoughts and feelings.
The novel ends on an optimistic note, however, with Jim’s return to Nebraska twenty years after he last saw
Ántonia and his mature decision to visit more often and to keep Ántonia in his life. This decision implies that, by
revisiting his past, Jim has learned to incorporate it into his present, to seek a real relationship with Ántonia
rather than transform her into a symbol of the past in his own mind. The past, the novel seems to suggest, is
unrecoverable, but the people who shared one’s past can be recovered, even after a separation of many years.
Humankind’s Relationship to Its Environment
Related to the novel’s nostalgic feeling for the past is its in-depth exploration of humankind’s relationship to its
environment. What characters in My Ántonia miss about the past is not simply lost time but a lost setting, a
vanished world of people, places, and things, especially natural surroundings. The characters in My Ántonia
respond powerfully to their environments—especially Jim, who develops a strong attachment to the Nebraska
landscape that never really leaves him, even after two decades in New York.
As Cather portrays it, one’s environment comes to symbolize one’s psychology, and may even shape one’s
emotional state by giving thoughts and feelings a physical form. The river, for example, makes Jim feel free, and
he comes to prize freedom; the setting sun captures his introspective loneliness, and the wide-open melancholy
of Nebraska’s plains may play a role in forming his reflective, romantic personality—if it does not create Jim’s
personality, it at least comes to embody it physically. Thus, characters in My Ántonia often develop an extremely
intense rapport with their surroundings, and it is the sense of loss engendered by moving beyond one’s
surroundings that occasions the novel’s exploration of the meaning of the past.
The Immigrant Experience in the United States

On a more concrete level, My Ántonia explores the lives of immigrants on the United States frontier in the
second half of the nineteenth century. The Nebraska prairie of the novel is an ethnic hodgepodge combining
American-born settlers with a wide range of European immigrants, especially eastern and northern Europeans
such as the Bohemian Shimerdas, the Russians Peter and Pavel, and the Norwegian Lena. The novel creates a
sympathetic portrait of the many hardships that immigrants faced, including intense homesickness (a form of
longing for the past), inability to speak English, and a bewildering array of cultural and religious differences that
the novel’s immigrants must overcome if they wish to fit in with the often quite judgmental American settlers
who make up the economic and cultural mainstream in Black Hawk. Because of the rigid (and, in Jim’s eyes,
preposterous) social hierarchy of Black Hawk, simply getting by can be very difficult for the immigrants, who
lack the same opportunities as the Americans—Jim goes to school, for instance, while Ántonia must help her
family eke out an existence after her father’s suicide.
Still, though Cather’s portrait of the immigrant experience is sympathetic, it never quite rises to the level of
advocacy: Jim is describing a vanished past, not agitating for social change, and he himself shares many of the
cultural assumptions of the American-born settlers. Thus, My Ántonia has little in common with more socially
inflammatory works about the hardships faced by immigrants such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which was
written to bring about social change. My Ántonia is a much more personal story and is more concerned with re-
creating an emotional reality than with awakening the nation to a moral outrage.
The Traditional Nature of Frontier Values
My Ántonia evokes the living conditions and mindset of the nineteenth century, as well as the simple,
hardworking, homespun ethic of that era’s settlers, an ethic Cather approves of strongly even if she does not
always approve of its application, for instance, the -prejudicial treatment of the hired girls in town. The novel
also explores the social assumptions of the frontier people on matters such as race (in the passage about Samson
d’Arnault) and gender (in the passages about the hired girls, and in Jim’s general desire to spend time with girls
rather than with boys). These rigid traditional social assumptions require that Jim learn to fight and swear so that
he will seem more like a boy. Nevertheless, despite their shortcomings, the settlers share values of family,
community, and religion that make Black Hawk a close-knit and positive community, not unworthy of the
nostalgia in which it is bathed throughout the novel.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s
major themes.
Childhood and Adulthood
As the generation to which the main characters (Ántonia, Jim, and Lena) belong grows from young children into
adults, the novel indirectly evokes many of the characteristics and feelings of children as they make the
transition into adulthood. As a result, the vanished past for which many of the characters long is often associated
with an innocent, childlike state that contrasts with the more worldly, grown-up present. But the motif of
childhood and adulthood is propagated in the novel mostly by the feelings of the characters as they gradually
begin to experience independence, responsibility, and sexuality, leading to a natural contrast between the before
and after states of their lives. Once Jim begins to fantasize sexually about Lena, his earlier years become less
relevant; once Ántonia begins to live for the town dances, she is never again the same simple farm girl. In
marking these sorts of divisions, the novel charts the growth of its principal characters, who eventually gain the
maturity to understand the relationship between their past and their present.
Religion
Of all the cultural differences between the European immigrants and the American settlers (and there are many,
often complicated differences, as we see when Jim’s grandmother attempts to give the Shimerdas a gift of food),
the one that recurs most interestingly is the difference in religion. Most of the Europeans are Catholic, as the
Shimerdas are, and most of the Americans are Protestant, as the Burdens are. In addition to this dichotomy, there
are smaller cultural differences, such as language and attitude, which the novel explores from time to time. The
motif of religion is most visible during the novel’s depictions of Christmas and the circumstances surrounding
Mr. Shimerda’s suicide.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Nebraska Landscape
The most important and universal symbol in My Ántonia is the Nebraska landscape. Cather’s poetic and moving
depiction of it is perhaps the most famous and highly praised aspect of the novel. The landscape symbolizes the
larger idea of a human environment, a setting in which a person lives and moves. Jim’s relationship with the
Nebraska landscape is important on its own terms, but it also comes to symbolize a great deal about Jim’s
relationship with the people and culture of Nebraska, as well as with his inner self. Throughout the novel, the
landscape mirrors Jim’s feelings—it looks desolate when he is lonely, for instance—and also awakens feelings
within him. Finally, the landscape becomes the novel’s most tangible symbol of the vanished past, as Jim, the
lawyer in distant New York, thinks back longingly on the landscape of his childhood.
The Plow
The plow, which Jim and Ántonia see silhouetted against the enormous setting sun, symbolizes the connection
between human culture and the natural landscape. As the sun sets behind the plow, the two elements are
combined in a single image of perfect harmony, suggesting that man and nature also coexist harmoniously. But
as the sun sinks lower on the horizon, the plow seems to grow smaller and smaller, ultimately reflecting the
dominance of the landscape over those who inhabit it.

Key Facts
FULL TITLE · My Ántonia
AUTHOR · Willa Cather
TYPE OF WORK · Novel
GENRE · Frontier fiction, autobiographical fiction
LANGUAGE · English
TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · 1917, New Hampshire
DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · 1918
NARRATOR · The main part of the story is Jim Burden’s memoir narrated in his first-person voice, from the
perspective of an older man looking back on his childhood. The introduction to the novel is narrated by an
unnamed individual, one of Jim’s childhood acquaintances. Like Jim, this narrator uses a friendly, first-person
voice.
POINT OF VIEW · Except for the introduction, written from the perspective of the unnamed narrator, the entire
novel is written from Jim’s perspective.
TONE · Jim’s attitude toward his story is somewhat sad, extremely nostalgic, and full of yearning for a lost past.
Throughout Book V, as he narrates the story of his reunion with Ántonia, he becomes much more optimistic and
less elegiac in mood.
TENSE · Past
SETTING (TIME) · 1880s–1910s
SETTING (PLACE) · In and around Black Hawk, Nebraska; also Lincoln, Nebraska
PROTAGONIST · Jim Burden
MAJOR CONFLICT · Jim has an extremely close, loving relationship with his childhood friend Ántonia, but their
friendship is tested by the different paths their lives take them down, as Jim acquires an education while Ántonia
is forced to work to help support her family. As a secondary conflict, Jim, a middle-aged lawyer, looks back
longingly toward his childhood with Ántonia but feels he has lost it forever; his feelings of nostalgia impede him
from reestablishing contact with the real Ántonia, now the matriarch of a large family in Nebraska. On a more
concrete level, Ántonia must struggle against various hardships, such as the death of her father and her fiancé’s
betrayal of her.
RISING ACTION · Many modernist authors broke from dramatic or narrative conventions; My Ántonia does so by
avoiding a conventional plot shape with rising action, climax, and falling action. Still, as Ántonia’s life becomes
fraught with increasing hardship, we might say that her father’s suicide, the betrayal of her fiancé, and the birth
of her child act as rising action. In Jim’s life, his move to Black Hawk, his time with Lena, and the dances all
serve as rising action in his transition from childhood to adulthood.
CLIMAX · The structure of My Ántonia does not yield one singular moment of dramatic intensity in which the
conflict is resolved. The novel becomes calmer and less conflicted as the final books progress, -leading to a
warmly optimistic conclusion that is not the result of any definitive struggle. The closest thing the novel has to a
climactic moment is Jim’s reunion with Ántonia, twenty years after their last meeting.
FALLING ACTION · If Jim’s reunion with Ántonia is taken as the climax, then the falling action is his time at the
Cuzak farm as he grows to know and admire Ántonia’s husband and children, and resolves to spend more time
with them.
THEMES · Humankind’s relationship to the past; humankind’s relationship to environment; the immigrant
experience in America; the traditional nature of late nineteenth-century American frontier values
MOTIFS · Religion, childhood, and adulthood
SYMBOLS · The Nebraska landscape, the plow
FORESHADOWING · The information divulged in the Introduction contains the blueprint for everything to come in
the novel; in a sense, the whole novel is foreshadowed. Also, Ántonia’s statement to Jim that things will be easy
for him but hard for her foreshadows his eventual departure for college and a high-powered job and her difficult
life on the prairie.

Study Questions & Essay Topics

Study Questions
1. Who is the protagonist of My Ántonia, Ántonia or Jim?
Answer for Study Question #1
While many have argued that Ántonia is the protagonist of the novel, she always remains at arm’s length from
the reader, accessible only through Jim’s imagination and memory of her. When Jim scribbles a title onto his
manuscript, he initially writes “Ántonia,” but then revises it to “My Ántonia.” Thus, the Ántonia we see is Jim’s
Ántonia, and while she is a driving force behind Jim’s recollection, Jim’s mind and feelings are still at the center
of the narrative, and his actions still determine the shape of the novel. When Jim moves first to Lincoln and then
to Cambridge and New York, Ántonia recedes as an important character, even if she dominates Jim’s thoughts
when he is around her. My Ántonia is most properly considered a novel of Jim’s education.
2. What is the nature of Jim’s affection for Ántonia? Does Ántonia reciprocate these feelings, or
is the quality of her affection somehow different? Is it fair to call their relationship a love relationship?
Answer for Study Question #2
Jim has a romanticized affection for Ántonia but not quite a romantic affection. He is unable to imagine her in
the same light as Lena Lingard, for whom he feels a coarser but perhaps more practical passion. Still, the
idealized love that Jim feels for Ántonia eclipses the strength of Ántonia’s feeling for him. Because she is
somewhat older, and because her plight as an immigrant’s daughter creates many hardships, she has less time
and energy to devote to romantic imaginations of Jim: while Jim is thinking about his feelings for Ántonia,
Ántonia is busy trying to help her family survive after the death of her father.
Additionally, as young man born and raised in America, Jim belongs to the dominant culture and is perhaps
more easily able to disregard Ántonia’s cultural differences than Ántonia herself is. Having immigrated to
America as a teenager, Ántonia is naturally more aware of her own differences from Jim, simply because to her
the environment in which she lives never seems quite like her native environment; as a result, she is slightly
more insular about her affections than Jim, with the result that her feelings become somewhat inscrutable as the
novel progresses. This side of Ántonia seems most strongly demonstrated by her eventual decision to marry
Cuzak, a Bohemian immigrant like herself. Nevertheless, she is clearly of a romantic persuasion, and the love
she holds for Jim is akin to what an older sister might feel for a younger brother. Thus, the love that comes to
develop between Ántonia and Jim falls somewhere in between familial and romantic affection.

3. Where does Jim fall within the social structure of Black Hawk that he outlines?
Answer for Study Question #3
Jim describes a social structure in Black Hawk that divides the respectable establishment from the generally less-
respected immigrants. While Jim is by default a member of the respectable establishment, his relatively recent
arrival in Black Hawk and his vociferous rejection of established values serve to place him outside of its bounds.
Jim’s class and upbringing ensure that he will never be an outcast on the level of the immigrant girls, but his
affection for them and his affiliation with them puts him in a unique and ambiguous position within the Black
Hawk social hierarchy.
4. Why does Jim choose to live in New York City if he truly feels most at home in Nebraska?
Answer for Study Question #4
Jim paints a very sentimental and idealized picture of Nebraska, but this picture is a memory of a time that has
long since passed. While Jim could potentially return to Black Hawk to practice law, his high-powered New
York City job is a logical extension of his high--powered education. When he returns to Nebraska to visit
Ántonia, he is greatly moved by the beauty and simplicity of her rural life, but he finds Black Hawk nearly
intolerable and is at a loss for things to do there. Jim’s proper sphere as an adult is certainly not Nebraska,
although his fond memories of childhood will always remain there, and his resolution to make more periodic
returns to his childhood home is certainly a positive move on his part. The peculiarities of Jim’s life are such
that, just as he does not quite fit into the rigid social hierarchy of Black Hawk as a young man, he does not quite
fit into any geographical environment as an adult. He seems to be fated to live in one place while always
thinking fondly of another.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. What is the role of the landscape in the novel? How does the novel thematize the relationship between man
and environment?
2. What is Ántonia’s relationship to her native Bohemia? Does she have stronger feelings for Bohemia or for
Nebraska? What does Ántonia’s predicament say about the lives of immigrants during the time of the novel?
3. How does the structure of the novel serve to emphasize some of its overriding themes?
4. Can Jim’s view of Ántonia be considered reductive or patronizing in any way? Consider that Cather is a
woman writing from the perspective of a man writing about a woman.

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1987/2/87.02.01.x.html

Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute Home

Willa Cather’s My Antonia: “The Happiness and the Curse”

by
Carol Leavitt Altieri
Contents of Curriculum Unit 87.02.01:

• Narrative
• Notes
• Annotated Bibliography
• Classroom Materials
• Student Reading List

To Guide Entry
This curriculum unit will be used as a segment of the American literature course for honors, college, and basic
junior students. Also, it could be integrated with an American history course and correlated with the themes of
immigration and westward expansion. In addition, it could be used appropriately for English four students if they
have not read the novel in their junior year. It should take at least two weeks to cover adequately and experience
deeply. It should be highly effective if taught with other novels or classics such as: Their Eyes Were Watching
God, O Pioneers!, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, Spoon River Anthology, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, An American
Tragedy, Ethan Frome, and Our Town as a comparative group of American fiction.

A visit to the Yale Art Gallery to view early Twentieth Century paintings and sculpture would make this unit
even more stimulating and pleasurable. Films for the Humanities has produced a film called Willa Cather’s
America which would serve as an ideal springboard for this unit. The film shows Cather’s places and characters
—the American land, her choice of characters and her countries—the red grass prairie of My Antonia, the New
Mexico canyons of Death Comes to the Archbishop, and the many places of New York.

My Antonia is an ideal book to introduce to high school students because it deals with the great variety of people
from other countries who were confronted simultaneously with the creation of new lives and a new country.
Willa Cather focused on depicting ethnic values of the different cultures of the various immigrants who came to
Nebraska. She wrote that Slavonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Bohemian and Latin “spread across our bronze
prairies like the daubs of color on a painter’s palette.”1 Undoubtedly, students will want to know why people like
the Shimerdas, the Lindgards, Krajiek, Otto, Anton Jelinek, Anton Cuzak, Peter, and Pavel emigrated to
America. Moreover, they will be amazed at the hardships, the plight, and the conditions of life on the rural
Nebraska prairie land of late nineteenth century America. Since Cather peopled her fiction with individuals and
immigrant groups who had not been written about before, students will find her characters individualized,
intriguing and true-to-life. These resourceful and brave people trekked into the unknown land of the Midwest
and Nebraska, brought their families, and sometimes hired hands with them. About My Antonia H.L. Mencken
wrote, “I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the western prairies more real . . . and I know of none
that makes them seem better worth knowing . . . ”2

Willa Cather said in her later years about Nebraska: “that country was the happiness and the curse” of her life.3
She greatly admired the pioneers who struggled to cope with the wilderness and to make a better life for
themselves and their families. She loved the trees and the wildflowers, especially the sunflowers along the roads
which she wrote always “seemed the roads to freedom.” Moreover, she believed that the tree’s lives were
connected with pioneers and that no place in the world grew more beautiful flowers than Nebraska.4 Cather knew
and wrote passionately not only of the resourcefulness, determination, and bravery of the first group of pioneers
who tried to survive on their hope in the American dream, but also of the harshness, coldness and brutality of
pioneer life in the prairie. Indeed, My Antonia resonates with Homeric and epic themes.

Most students will admire Cather’s protagonists (especially Antonia) who possess the imagination and ideas to
seek a more hopeful destiny in an unfamiliar territory through coping with hardships and stoically overcoming
many of them. The heart of the novel, however, lies in Antonia’s harmony and creativity with her environment
and her contribution to the creation of new lives and a new country. “More than any other person we
remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.”
Jim remarks. (p. 2) I will discuss with students why Antonia has such a strong effect on the characters around
her. As a catalyst for further discussion, I will ask the following questions. In what ways did Antonia symbolize
the Nebraska land? How was she like Nebraska during the later part of the nineteenth century? Would she have
made the same impression on family, friends, and neighbors if she had lived in another place? What character
quality does Antonia portray during her life? Does her character change? Was her life a success?
The author’s exploration of the relationship between him and Antonia is an uncommon one. I want the class to
consider and express their own ideas on personal relationships. What is Jim’s attitude toward Antonia and how
does she feel about him? Does Jim seem romantic about Antonia and the other country girls? Even though most
of the characters project individuality, they are partially revealed through their relationships with Antonia. For
example, Ambrosch’s and his mother’s relationship with Antonia reveal much about them, as do the other
characters, such as Mrs. Harling, Larry Donovan, Anton Cuzak, Lena Lingard, and Tiny Soderball. Furthermore,
Lena Lingard, the blond Norwegian, who becomes a successful dressmaker is a foil to Antonia. Lena is creative,
successful and generous too, yet she does not desire to marry and raise children as Antonia does, since she wants
her freedom and a successful, self-sufficient life. Therefore, she does not measure up to the heroism represented
by Antonia.

As the reader experiences life on the prairie land, one realizes that the land is a richly complex symbol
representing great hardships and great rewards. It serves as a natural and vital force that begins and sustains all
living things in rich abundance—if one works hard enough cultivating it. Yet, the land is also a source of back-
breaking labor, sacrifice, and deprivation during bad years. The pioneers felt challenged by the prairie land
because of the packed grass and sod that covered it. In order to plant corn, wheat, sorghum, winter fodder, and
other crops, they had to break up the sod with axes and hand plows. After the land was planted with crops,
plagues of grasshoppers and locusts could destroy them and cause severe privation. Drought, prairie fires, and
frost could also attack their hard-won planted fields.

The settlers had to depend mainly upon themselves, and to a lesser extent, their neighbors for farming
equipment, for building houses, and for provisions.5 Most of them had to build their houses out of the prairie sod
as there were very few trees. Or, they could dig into a ravine and make a “cave-like” dugout with a “shed-like
shelter, with a door and window set into a front wall of sod and a roof of sod supported by handhewn poplar
logs.” These sod shelters were very cramped, dark, wet, and uncomfortable, but eventually families hoped to
build a frame house after about five years. (p. vii) The land in My Antonia is a powerful protagonist in the
conflict to survive and prosper. The sense of space of the plains, land, and prairie gives an impression of
greatness, “an epic scope” which Cather wouldn’t have achieved if she had used another or smaller background.
A pioneer herself, Cather in an interview many years after she had moved from Virginia to Nebraska recalled:

My grandfather’s homestead was about eighteen miles from Red Cloud—a little town on the Burlington . . . We
drove out from Red Cloud to my grandfather’s homestead one day in April. I was sitting on the hay in the
bottom of a Studebaker wagon, holding onto the side of the wagon box to steady myself—the roads were mostly
faint trails over the bunch grass in those days . . . As we drove further and further out into the country, I felt a
good deal as if we had come to the end of everything—it was a kind of erasure of personality. I would not know
how much a child’s life is bound up in the woods and hills and meadows around it, if I had not been thrown out
into a country as bare as a piece of sheet iron.6
Bernice Slote tells us that Cather experienced pioneer life in all its duality “both the dark and the bright of the
moon, and she wrote of both sides.”7 In the early years of settling in Nebraska there were many warm, exciting
and memorable experiences too. Since the pioneers lived close together at first, they could give support and
assistance to one another and become their brother’s keeper. The family of the native-born Jim Burden often
brought bundles of clothing, wood, and other provisions to the poor Bohemian Shimerda family. Anton Jelinek,
a young Bohemian often rode on his horse to help others with their troubles. He, too, is very responsible and
helpful in arranging the funeral after Mr. Shimerda’s suicide when the Norwegians didn’t want to have his body
buried in their cemetery. Some of the pioneers, but not all, conquered the land, made it flourish, and helped
others to gather their crops, thresh their grain and to build their houses.

The land gave opportunities for personal development and artistic inspiration also. Jim Burden remarks about his
early Nebraskan life: “I was entirely happy . . . that is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and
great. (p. 15) “All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first glorious autumn.” (p. 21)
“Antonia . . . lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true . . .
She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you
feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting . . . She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of
early races.” (p. 229)

The suffering of change, family members growing older and dying, the disasters and uncertainties of the
pioneers, the grave at the crossroads of Antonia’s sensitive father who killed himself, the poverty, trouble,
anxiety about everyday living, the burdensome, back-breaking labor of the immigrants’ lives, and the sense of
irreparable loss in time are one aspect of the duality of My Antonia. The other is the timelessness and creativity
of those images associated with Antonia, the stoical strength of the hired men and the vivacity of spirit of the
hired girls. The earth, like the plow image on the sun, expresses the ultimate relationship and continuity between
humans and the universe. Cather once remarked that the city robbed man of his roots, heritage and continuity of
feeling with the earth and mankind. The land of the Nebraskan country symbolized permanence, freedom of
spirit, timelessness, and a sense of endurance. She viewed earth and nature as the personal, primeval force that
enriched and sustained life and creativity. The pioneers passed on their old customs, culture and ways of life that
enriched the land and the new way of life. The frontier gave the immigrants and pioneers creative individualism,
a free will and an opportunity to develop the pioneer spirit. It would be interesting to make students recognize
the contributions to the American character of people like the Shimerdas and the Lingards. Students will be
stimulated to do research on various national groups in America to find out what they have added to America’s
development. Knowledge about the contributions of the various national and ethnic groups could include
traditions, food, customs, names of places, and the character of the people.

After the War between the States, The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed by Congress. This gave to any
American citizen over twenty-one the title of 160 acres of land, if he lived on the land for five years and
improved it, starting on January 1, 1863. Many homesteaders, as they were called, from various countries of
Europe were lured to stake out their territory in the wild land.8 Sponsors believed that the law would help the
owners improve the land and build small farms on it. Many of the pioneers who tried to build homesteads faced
many difficulties, disappointments, and tragedies. Farming conditions were unfavorable because of drought
periods when rainfall was meager and scarce. There was an economic depression and Nebraska was once
considered the “Great American Desert.” One of the themes of My Antonia is the heroic idealism of the settlers.
Nebraska was the first state and settlement beyond the Mississippi after the Civil War.9 James Schroeter has
written: “Within a single decade, half a million people—Yankee settlers, sod-house pioneers out of the Lincoln
Country, Danes, Norwegians, Bohemians, Poles—pulled up stakes or emigrated from the farms of northern and
eastern Europe to settle on the plains of a region [Nebraska].”10

There are scenes in My Antonia that include the difficulty and failure of life as a pioneer. One of Cather’s early
stories in the Hesperia is the one called “Peter,” the tragedy of the lonely, sensitive Frances Sadilek who
becomes disheartened and disillusioned with Nebraska and takes his own life.11 This true event made such an
indelible impression on Cather when she first came to Nebraska that she changed his name to Mr. Shimerda, the
Bohemian, and included the episode in My Antonia. Here Mr. Shimerda breaks his precious fiddle angrily across
his knees and then shoots himself with his gun. His son, Ambrosch, carries the bow to town to sell before his
father’s funeral.

Willa Cather immortalized the settings of Webster County, Lincoln, and Red Cloud, Nebraska. Thus it is much
more than a place on the map. It has an existence of its own. She vividly conveys the indelible impression that
the land possesses—strength, force, American folklore, and symbolic meaning.

Symbols, sense, imagery, color, and figures of speech are particularly rich and poetic in My Antonia. The New
Postwar Critics in the 1950’s stimulated many readers to re-read Cather’s novels. They discovered that they were
full of myth and symbol.12 Therefore, this novel will be a valuable one to help inexperienced readers develop the
sophistication to understand symbolism, myth, and figurative language. Cather was a high school teacher herself
who possessed the ability to take inexperienced readers and bring them to a sophisticated level of understanding
as well as awaken their curiosity and enthusiasm. Her masterful style teaches students to see differently and
challenges them to read perceptively and deeply. She believed that “Every great work of art should teach, but
never preach.”13

There is the memorable, artistic scene where Jim Burden and some hired girls from the town of Black Hawk
spending an afternoon by the river, spot a curious black figure of a plow that has been left standing in the field
against the setting sun: “There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.” (p. 159) Many vivid,
memorable symbols such as this one give power to Cather’s artistic achievement. The plow against the sun “is a
romanticizing and mythologizing of the American West.”14 Nature symbolized by the plow combine in the
harmonious blending of the work of the earth with heaven. Furthermore, the plow image exemplifies humans
recognizing their role as providers of food. Magnified by the sun, it also suggests “heroic physical proportions.”
It is the symbol of creativity in the development of a new country. A symbol of the machine and the force that
will change the landscape, it suggests advancement and progress. Finally, the plow could be seen as an artistic
object suggesting Cather’s desire to transcend time and change. Jim Burden describes the plow as “picture
writing on the sun.” (p. 159) This powerfully vivid scene, which ends Jim’s boyhood stage, exemplifies Cather’s
artistic style in this novel.
Another symbol that fits together very effectively in My Antonia is the detestable, fat rattlesnake that horrifies
Jim and Antonia, and that Jim kills, thus making him greatly admired in the eyes of Antonia. (p. 32) Krajiek the
dishonest, greedy money lender who fleeced the Shimerdas and cheated the two Russians, Pavel and Peter, and
nearly seduced Antonia, is similar to the rattlesnake attacking the prairie dog. Humanity and nature both breed
such creatures. “They hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being . . . from who
they could get information . . . They kept him in their hole and fed him for the same reason that the brown owls
house the rattlesnakes—because they did not know how to get rid of him.” (p. 23)

In another scene, the narrator Jim gives a vivid description of the landscape: “The whole prairie was like the
bush that burned with fire and was not consumed . . . It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting up of a day.” (p.
28) The symbolic illusion is to the Lord appearing to Moses. “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning yet it was not consumed.”
(Exodus 3:2, New Oxford Bible)

Then, Cather uses history and legend in the story Jim tells the girls about Coronado and his search for the Seven
Golden Cities. (p. 158) Coronado, the Spanish explorer wandered through the Southwest and perhaps to
Nebraska. This connects the Nebraska landscape with all the ancient quests, as well as the history of Spanish
penetration of North America.15 Also, Coronado suggests the adventurous spirit, romance and the kind of dreams
young people have. A metal stirrup and sword were found by a farmer turning the sod of the prairie. Coronado
died of a broken heart in his futile quest for gold. The death of Antonia’s father echoes the Coronado symbol in
that his death occurred in the wilderness of America that refused to yield its treasure.16 Antonia’s father and the
two Russians could not grapple with the challenge of America, thus they became victims and were defeated by
the hardships of the immigrant’s life.

The use of symbols is especially evident toward the end of the novel when after twenty years Jim Burden
marshals his courage to return to Black Hawk to visit his old childhood friend, Antonia, who has married Anton
Cuzak. She greets him with all the old enthusiasm and affection after laboring on the farm for many years and
raising her large brood of eleven children. She appears “in the full vigour of her personality battered but not
diminished.” (p. 216) When taken to visit the fruit cave, Jim describes the children as “a veritable explosion of
life out of the dark cave into the sunlight.” (p. 220) Antonia’s dark and fair children burst forth with the intensity
of life suggesting Antonia’s fulfillment and enrichment after her dark beginnings in the cave of her early
immigrant life. In addition, touching the trees in the orchard, she says that she loves her trees “as if they were
people.” (p. 221) One could say about her creative and adventurous life (by using Faulkner’s words) that she and
her family will prosper because she possesses “a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance” and
it is through her spirit of determination, sacrifice and hard work that the trees, garden and her family come to
ripeness and fruition. Jim says of Antonia: “all the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been
so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich
mine of life, like the founders of early races.” (p. 229) Antonia stands for the undefeated strength, power, and
spirit of the pioneers. She not only displays a great physical strength, but also an inner spiritual one. Antonia
may have given up something for her marriage but from another point of view, she has gained much—a loving
husband, eleven children and the pride of accomplishment. I believe that my students will feel and think that way
about My Antonia. Cather’s novel not only offers opportunities for students to think about the immigrant’s
condition and experience in the western frontier of America in the late 1900’s, but also to reflect on and
appreciate her craftsmanship. To tell her story of the Nebraska frontier, she has created many memorable and
complex characters who possess hidden recesses of personality and take us by surprise. Moreover, her characters
take on vivid colors, live and breathe as they did in reality.

My Antonia is an ideal book for introducing readers to the various elements of character, theme, setting and style.
Antonia’s story is told with vividness of description and rhythm of phrase. Cather searches for the exact word,
thus every word is important and carries its own weight.

Thematically My Antonia lends itself to many stimulating topics for discussion such as: the American dream, the
sense of place, the reverence for nature and art, the idealization of a past way of life, women’s relations with
men, the deceptive nature of material wealth, the individual in a hostile environment and what is the something
valuable and eternal that is in each human being?

One could launch My Antonia by a discussion about the following: Do you have a pioneering story that has been
told by any of your grandparents? Often we hear of the better life of today’s women compared with the arduous
life of pioneer women. “Are there complexities in modern society that create problems pioneer women never
encountered?” Do you know of any person today who can be said to be a pioneer?17

Objectives
1. To enrich students’ vocabularies from the words used in My Antonia.
2. To encourage students to analyze and interpret the main and minor characters.
3. To improve writing skills by providing a variety of writing assignments related to My Antonia.
4. To develop the literary ability to recognize and understand theme, figurative language, and symbols.
5. To help students not only to analyze the novel, but also to experience it deeply and to relate it to their own
lives.
6. To urge students to become actively involved in analyzing and discussing the stories.
7. To introduce students to the central themes of Cather’s novels.
8. To introduce students to biographical information about the author and period in which My Antonia takes
place.
9. To supplement the novel with additional reading, composition, oral, and artistic activities.

Reading Guide for My Antonia

These questions will help to focus students’ attention on the important themes, meanings, characterizations and
artistry of the novel, as well as help them to achieve understanding and appreciation. They will serve as a guide
for students of all levels of ability and can be used for occasional quizzes. The questions should be reviewed
with the class before the students start their reading.

Directions Some of the following questions require literal answers while others require creative, inferential,
or critical thinking. Write complete answers in your notebook or journal as you proceed with your reading.

Introduction and Book One, Chapters 1 and 2:

1. From what point of view is My Antonia told?

2. Why does the author use this point of view? Is it effective?
3. Jim traveled on a train from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska around 1880. What are some of the feelings he
might have had?
4. What kind of a person is Jim Burden? is he a three-dimensional character? What do you learn about him in the
introduction? Does he now have a fulfilling life?
5. Explain Jim’s concept of happiness (p. 15): “to be dissolved into something complete and great:”
6. “It was a kind of freemasonry,” Jim said about growing up in “a little prairie town.” (p.1) What does he mean?

Chapters 3—9:

1. What were some of the many challenging difficulties, miseries, and hardships that the pioneers had to face?
2. Did all the various ethnic individuals and pioneer groups help each other when they first arrived in Black
Hawk? Explain.
3. What were some of the prejudices which the pioneers had?
4. Antonia is generous—spirited, eager to learn, affectionate, highspirited and tough. What elements shaped her
personality and character? Does she grow, change and develop throughout the novel?
5. Is there a contrast between the way Willa Cather characterizes the native-born Nebraska settlers versus the
European pioneers?
6. Would you predict that the Shimerdas will survive and prosper in America?
7. What are the various members of the Shimerda family like?
8. What advantages or disadvantages did Jim have in living among people of different ethnic, religious, and
cultural backgrounds.
9. What impression do you receive from the snake-killing scene?

Chapters 10—16:

1. How did the Shimerdas react during the extreme first Nebraska winter?
2. What kind of style best describes the novel? Give specific examples of Cather’s rhetoric, vocabulary and
figures of speech.
3. Show how Cather uses complex and contrasting emotions such as grandness and meanness or sadness and
happiness in certain scenes in these chapters.
4. How did Mrs. Shimerda react to her difficult situation in her struggle against hardships?
5. Why did Mr. Shimerda commit suicide? Why did this make such a significant impression on Jim?

Chapters 17—19:

1. What were some of the details and impressions of Spring on the prairie?
2. Explain the statement: “It took a clear meditative eye like my grandfather’s to foresee that they [the
cornfields] would enlarge and multiply until they would be not the Shimerdas’ cornfields, or Mr. Bushy’s, but
the world’s cornfields; that their yield would be one of the great economic facts, . . . which underlie all the
activities of men, in peace or war.”

Book Two, Chapters 1—7:

1. Why has Antonia, whose life is so different from Jim’s, made such a significant impression on him?
2. Why do you think Cather included the story of the tramp at the Iverson’s harvest?
3. Why did Mrs. Harling like Antonia so much?
4. Give an example of individual heroism or nobility from these chapters. Explain why you think the episode is
heroic or noble.

Chapters 8—15:

1. Describe the character of Wick Cutter. Why did he and his wife live together?
2. What were some of the children’s Spring activities?
3. Why didn’t Mr. Harling want Antonia to attend the dances in town?
4. Explain the statement: “The country girls were considered a menace to the social order” and “The respect for
respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk youth.”
5. What were some of the contributions of Lena, Tina, and Antonia to some of the families who hired them?

Book Three:

1. What do you learn about Antonia in these four chapters?

2. What influence did the scholarly Gaston Cleric have on Jim Burden?
3. What role does the Norwegian, Lena Lingard play in My Antonia? How does she contrast with Antonia? Is she
a complex, well-developed character?
4. Why were Jim and Lena so greatly impressed with the play Camille?
5. Why does Jim still hold fast to his memories of the past?

Book Four:

1. What were some of the traits that Lena and Tiny had in common?
2. What role does the Widow Stevens play in the novel?
3. What traits in Antonia led to her betrayal by Donovan?
4. Why do some of the smug citizens of Black Hawk feel that they belong to the upper class?
5. What progress have the farm families made since they first arrived in Nebraska?
6. Explain why Cather called the part of the novel, “The Pioneer Woman’s Story”?

Book Five:

1. Explain why Cather called this last part of the novel “Cuzak’s Boys”?
2. Explain the following remarks that Jim says about Antonia: “All the strong things of her heart came out in her
body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and
straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”
3. In what ways does Antonia seem like the young girl Jim had known? Has she changed much since the days of
their childhood?
4. What kind of relationship do Cuzak and Antonia have? What role does Cuzak play in Antonia’s life.
5. What do you think will happen to Antonia and Cuzak’s sons and daughters?
6. Do you think Jim Burden actually meant what he said in the introduction: “here is the thing about
Antonia? . . . I didn’t take time to arrange it; I simply wrote down pretty much all that her name recalls to me. I
suppose it hasn’t any form.” Do you think the novel has form and unity? If so, how is it achieved?

Character Analysis
By studying the characters, students can learn to understand and appreciate the complexities, depth, and
contradictions of excellent characterizations and of human personality and nature. An author describes a
character in the following ways:
1. Action—what the character does.
2. Appearance—how the character looks.
3. Dialogue—what the character says or thinks and what others speak to him or about him.
4. Physical and emotional atmosphere—where the character lives, period of time, social class, events occurring
around the character.
5. Stream of consciousness—the thoughts, feelings and imaginings that enter a character’s mind.
6. Comments by the author describing the character.
In each passage below from My Antonia decide which of the different ways Willa Cather is depicting the
characters of Antonia, Anton Jelinek, Mrs. Burden, Mr. Harling, Mrs. Harling, Lena Lingard, Anton Cuzak, and
Mr. and Mrs. Shimerda:

2. Discuss the changes of important stages in Antonia’s life from her girlhood to the end of the book.
3. Discuss your interpretation of the relationship between Jim and Antonia, including such things as how they
felt about each other and what they meant to each other.

IV. List (in phrases) at least five important themes which you feel are central to this novel.

Some Suggestions for Writing Assignments

1. After reading My Antonia and learning about the characters, write a portrait of a friend, neighbor, grandparent,
or parent who gave you a deeper understanding, greater awareness, and better appreciation of life.
2. Would you be interested in visiting, joining a moon expedition, or pioneering on the moon? Why or why not?
If you were a pioneer on the moon, what do you imagine would be some of your problems, difficulties, or fears?
3. Write the obituary or eulogy for Mr. Shimerda that would appear in the Nebraska Times shortly after his
death.
________Include facts of Mr. Shimerda’s background, parentage, ancestors, education, accomplishments, and
personal life.
________Include Mr. Shimerda’s values, beliefs, attitudes, and hopes.
________Include opinions, remarks and comments about him as expressed by family members, his wife and
friends.
4. Discuss Antonia’s development as a person of strength, integrity, and creativity. Support your position by
citing related scenes from My Antonia.
5. Do a research paper on one of the following:
____Willa Cather’s life
____The Oregon Trail
____The Mormons
____Coronado and the Seven Golden Cities
____The Wild West, the Klondike and the Alaskan Gold Rush
____Homesteading in Nebraska
____The immigrant experience in America
____Westward Expansion
6. Neil Armstrong in 1969 while on the moon said: “ . . . one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Write an essay relating Armstrong’s statement to the theme of My Antonia.
7. Compare and contrast Lena Lingard with Antonia Shimerda Cuzak, giving evidence from the novel to show
how they are alike and how they differ.
8. Discuss the element of evil as shown in My Antonia. How do the evil characters manipulate the good
characters? How should people deal with evil characters?
9. Choose a character from My Antonia and write an essay on that person’s dreams and hopes for his/her future
and how his/her life is influenced by those dreams.
10. In My Antonia the narrator is Jim Burden, an adult who tells the story of his childhood and of Antonia’s with
the benefit of his adult knowledge. Why do you think Willa Cather chose Jim, the corporation lawyer, to tell the
story? Pay close attention to the brief prologue related by a narrator other than Jim.
Pages: A review of My Antonia by Willa Cather

My Antonia is a great novel, a classic that does not disappoint. Perhaps most of all, it is about what true wealth
is. Reading it, one is reminded often of The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley: there is the same look back toward
childhood and the same richly allusive and resonant symbolism.

Reviewed by Paul Kane

My Antonia
by Willa Cather
Everyman's Library, September 2006

Willa Cather’s novel, like a number of classics - Wuthering Heights and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure are
two that immediately come to mind - is one of those “I in drag” efforts. My Antonia is written in the first person,
but in a different gender to that of the author herself. Cather assumes the voice of a man, Jim Burden, to tell the
life-story of a woman and a country, the American Midwest.

When we first meet Antonia she is a young girl, innocent and unformed, part of a family of Bohemian (for the
purposes of the novel, the word means simply “Czech”) migrants newly arrived in Nebraska. And the land, too,
is innocent and unformed. Here is how Jim describes his first sighting of it, on the night of the journey to his
grandfather’s farm:

If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all,
but the material out of which countries are made. (11-12)

We see the girl and the land change and grow, but the novel is altogether something more than a creation myth
about the making of America; although it is that too, as one of Jim’s later summations of Antonia - “She was a
rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.” (259) – makes clear. There are some telling descriptions of
small-town life, with all its snobbery and small-mindedness. There are accounts of childhood friendships,
adolescent loves and youthful ambition – which is pretty much Jim’s story. (Jim’s sexuality is quite deliberately
ambivalent, I think: he loved Antonia, but had too a passionate friendship with his teacher Gaston Cleric.) And
other smaller stories bejewel the narrative too. Stories about people who have touched Jim, tragic, noble and
ridiculous people like Jake and Otto, two labourers who worked for Jim’s grandfather and then later went West
to seek adventure:

As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them
defenceless. These boys had no practiced manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance.
They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. (66)

(The phrase “unprotected faces” is here quite special and extraordinary, I think.)

My Antonia is a great novel, a classic that does not disappoint. Perhaps most of all, it is about what true wealth
is. Reading it, one is reminded often of The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley: there is the same look back toward
childhood and the same richly allusive and resonant symbolism. Cather’s prose - pluperfect tense and all - has a
direct and sometimes startling poignancy that is certain to be the source of an immense amount of pleasure for
the discerning reader.

http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1562
Willa Cather

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilella Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873[1] – April 24, 1947) is among the most eminent American authors.
She is known for her depictions of U.S. life in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the
Archbishop.

Early life

Willa Cather was born on a small farm in Back Creek Valley (near Winchester, Virginia). Her father was
Charles Fectigue Cather (d. 1928), whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Her mother
was born Mary Virginia Boak (d. 1931), and she had six younger children: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James,
John, and Elsie.[2] In 1883, Cather moved with her family to Catherton in Webster County, Nebraska. The
following year the family relocated to Red Cloud, the county seat. There, she spent the rest of her childhood in
the same town that has been made famous by her writing. She insisted on attending college[citation needed], so her
family borrowed money so she could enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there, she became a
regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal.

She then moved to Pittsburgh, where she taught high school English and worked for Home Monthly, and
eventually got a job offer from McClure's Magazine in New York City. The latter publication serialized her first
novel, Alexander's Bridge, which was heavily influenced by Henry James.

Cather was born into the Baptist faith but converted to Episcopalianism in 1922, having begun to attend Sunday
services in the church as early as 1906.[3]

[edit] Writing career

Cather moved to New York City in 1906 in order to join the editorial staff of McClure's and later became the
managing editor (1908). As a muckraking journalist, she coauthored a powerful and highly critical biography of
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. It was serialized in McClure's in 1907-8 and published as a
book the next year. Christian Scientists were outraged and tried to buy every copy; it was reprinted by the
University of Nebraska Press in 1993.

She met author Sarah Orne Jewett, who advised Cather to rely less on the influence of James and more on her
native Nebraska. For her novels she returned to the prairie for inspiration, and these works became popular and
critical successes. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours (1922).

She was celebrated by critics like H.L. Mencken for writing about ordinary people in plainspoken language.
When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Sinclair Lewis said Cather should have won it instead. However,
later critics tended to favor more experimental authors and attacked Cather, a political conservative, for ignoring
the actual plight of ordinary people.

In 1973, Willa Cather was honored by the United States Postal Service with her image on a postage stamp.
Cather is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame. In 1986, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum
and Hall of Fame. She was a close companion to opera singer Olive Fremstad.

[edit] Personal life

As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname
"William" and wore masculine clothes. [4] A photograph in the University of Nebraska archives depicts Cather,
"her hair shingled, at a time when long hair was fashionable, and dressed boyishly." [5]

Throughout Cather's adult life, her most significant relationships were with women, such as her college friend
Louise Pound, the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe, and most
notably the editor Edith Lewis. Cather's friendship with Lewis began in the early 1900s; the two women lived
together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1912 until the writer's death in 1947, Lewis afterwards
serving as the literary trustee for the Cather estate.[6]

Cather is buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will restricted the
ability of scholars to quote from those personal papers that remain. Since the 1980s, feminist and other academic
writers have written about Cather's sexual orientation and the influence of her female friendships on her work. [7]

[edit] Trivia

• From 1913 to 1927, she lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village, until the apartment was torn
down during the construction of the Seventh Avenue subway line.[8]

• After reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother, wrote the Pulitzer Prize-
winning "One of Ours". He was Nebraska's first officer killed in World War I. Those same letters are
now held in the George Cather Ray Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.

• Cather and Pound residence halls at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln) are named after Willa Cather
and Louise Pound. [1]

My Ántonia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from My Antonia)
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My Antonia

Author Willa Cather

Country United States

Language English

Genre(s) (historical fiction)

 Publisher Houghton Mifflin (Boston)

Released 1918

Pages 419

ISBN ISBN 0-486-28240-6

My Ántonia (first published 1918) is considered the greatest novel by American writer Willa Cather. My
Ántonia — pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of "Ántonia" — is the final book of the "prairie
trilogy" of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.

My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in
America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia.
The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the
Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for
Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant
struggles and triumphs, through that lens.

The book is divided into five volumes, some of which incorporate short stories Cather had previously written,
based on her own life growing up on the Nebraska prairies. The volumes correspond roughly to the stages of
Ántonia's life up through her marriage and motherhood, although the third volume, "Lena Lingard," focuses
more on Jim's time in college and his affair with Lena, another childhood friend of his and Ántonia's.

While interpretations vary, My Ántonia is clearly an elegy to the proud, hard-working immigrants who built new
lives west of the Mississippi River and highlights the role of women pioneers in particular.

[edit] Notes

A made-for-television movie, also entitled My Antonia, was based on this novel.

My Ántonia is available in a number of editions ranging from free editions available on the Internet to
inexpensive, mass-market paperbacks to expensive "scholarly editions" aimed at more serious students of
Cather's work.

[edit] External links

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-82,pageNum-62.html

When the Cather family left their country farm and moved into the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1884,
Mary Miner, the second Miner daughter, brought Willa a bottle of perfume, nestled in a red plush slipper. Thus
began Cather’s lifetime friendship with the Miner family, who were to become the models for the Harlings in
My Ántonia.

Cather’s friendship with Annie Sadilek, the model for Ántonia, blossomed when Annie was employed as the
Miner family’s “hired girl.” It’s possible, however, that the girls may have known each other earlier, when they
both lived in the country. The road to Red Cloud passed near the Sadilek dugout, and one of Willa’s favorite
pastimes was visiting her immigrant neighbors. In fact, Cather has said that she “saw a good deal of [the original
Ántonia] from the time I was eight until I was twelve.”

The Sadileks left their village of Mzizovic, Bohemia, in October 1880. There was only one other Bohemian
family on their ship, the rest were Polish, and they landed in America on November 5. Francis Sadilek had
received letters from America that told of the country’s beauty and prosperity, and he wanted his family to have
a better life. What he ended up with was a 160-acre Nebraska farm with nothing on it but a sod house, a bed, and
a four-lid stove.
The hard living conditions on the prairie, the dugouts, and the roads that were no more than a set of wagon tracks
disillusioned Francis Sadilek. On February 15, he told his wife that he was going rabbit hunting. He took the
shotgun he’d brought from the Old Country and went out. When he hadn’t returned by 5:00 p.m., Mrs. Sadilek,
Annie’s older brother, and the man whom the Sadileks lived with went to search for him. They found him half-
sitting in an old barn; he had shot himself in the head. He was buried on a corner of the Sadilek farm, at the
crossroads, although his son Anton later moved the body to the Catholic section of the Red Cloud cemetery. Mrs.
Sadilek and the two Sadilek boys are also buried there.

In a 1955 letter to a schoolgirl, Annie Sadilek Pavelka writes: “ . . . most all is true that you read in the Book
thoug [sic] most of the names are changed.”

Willa Cather told the story of Francis Sadilek’s suicide in her first published story, “Peter,” written during her
freshman year in college, and again in My Ántonia. In a 1934 letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, she said that if
she’d written only one thing in her life, it would have been My Ántonia because of the many times she’d heard
about the Sadilek suicide story shortly after her family arrived in Nebraska.

Willa and Carrie speculated endlessly on Mr. Sadilek’s occupation before he came to America and about why
he’d taken his life. They also discussed the other Sadilek family members: the crippled little sister who didn’t go
to school, the deaf brother who tried to be friendly but usually startled people instead, the controlling older
brother, and the demanding mother who wanted her family to be successful. Annie’s mother always insisted that
visitors take sugar with their coffee because she believed that being able to provide sugar was a sign of
prosperity.

After her mother’s death, Christina Sadilek, Annie’s crippled younger sister, entered the St. Francis Convent at
Lafayette, Indiana; convent records show the date as September 4, 1897. At the convent, Christina proved to be
an excellent baker and was also given the duty of teaching young girls. This life apparently agreed with her
because she lost all traces of the illness from which she’d suffered as a child.

Like Ántonia, Annie took over her father’s chores after his death, but the work eventually proved to be too
difficult, and she was finally forced to become a hired girl in the Miner home. She was a hard worker. Although
she’d never cooked before, she soon learned how to prepare meals and how to sew. When Mrs. Miner gave her
permission to use the sewing machine, she made all the clothes, including husking gloves, for her family. She
made everyday shoes for herself out of cardboard, oilcloth, and denim, which she tied to her feet with black tape.
The shoes flapped when she hurried about breathlessly getting her work done.

Annie often went with the Miner children to the Red Cloud Opera House. She loved to dance and would have
danced all night if she didn’t have to get some sleep so she could work the next day. Because Annie was under
eighteen, her family collected her wages, but Carrie Miner, the model for Frances Harling in My Ántonia, finally
made sure that Annie had enough money left over for shoes.

Annie later went West to marry a brakeman for the Burlington railroad. After only a few weeks, however, he
deserted her, and she returned to her family on the farm.

Cather went on to the university in Lincoln and soon began a promising journalism career. She moved away
from Nebraska and lost touch with Annie, but, in 1914, she found her again. Although Edith Lewis suggests that
this meeting took place in 1916, critic James Woodress points out that in 1914, while she was writing The Song
of the Lark, Cather spent two weeks visiting immigrant friends in the Red Cloud area. Therefore, he maintains, it
seems likely that she renewed her friendship with Annie at this time. Also, if we assume that My Ántonia begins
in the year the Cathers arrived in Nebraska, then Jim Burden’s return from New York to visit Ántonia would be
in 1914.

Cather discovered that Annie had married a fellow Bohemian, John Pavelka, who would become the model for
Neighbor Rosicky, in the short story of the same name. Moreover, Annie was mother to a clan of strong, healthy
children. Her daughters were beautiful and her sons excelled in high school sports. Cather enjoyed her visits with
the Pavelkas. She especially liked sitting at the long table in Annie’s cheerful kitchen and she had long enjoyed
Bohemian cooking—especially kolaches and Annie’s banana cream pie. The food storage cave, characteristic of
all Midwestern farm homes, described in the final section of the novel is an accurate depiction of the Pavelkas’
food storage cave.
Cather got along well with Annie’s sons, whose manners, she said, “would do credit to the family of a Grand
Duke,” and, when it was time for her to leave, they escorted her to her carriage. John Pavelka was as proud of his
children as Annie was, agreeing that raising healthy and happy children was more important than acquiring land
or money. John was fond of telling strangers that he was “the husband of My Ántonia,” and one of the Pavelka
sons, even as an old man, would proudly say, “I’m Leo, the mischievous one.”

After her mother died in 1931, Cather returned to Red Cloud for a short while to visit old friends and tie up
family affairs. Although she would continue writing letters and sending gifts to people she knew, including
Annie Pavelka, she never went home again.

Annie died at the age of eighty-six on April 24, 1955, eight years to the day after Willa Cather’s death, and is
buried in the Cloverton Cemetery near Bladen, Nebraska. She became hard of hearing toward the end of her life,
but she never lost the vitality or the energy that Willa Cather captured in Ántonia Shimerda. One of Annie’s sons
has said that his mother “was happier with a crust of bread and a new baby than someone else would be with a
million dollars.”

http://www.neabigread.org/books/myantonia/

When Willa Cather's editor first read the manuscript of My Ántonia, he experienced "the most thrilling shock of
recognition of the real thing" in any manuscript he had ever read. I confess I feel almost the same way about this
classic novel of the American immigrant experience.

Few books pack so much vibrantly real life into their pages as My Ántonia. The novel teems with romance,
violence, tenderness, cruelty, comedy, and tragedy-all bustling side by side in a narrative at once compassionate
and compelling.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary
reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA
report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read aims to address
this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their
communities.

A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity.
It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader
already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining The Big Read.

Dana Gioia
Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

A beloved American classic, Willa Cather's My Ántonia (1918) is best summarized by its epigraph-"the best days
are the first to flee." In it, the adult narrator, Jim Burden, remembers his childhood through the memory of his
friend, Ántonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant. As Cather herself did, 10-year-old Jim has left Virginia for
Nebraska by train and is shocked by the barren prairie on his first wagon ride. Unlike Cather, Jim is an orphan
joining his paternal grandparents on the Nebraska Divide.

The novel comprises five sections, called "books" by the author, and may appear at first to lack a cohesive
structure. As Cather intended, there is no plot in the usual sense of the word. Instead, each book contains
thematic contrasts. Book One, for example, begins with an idyllic autumn of exploration for Jim and Ántonia; it
ends with a bitter winter and an unforeseen family tragedy that changes Ántonia's life forever.

In Book Two, Jim's family leaves the prairie for the small town of Black Hawk, where many of the young
immigrant women help alleviate their families' financial hardships by becoming the town's "hired girls." After
Jim leaves Black Hawk to attend the University of Nebraska, he reunites with Norwegian Lena Lingard, who has
become a successful dressmaker in Lincoln. He flees to Boston to avoid a lasting romance with her.
Still, Jim cannot escape his love for either Ántonia or the prairie. Similar to Cather, Jim regards the land as "the
happiness and curse" of his life. While living in New York, Jim hears rumors of Ántonia's ruin. More than 15
years pass before he musters up enough courage to find out what really happened to her.

The novel owes its enduring appeal partly to its universal themes of time, death, youth, and friendship. Children
grow up and lose their innocence; the virgin land becomes productive but fenced. Cather's friend Edith Lewis
once reflected, "The whole book was a sort of love story of the country." The beautiful elegiac tone of My
Ántonia captures the taming of the American frontier as no other work of fiction ever has. Perhaps most of all,
the novel is about memory, as Jim concludes at the novel's end: "Whatever we had missed, we possessed
together the previous, the incommunicable past."

"There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could
not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land.I had never before looked up at the sky when
there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven."
-from My Ántonia

The Model for Ántonia Shimerda

Willa Cather once set a jar filled with orange-brown flowers in the middle of an antique table and told a friend,
"I want my new heroine to be like this-like a rare object in the middle of a table, which one may examine from
all sides."

The character of Ántonia Shimerda embodied all Cather's feelings about the early immigrants to the prairie
country. Cather told an interviewer in 1921 that one of the people who had interested her most as a child was
Anna Sadilek, later Anna Pavelka, the Bohemian "hired girl" who worked for one of her neighbors: "She was
one of the truest artists I ever knew in the keenness and sensitiveness of her enjoyment, in her love of people and
in her willingness to take pains. I did not realize all this as a child, but Annie fascinated me and I always had it in
mind to write a story about her." Since the most popular American novels featured upper-class ladies and
gentlemen, it was a radical aesthetic move for Cather to feature lower-class, immigrant "hired girls." In fact, the
Pavelka family was upset that a novel had been written about them because, according to Anna's granddaughter
Antonette Willa Skulpa Turner, the book so clearly described their poverty. In addition, Cather accurately
described Anna's disgrace: When she went west to marry a brakeman, he deserted her as an unmarried pregnant
woman with no choice but to return to her mother's Nebraskan dugout.

Cather's later story, "Neighbor Rosicky" (from 1931's Obscure Destinies), centers on the quiet kindnesses of a
Bohemian farmer at the end of his life-a man based upon Anna's husband, with whom she bore 12 children.

"She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination,
could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common
things."
-from My Ántonia

The Life and Times of Willa Cather

1870s
Wilella Cather is born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, December 7, 1873.
Cather's paternal grandparents move from Virginia to Nebraska, 1877.
Drought and grasshopper infestations drive many American farmers to despair, 1873-78.

1880s
Charles Cather moves his wife and four children, including 9-year-old Willa, from Virginia to Nebraska, 1883.
By the mid-1880s, Bohemian composer Antonín Dvorák's international fame is firmly established with works
such as his "Slavonic Dances."
Thousands of Scandinavians and Bohemians immigrate to the United States.

1890s
New York's Ellis Island opens as an immigration depot in 1892, serving more than 17 million people until its
closure in 1954.
Cather leaves Nebraska for Pittsburgh, 1896.
Cather meets Isabelle McClung, who will become "the one person for whom all [her] books are written," 1899.

1900s
In 1901, Cather begins five years as a high school teacher.
Cather's first book, a collection of poetry, April Twilights, is published, 1903.
The death of American author Sarah Orne Jewett devastates Cather, 1909.

1910s
Cather's novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) are published to
critical acclaim.
Isabelle McClung marries Jewish violinist Jan Hambourg, 1916.
World War I begins in 1914. America enters in 1917, joining the Allies-France, Britain, Italy, and Russia.
Armistice ending the war signed on November 11, 1918.

1920s
One of Ours (1922) receives the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 1923.
In 1924, nearly 40% of New York's population is foreign-born. New laws drastically curtail U.S. immigration.
Cather elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1929.
Stock Market crashes in 1929, triggering the Great Depression.

1930s
Franklin Roosevelt elected U.S. President, 1932; Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany, 1933.
Angered by two films of A Lost Lady, Cather takes legal measures to prevent further adaptations of her fiction,
1934.
Cather's Lucy Gayheart and Not Under Forty are published, 1935 and 1936.

1940s
Nobel prize-winning novelist Sigrid Undset, exiled from Norway to New York, becomes friends with Cather,
1942.
World War II: Japanese forces bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941; America enters the war. Armistice signed in 1945.
Cather dies in New York, leaving a will that forbids any reprinting of her letters, 1947.

"The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor."
-Willa Cather

Willa Cather's Nebraska

Willa Cather is celebrated for her portrayal of the American frontier, describing with poignant beauty the brave
immigrant pioneers for whom exile and trials led to a better life for many in the next generation.

The 1862 Homestead Act offered free land in the new territories to those who would live on it, and the 1869
completion of the transcontinental railroad made the dream of fertile, cheap land a possibility for more than a
million European immigrants in the 1880s. No one told them about the grasshopper plagues, the severe droughts,
or the rising price for the best land. Due to the shortage of timber, many early settlers and immigrants were
forced to live in dugouts or sod houses. Although hogs often ate the snakes, women still carried a rattlesnake
cane, especially in the hen and milk houses.

The deaths of six family members led the Cathers to leave Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. After their first 18
months on the Nebraska Divide, they moved to the small, poor town of Red Cloud, where, under different
names, she set most of her novels. In 1883, Cather was one of 16 students in the township's one-room
schoolhouse. The daily arrival of eight passenger trains led hundreds of travelers to stop for meals. The still-
standing opera house was completed in 1885, and by 1889 Nebraska Governor Silas Garber (the model for A
Lost Lady's Captain Forrester) had built his grand bank on the main street. The populist presidential candidate
William Jennings Bryan often visited Red Cloud. By the time Cather left for college, the town's population rose
from 1,200 to almost 3,000.
Forty-five percent of Nebraska's population comprised immigrants. Within a wagon's drive, Cather could have
attended a church service in Swedish, Norwegian, Bohemian, French, German, Danish, or English. She once
remembered a day spent in town without hearing a word of English.

Amid this cultural diversity, Cather pursued an unconventional education. A Jewish couple who spoke French
and German let her borrow books from their vast European library. Cather befriended two of the town's most
intellectual men: Herr Schindelmeisser, the German piano teacher who taught her about music and Europe, and
William Ducker, the Englishman who taught her Latin, Greek, and how to perform vivisection. She loved
listening to immigrant women's stories, later saying: "I never found any intellectual excitement any more intense
than I used to feel when I spent a morning with one of these old women at her baking or butter-making.I always
felt.as if I had actually got inside another person's skin."

This is exactly what her fiction does. Cather's protagonists often feel homesick, restless, displaced, or
discontented, and they are almost all exiles. After Cather left Nebraska in 1896, she never lived there
permanently again. After the death of her mother in 1931, Cather never returned at all to "that shaggy grass
country" that she later said had "been the happiness and curse" of her life.

Willa Cather commissioned Bohemian artist W.T. Benda to create illustrations for the first edition of My
Ántonia. When her publisher balked at the cost, Cather fought to keep them in, without success. The University
of Nebraska scholarly edition has restored the images according to Cather's original intent.

"Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. [.] If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a
sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see."
-Willa Cather

Willa Cather, 1873-1947

Born on a sheep farm in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia, in 1873, Willa Cather was named
Wilella after her aunt (Willa was her own invention). Cather's grandparents left Virginia for Nebraska in 1877,
but the burning of the family's sheep barn gave the final push for her father to uproot his family in 1883. The
journey from Virginia's lush mountains to Nebraska's open range shocked the nine-year-old Cather, a
transforming experience she later described as "a kind of erasure of personality."

After 18 months on her grandparents' farm, the Cather family moved to the prairie town of Red Cloud. The
privacy of her attic room afforded Cather countless hours to read adventure books, Russian and British novels,
and Shakespeare's plays. When she left Red Cloud at age 16 to attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, she
wanted to be a surgeon. But after her freshman English professor secretly published her essay on Victorian
writer Thomas Carlyle, she decided to become a writer.

Twenty years passed between the publication of this first essay and her first novel. A year after her college
graduation, Cather left Nebraska for Pittsburgh to work as the editor of Home Monthly.

In 1899, Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a wealthy and prominent Pittsburgh judge. Cather later
declared that all her books were written for McClung, and their intimate friendship would continue until the
latter's death in 1938.

While living in McClungs' home, Cather taught English and Latin at two Pittsburgh high schools (1901-1905).
During this time she wrote the stories and poems that led to her employment as associate editor of McClure's
Magazine in New York.

Between 1906 and 1912, Cather became the foremost woman in American journalism. After she published a
book of poetry, a collection of short stories, and her first novel, the separation between her journalism and her art
became more pronounced. At age 38, she gathered enough strength to take a leave of absence from her
prestigious job at McClure's, eventually leaving the magazine for good after a transformative trip to the
Southwest. In a remarkable five-year period of productivity, she wrote three American masterpieces: O
Pioneers! ( 1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918).
By the mid-1920s, Cather was one of America's best-loved writers. She won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours
in 1923, made the cover of Time in 1931, and received the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters in 1944.

She died on April 24, 1947, at her home in New York, never finishing a final novel set in medieval Avignon.
Despite her acquired affection for the Nebraskan prairie, she chose to be buried on a hillside in Jaffrey, New
Hampshire, a place she had loved and returned to every year after her first trip there in 1916. Her grave includes
a citation from My Ántonia: "that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

http://www.unl.edu/cather/works/se/antonia/entire/antoniatext.htm

WILLA CATHER

My Ántonia
Edited by
CHARLES MIGNON
with Kari Ronning

Historical Essay
BY JAMES WOODRESS

Explanatory Notes by
JAMES WOODRESS
with the assistance of
Kari Ronning
Kathleen Danker &
Emily Levine

University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln & London
1994

Preface

The objective of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition is to provide to readers — present and
future — various kinds of information relevant to Willa Cather's writing, obtained and
presented according to the highest scholarly standards: a critical text faithful to her intention
as she prepared it for the first edition, a historical essay providing relevant biographical and
historical facts, explanatory notes identifying allusions and references, a textual commentary
tracing the work through its lifetime and describing Cather's involvement with it, and a record
of changes in the text's various editions. This edition is distinctive in the comprehensiveness
of its apparatus, especially in its inclusion of extensive explanatory information that
illuminates the fiction of a writer who drew so extensively upon actual experience, as well as
the full textual information we have come to expect in a modern critical edition. It thus
connects activities that are too often separate — literary scholarship and textual editing.

Editing Cather's writing means recognizing that Cather was as fiercely protective of her
novels as she was of her private life. She suppressed much of her early writing and dismissed
serial publication of later work, discarded manuscripts and proofs, destroyed letters, and
included in her will a stipulation against publication of her private papers. Yet the record
remains surprisingly full. Manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of some texts survive with
corrections and revisions in Cather's hand; serial publications provide final "draft" versions of
texts; correspondence with her editors and publishers helps clarify her intention for a work,
and publishers' records detail each book's public life; correspondence with friends and
acquaintances provides an intimate view of her writing; published interviews with and
speeches by Cather provide a running public commentary on her career; and through their
memoirs, recollections, and letters, Cather's contemporaries provide their own commentary on
circumstances surrounding her writing.

In assembling pieces of the editorial puzzle, we have been guided by principles and
procedures articulated by the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language
Association. Assembling and comparing texts demonstrated the basic tenet of the textual
editor — that only painstaking collations reveal what is actually there. Scholars had assumed,
for example, that with the exception of a single correction in spelling, O Pioneers! passed
unchanged from the 1913 first edition to the 1937 Autograph Edition. Collations revealed
nearly a hundred word changes, thus providing information not only necessary to establish a
critical text and to interpret how Cather composed, but also basic to interpreting how her ideas
about art changed as she matured.

Cather's revisions and corrections on typescripts and page proofs demonstrate that she brought
to her own writing her extensive experience as an editor. Word changes demonstrate her
practices in revising; other changes demonstrate that she gave extraordinarily close scrutiny to
such matters as capitalization, punctuation, paragraphing, hyphenation, and spacing.
Knowledgeable about production, Cather had intentions for her books that extended to their
design and manufacture. For example, she specified typography, illustrations, page format,
paper stock, ink color, covers, wrappers, and advertising copy.

To an exceptional degree, then, Cather gave to her work the close textual attention that
modern editing practices respect, while in other ways she challenged her editors to expand the
definition of "corruption" and "authoritative" beyond the text, to include the book's whole
format and material existence. Believing that a book's physical form influenced its
relationship with a reader, she selected type, paper, and format that invited the reader response
she sought. The heavy texture and cream color of paper used for O Pioneers! and My
Ántonia,, for example, created a sense of warmth and invited a childlike play of imagination,
as did these books' large dark type and wide margins. By the same principle, she expressly
rejected the anthology format of assembling texts of numerous novels within the covers of
one volume, with tight margins, thin paper, and condensed print.

Given Cather's explicitly stated intentions for her works, printing and publishing decisions
that disregard her wishes represent their own form of corruption, and an authoritative edition
of Cather must go beyond the sequence of words and punctuation to include other matters:
page format, paper stock, typeface, and other features of design. The volumes in the Cather
Edition respect those intentions insofar as possible within a series format that includes a
comprehensive scholarly apparatus. For example, the Cather Edition has adopted the format
of six by nine inches, which Cather approved in Bruce Rogers's elegant work on the 1937
Houghton Mifflin Autograph Edition, to accommodate the various elements of design. While
lacking something of the intimacy of the original page, this size permits the use of large,
generously leaded type and ample margins - points of style upon which the author was so
insistent. In the choice of paper, we have deferred to Cather's declared preference for a warm,
cream antique stock.

Today's technology makes it difficult to emulate the qualities of hot-metal typesetting and
letterpress printing. In comparison, modern phototypesetting printed by offset lithography
tends to look anemic and lacks the tactile quality of type impressed into the page. The version
of the Caslon typeface employed in the original edition of My Ántonia, were it available for
phototypesetting, would hardly survive the transition. Instead, we have chosen Linotype
Janson Text, a modern rendering of the type used by Rogers. The subtle adjustments of stroke
weight in this reworking do much to retain the integrity of earlier metal versions. Therefore,
without trying to replicate the design of single works, we seek to represent Cather's general
preferences in a design that encompasses many volumes.

In each volume in the Cather Edition, the author's specific intentions for design and printing
are set forth in textual commentaries. These essays also describe the history of the texts,
identify those that are authoritative, explain the selection of copy-texts or basic texts, justify
emendations of the copy-text, and describe patterns of variants. The textual apparatus in each
volume-lists of variants, emendations, explanations of emendations, and end-of-line
hyphenations-completes the textual story.

Historical essays provide essential information about the genesis, form, and transmission of
each book, as well as supply its biographical, historical, and intellectual contexts. Illustrations
supplement these essays with photographs, maps, and facsimiles of manuscript, typescript, or
typeset pages. Finally, because Cather in her writing drew so extensively upon personal
experience and historical detail, explanatory notes are an especially important part of the
Cather Edition. By providing a comprehensive identification of her references to flora and
fauna, to regional customs and manners, to the classics and the Bible, to popular writing,
music, and other arts-as well as relevant cartography and census material-these notes provide
a starting place for scholarship and criticism on subjects long slighted or ignored.

Within this overall standard format, differences occur that are informative in their own right.
The straightforward textual history of O Pioneers! and My Ántonia contrasts with the more
complicated textual challenges of A Lost Lady and Death Comes for the Archbishop; the
allusive personal history of the Nebraska novels, so densely woven that My Ántonia seems
drawn not merely upon Anna Pavelka but all of Webster County, contrasts with the more
public allusions of novels set elsewhere. The Cather Edition reflects the individuality of each
work while providing a standard of reference for critical study.

Historical Apparatus
Historical Essay
Basis in Early Experience
My Ántonia had the longest foreground of any novel Willa Cather wrote except her last,
Sapphira and the Slave Girl, which drew on memories of her Virginia childhood. My Ántonia,
Cather's fourth novel, had its genesis in the author's first experience of the Nebraska prairie at
the age of nine. In the spring of 1883 her father, Charles Cather, sold his sheep farm at Back
Creek Valley, Virginia, near Winchester, and moved his family to Webster County, Nebraska.
They spent their first 22 months on Grandfather Cather's farm some dozen miles north of Red
Cloud. Willa's father farmed the property while her grandfather returned to Virginia to visit
and her grandmother went to live with her Uncle George nearby.

Jim Burden's account of arriving in Black Hawk, Nebraska, en route to live with his
grandparents, is pretty much of a piece with young Willa's memory of her first sight of
Nebraska and its impact. Jim, who has been orphaned in Virginia, gets off the train at the
Burlington depot, where he is met by his grandfather's hired hand and bundled into a wagon
for the long ride to the farm across the nearly trackless prairie. He is taken deep into the area
known locally as the Divide, the rolling land between the Republican River that flows south
of Red Cloud and the Little Blue River to the north. It is night when Jim descends from the
train and climbs into the wagon. After they start off he slips out from beneath the buffalo hide
in the wagon bed: "Cautiously I . . . got up on my knees and peered over the side of the
wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If
there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land. . . .
I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were
outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a
familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of
it" (7-8).

Cather's memory is similar, though in the novel she places the action at night and the time in
September to heighten the drama. She gave this account to an interviewer in 1913: "We drove
out from Red Cloud to my grandfather's homestead one day in April. I was sitting on the hay
in the bottom of a Studebaker wagon, holding on to the side of the wagon box to steady
myself — the roads were mostly faint trails over the bunch grass in those days. The land was
open range and there was almost no fencing. As we drove further and further out into the
country, I felt a good deal as if we had come to the end of everything — it was a kind of
erasure of personality" (Bohlke 9-10). She remembered fighting back the tears because her
father had said that one had to show grit in a new country. This first impression of the prairie
was indelible and dropped into the deep well of her unconscious to remain until she drew it up
33 years later.

There is very little record of Cather's day-to-day experiences during the months she lived on
her grandfather's farm. In a biographical sketch she wrote for Houghton Mifflin in 1915,
putting her account in the third person, she recalled "getting acquainted with the neighbors,
whose foreign speech and customs she found intensely interesting. Had she been born in that
community she doubtless would have taken these things for granted. . . . An imaginative
child, taken out of this definitely arranged background [of long-settled Virginia], and dropped
down among struggling immigrants from all over the world, naturally found something to
think about" (Willa Cather 1-2). [1]

Cather's interest in the foreign-born farm families, such as the fictional Shimerdas in My
Ántonia, which began in this period when she was nine, lasted all her life, even after 1931
when she stopped going back to Nebraska and lived as a sophisticated New Yorker in a Park
Avenue apartment. As a young adult, however, she returned often to visit her family, and
when she did she went out into the country to see her farm friends. It was like reading War
and Peace, she said, to follow the lives of these people over the years. Between visits she
corresponded with them, sent them Christmas boxes, and later during the Great Depression
and drought of the thirties sent them money and clothes to keep them afloat. In the 1913
interview quoted above, she said, "We had very few American neighbors — they were mostly
Swedes and Danes, Norwegians and Bohemians. I liked them from the first and they made up
for what I missed in the country. I particularly liked the old women, they understood my
homesickness and were kind to me. . . . [T]hese old women on the farms were the first people
who ever gave me the real feeling of an older world across the sea. . . . I have never found any
intellectual excitement any more intense than I used to feel when I spent a morning with one
of those old women at her baking or butter making. I used to ride home in the most
unreasonable state of excitement; I always felt . . . as if I had actually got inside another
person's skin" (Bohlke 10).

This figure of speech described accurately Cather's creative process. Her imagination required
total absorption in her fictional world and she always felt a sense of loss after finishing a
novel in which she had created strong central characters like Ántonia. Once an image was
recorded on her brain it never left her, but it was not available immediately. Like vintage
wine, it had to age before it was ready for use. On one occasion she said, "When I sit down to
write, turns of phrase I've forgotten for years come back like white ink before fire" (Bohlke
20). She told her friend Elizabeth Sergeant, "Life began for me when I ceased to admire and
began to remember" (Sergeant 107). She also believed that the basic material a writer works
with is acquired before the age of 15. That's the important period, she said. Those years
determine whether one's work will be poor and thin or rich and fine.

These experiences in her ninth and tenth years provided much of the material that ultimately
went into Book I: "The Shimerdas," the first 135 pages of My Ántonia. There is no
contemporary record of her having met the Shimerdas's real- life prototypes, the Sadileks,
during the months she lived on her grandfather's farm, but they lived not far away and she
heard about them. She remembered that one of the first stories she was told after arriving in
Nebraska was of the suicide of Francis Sadilek, after whom Ántonia's father was patterned.
As in the novel, he had been a city man in his native Bohemia, and the transition from urban
Europe to the lonely virgin prairie of Nebraska had overwhelmed him. The story of his death
that she heard as a child ultimately became the moving, dramatic episode in the first part of
My Ántonia. The story made such a vivid impression that when Cather began her literary
apprenticeship at the University of Nebraska she made it the subject of her first printed story,
"Peter." Later she revised the story and reprinted it twice, once in the undergraduate literary
magazine, the Hesperian, during her sophomore year when she was literary editor, and again
in 1900 when she was living in Pittsburgh.

Many of the episodes that went into the early chapters of My Ántonia no doubt were based on
memories of this early period. Although Cather in the biographical sketch referred to above
said she roamed the countryside on her pony and did not go to school, she actually did attend
the three-month term of the New Virginia School in the academic year 1883-84. Jim Burden's
memory of the one-room schoolhouse is probably close to Cather's own experience: "We
were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback and brought our
dinner" (122). But the pioneer era already was over and Cather and her 15 fellow students
were the last to study in the sod schoolhouse, which was replaced by a frame building in
1884. The pioneer period in fact lasted only a few years. Cather's Uncle George and Aunt
Franc had gone to Nebraska in 1873 when the land was indeed first being settled, but by 1883,
when the Charles Cathers arrived, sod houses had been mostly replaced by frame houses and
the farming frontier had moved farther west.

Whether or not Cather accurately describes her grandfather's farm and farmhouse through Jim
Burden's memory cannot be ascertained at this date, but considering that Cather had almost
total recall, it is probably depicted pretty much as she remembered it, perhaps with some
romantic coloring. The view from outside the house, however, is definitely touched up. When
Jim goes outdoors on his first morning on the farm, he sees "the windmill close by the kitchen
door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and
pig- yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the
rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with
rusty willow bushes growing about it" (13-14). This is a fairly neutral description, but when
Cather wrote "A Wagner Matinee" (1903), reprinted in The Troll Garden (1905), she was
closer to the experience and described the view from the house more bleakly: "Outside the
door . . . lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs . . . the crook-back ash seedlings
where the dish-cloths hung to dry; the gaunt moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the
kitchen door." And the house itself was "tall, unpainted . . . with weather-curled boards; naked
as a tower" (Woodress, Troll Garden 101). [2]

Cather's memory of her first Christmas in Nebraska is much grimmer than Jim Burden's
glowing recollection of the same experience. She wrote Witter Bynner in 1905 that as a child
she had been pretty much depressed by all the ugliness surrounding her on their farm. The
contrast with Virginia, she said, had been stark. One simply could not imagine anything so
bleak and desolate as a Nebraska farm in the 1880s, and she remembered coming as close to
dying of homesickness as any healthy child could. When Christmas came she and her brothers
were taken to a party at the Norwegian church. The Christmas tree was a naked little box-
elder wrapped in green tissue paper cut in fringes to simulate pine needles (Woodess, Willa
Cather 43). [3] For the purposes of her novel, however, Cather has Jim Burden recall that the
hired man Jake brought home a real Christmas tree, a five-foot cedar, on which they hung
gingerbread animals, strings of popcorn, and brilliantly colored paper figures.

Two other memorable episodes in the early chapters of My Ántonia may have a basis in fact
from those early months in Nebraska: the killing of the snake and the gruesome story of Pavel
and Peter. There certainly were rattlesnakes on the prairie, and Cather in the 1913 interview
recalled the steel-tipped cane, as Jim Burden does, that her grandmother carried to kill snakes
with when she worked in her garden. But whether or not Cather ever killed a rattler seems
doubtful. Leo Pavelka, who was the prototype for Ántonia's son and who died in 1991,
remembered that it was his mother who killed the snake. Perhaps she did, as she was 14 when
Willa was 10, but as I have noted, there is no evidence that Cather met the Sadileks during
those months on the Divide. The story of the Russians who threw the bride and bridegroom to
the wolves is another tale Cather may have heard at this time. The version that Cather used in
My Ántonia exists in the folklore of German immigrants who had come to Nebraska from
Russia (Schach 67-78). Cather, however, may have conceived of this incident after reading a
similar story in Browning's "Ivan Ivanovich" at the University of Nebraska. Or she may have
seen at some time Paul Powis's painting of a similar scene. [illustration]

There is no doubt, however, that Cather drew the characters of Jim Burden's grandparents
from her own grandfather and grandmother. She mitted as much to an interviewer in the
Webster County Argus (Bohlke 27). Jim remembers:
My grandfather said little. . . . I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a
little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly,
snow-white beard. . . . His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a
fresh, frosty sparkle. (11-12)

In his photograph William Cather looks like an Old Testament prophet and, in keeping with
this appearance, he was deeply religious. In his youth his conscience had led him to drop his
inherited Calvinism and become a Baptist. Jim's description of his grandmother also seems a
clear little snapshot of Caroline Cather, Willa's grandmother: "[A] spare, tall woman, a little
stooped, . . . she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention. . . . She
was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill,
and she often spoke with an anxious inflection. . . . Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a
little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a
strong woman, of unusual endurance" (10).

Although Jim Burden spends three years on the farm before h grandfather decides to move
into town, the Cathers left the country for Red Cloud probably in March 1885. Jim's
description of Black Hawk, however, is a good description of Red Cloud: "a clean, well-
planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards . . . and shapely little trees
growing along the wooden sidewalks. In the center of the town there were two rows of new
brick "store" buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the court-house, and four white churches.
Cather's grandparents also moved into town and lived in a house at the north end, as Jim's
grandparents do, but the Charles Cathers rented a house near the center. (See also an aerial
view of Red Cloud and the location of the Cather house.)

Around the corner from them lived the Miner family, all of whom became characters in the
novel. The book is dedicated to Carrie and Irene Miner, who are Frances and Nina Harling in
My Ántonia. They became Cather's lifelong friends. Their mother, who is Mrs. Harling in the
novel, was in fact an accomplished musician and a person Cather greatly admired. She died as
Cather was writing the novel, and her portrait in the book is the only character, besides her
grandparents, Cather ever admitted to drawing from life (Bohlke 27). Usually she insisted that
her characters were composites, creatures of the imagination, not made out of the flesh and
blood of her friends and acquaintances. These matters are relative, however, and Red Cloud
residents did indeed suggest many of the characters in the novel.

Chief among these was Anna Sadilek, who inspired the title character of My Ántonia. As far
as scholars can determine, Cather met Anna when the latter came into town to work for the
Miners. As she looked back in her old age, Cather felt that the character of Ántonia was the
embodiment of all her feelings about the early immigrants in the prairie country, and it
seemed to her then that she must have been destined to write this novel if she ever wrote
anything. She told an interviewer in 1921 that one of the people who had interested her most
when she was a child was the Bohemian hired girl who worked for one of their neighbors.
"She was one of the truest artists I ever knew in the keenness and sensitiveness of her
enjoyment, in her love of people and in her willingness to take pains" (Bohlke 44).

Anna Sadilek, of course, was not the only farm girl to seek work in Red Cloud. The other
immigrant women such as Lena Lingard, Tiny Soderball, Anna Hansen, the Bohemian Marys,
and the Danish laundry girls, who populate Book II of the novel, must have had their
prototypes, but specific individuals who sat for the portraits have not yet been identified. They
are no doubt the composites that Cather talked about.

Other characters in My Ántonia are easy to recognize. The black pianist Blind d'Arnault, who
plays in Black Hawk, was drawn from the real Blind Boone, who performed in Red Cloud,
and Blind Tom, whom Cather heard later in Lincoln. The hotel-keeping Mrs. Gardener in the
novel was suggested by a real Mrs. Holland who, with her husband, operated the Holland
House in Red Cloud. Larry Donovan, who fathers Ántonia's daughter out of wedlock, is based
on a railroad man named James William Murphy. Most surprising perhaps is the fact that the
wicked Wick Cutter had his prototype in a Red Cloud loan shark named Bentley, who was
just as much a rascal as Cather makes him in My Ántonia. Cather did not even have to invent
his melodramatic demise, for he did murder his wife and then commit suicide, though the acts
took place in Arkansas rather than Nebraska. [4]

Toward the end of Book II Jim graduates from high school, as Cather did in 1890, and at his
commencement exercises delivers his oration. "It stated with fervor," Jim remembers, "a great
many things I had lately discovered" (222). Cather too gave at her graduation an impassioned
address on the subject of superstition versus investigation, an obvious answer to the small-
town busybodies who had criticized her interests in biology, medicine, and vivisection. It was
a ringing defense of scientific inquiry and ranged from the dawn of history to the nineteenth
century. [5] The Red Cloud Chief printed the text in toto, though it did not predict a great
future for Cather, as it did for the two boys who also spoke from the same platform.

When the novel moves to Lincoln and Jim Burden enters the state university, Cather again
draws on her memories. She moved to the state capital following her graduation from high
school and after spending her first year in the University of Nebraska's prep school, where she
finished her preparation for college, she entered as a freshman in 1891. She graduated in
1895. Cather, as Jim does, had to rent a room off campus because there were no dormitories
yet built at that young university. Jim's description of the student body is quite close to fact:
"There were many serious young men among the students who had come up to the University
from the farms and the little towns scattered over the thinly settled State. Some of those boys
came straight from the cornfields with only a summer's wages in their pockets." But Jim's
characterization of the faculty is subjective: "Our instructors were oddly assorted; wandering
pioneer school- teachers, stranded ministers of the Gospel, a few enthusiastic young men just
out of graduate schools." By the time Cather arrived, however, the university had attracted a
number of distinguished scholars to its faculty, and academic standards were high. The novel
is accurate when Jim recalls that "there was an atmosphere of endeavor, of expectancy and
bright hopefulness about the young college" (250).

Cather drew less on her own experiences in Book III: "Lena Lingard," which devotes more
attention to Jim's romance with Lena than did the previous books, but Jim's immersion in the
classics parallels her own course of study. She already had studied Latin in Red Cloud, and
when she entered the university, she continued the subject for two more years. It is very likely
that she read Virgil's Georgics in Lincoln, from which she drew the "Optima dies . . . prima
fugit" quotation (256) that provides a haunting theme for Jim's memories of his youth and
college years. But she certainly did not read Virgil with Gaston Cleric's prototype, for Cleric
is modeled on Herbert Bates, the professor of English who encouraged Cather's early fiction
and sent her first story, "Peter," off to be published in a Boston magazine.
Even Jim's romance with Lena, which provides an interlude in the novel while Ántonia is
being seduced and abandoned in Denver, has some of Cather's memories worked into it. The
most significant is the account of Jim and Lena at the theater watching a production of
Camille, a performance at which both weep unrestrainedly as Marguerite dies of consumption
in the final act. Cather during her junior and senior years in college became the drama critic
for the Nebraska State Journal, and in that capacity reviewed scores of plays. Her first major
theater review was of a performance of Alexander Dumas fils' Camille, which she thought the
best play written in the nineteenth century. [6] The actress who played the title role was the
veteran Clara Morris, who Cather admitted was past her prime and undoubtedly a loud actress
but nonetheless one of the great ones. She doesn't identify Morris in My Ántonia, but the
Marguerite Jim and Lena see is like her. Jim calls her "old-fashioned, though historic," an
actress who "had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were
accessible" (265-66).

Previous Writing

After graduating from college Cather stayed on in Lincoln for a year before getting a job as
editor of a magazine in Pittsburgh. A year later she joined the staff of the Pittsburgh Leader,
first as telegraph editor, then as drama and music critic, and remained there for three years.
Then she left journalism to teach high school in Pittsburgh in order to have at least the
summers free for writing. In 1902 she published her first book, April Twilights, a book of
verse, and in 1905 her first collection of stories, The Troll Garden. In 1906 S. S. McClure
hired her to help edit his magazine and she moved from Pittsburgh to New York, which
became her permanent home for the rest of her life. From 1906 until 1911 she devoted her
energies to McClure's, becoming managing editor after two years. During this period, though,
she had very little time to write. It was not until 1911 that she felt confident enough to cut
loose from journalism to become a full-time writer.

Cather's career as a novelist began in 1912 with the publication of her first novel, Alexander's
Bridge, and she immediately began work on O Pioneers!, her first Nebraska novel. Although
Alexander's Bridge is quite a good novel, Cather always regarded it as a false start because of
its setting in Boston and London, its use of characters from the world of business and the
theater, and its very Henry Jamesian flavor. In O Pioneers!, however, she "hit the home
pasture," as she put it, and discovered her adopted Nebraska as a prime subject for fiction.
From that point on, Cather's place as an important novelist was secure.

Her third novel, however, uses western memories only in part. This is The Song of the Lark
(1915), which tells the story of an opera singer from her childhood to her artistic maturity. In
addition to her fondness for Nebraska, Cather had a major interest in music and singers. Yet
The Song of the Lark is exceptionally autobiographical, and even though the initial locale is
Moonstone, Colorado, it is really Red Cloud, and the experiences of the heroine, Thea
Kronborg, in childhood and adolescence are Cather's.

After Cather left McClure's she made her first trip to the Southwest to visit her brother
Douglass, who worked for the Santa Fe Railroad in Arizona. This was a pivotal experience for
her, from which she developed an affection for the Southwest that rivaled her love of
Nebraska. So great was her interest in the Southwest that she made significant use of it in The
Song of the Lark and she went back for additional looks in 1914 and 1915. On the latter
occasion she visited Mesa Verde National Park and was captivated by the cliff dwellings and
the ancient culture that once had flourished there. As a result of this experience she planned a
work of fiction to be called "The Blue Mesa."

The winter of 1915-16 was a difficult time for Cather. The McClung house in Pittsburgh
where she had lived during her teaching years and had subsequently visited many times was
sold, and her dearest friend, Isabelle McClung, announced that she was going to be married.
These two developments threw Cather into a state of depression during the winter and spring
of 1916, but in June she bolted from New York and went west again, first revisiting Taos,
New Mexico, for three weeks, then heading north to Wyoming to see her brother Roscoe
(Ross). After five weeks in the Far West, she recovered her spirits, leaving her troubles above
the timberline, she said, and turned east toward Nebraska, stopping in Red Cloud to visit her
parents and to renew her ties with old friends.

Genesis and Composition

The heat in Nebraska that summer was merciless. The amorous lovers of Dante, she wrote
Sergeant, were no more scourged by fire than were the dwellers of the corn country
(Woodress, Willa Cather 284). But corn took a terrific amount of heat, she explained, and
everyone panted resignedly under the magnificent fire as the crops matured. Sometime in
September or October before returning to New York, Cather must have driven out into the
Bohemian country, as she usually did, to visit her old friend Anna Sadilek, now married to a
Czech farmer named Pavelka, who is Cuzak in My Ántonia. As a young woman, Anna had
returned quietly to Webster County unwed and deserted by the railroad man Murphy and
there raised her daughter herself until she met and married John Pavelka and became mistress
of her own establishment. Cather's trip to the Pavelka farm in 1916 may well have been the
basis for the visit Jim Burden makes in the final book of the novel when he sees Ántonia, now
middle-aged, "battered but not diminished," surrounded by her large brood of children.

The idea for the novel had not yet come to Cather, however, and she spent the fall working on
"The Blue Mesa." Two months after getting to Red Cloud she still was making notes for it,
but the materials seemed intractable. The experience was simply too recent for use and needed
to age for a few years. Her mother also was sick during the three months she spent in Red
Cloud, and she had to be cook and housekeeper. On the whole she enjoyed these duties, she
wrote Sergeant, even though there were eight in the family all the time (Woodress, Willa
Cather 284). She had gotten the secret of good pastry at last and thought she never would be
intimidated by a kitchen range again. She told another friend that she was now no mean cook
(Woodress, Willa Cather 284). She returned to her apartment on Bank Street in Greenwich
Village on Thanksgiving Day with little writing to show for the first eleven months of 1916
except a few stories.

She arrived in New York, however, with the idea for My Ántonia. She wrote R. L. Scaife at
Houghton Mifflin the following March that as soon as she had returned from the West, she
had put aside "The Blue Mesa" to take up work on a new novel, a western story about the
same length as O Pioneers! and with a somewhat similar background (Woodress, Willa
Cather 285). In three months she had gotten halfway through the first draft, and she thought
she might be ready to send a manuscript to Boston by mid-June. She wanted to know the
latest date possible to make fall publication. She needed the royalties from a new novel for
living expenses, for The Song of the Lark, while a critical success, was not making her very
much money. She preferred to write novels, and did not like to have to take time out to keep
the pot boiling with short stories. She was too optimistic by far in thinking that she might
make fall publication in 1917, and it was another 14 months before she completed the novel.

The winter of 1916-17 was a happy, productive period, but she did a lot of socializing that
must have cut into her writing time. She was riotously well after six months in the West, and
her friend Isabelle McClung, now Mrs. Jan Hambourg, was living in the city and making a
great effort to reconcile her to the marriage. Before Christmas Cather invited the Hambourgs
and S. S. McClure, her old boss, to dinner, and the Hambourgs returned the invitation on
Christmas Eve. The next week she lunched at their house with the pianist Harold Bauer, his
wife, and the violinist Fritz Kreisler; she thought Isabelle made a charming hostess for artists
and musicians. Then she attended a concert with the Hambourgs. In between these social
occasions she dined with Boston friends and had 30 people in for tea. She had begun the
practice the previous spring of having people drop in for tea and talk on Friday afternoons.

It must have been about this time that Cather went uptown to visit Elizabeth Sergeant at her
apartment. She arrived "flushed and alert from one of her swift wintry walks" in Central Park,
Sergeant remembered (138). While they were having tea

she then suddenly leaned over . . . and set an old Sicilian apothecary jar of mine, filled with
orange-brown flowers of scented stock, in the middle of a bare, round antique table.

'I want my new heroine to be like this — like a rare object in the middle of a table, which one
may examine from all sides.'

She moved the lamp so that light streamed brightly down on my Taormina jar, with its glazed
orange and blue design.

'I want her to stand out — like this — because she is the story.'

The writing was going well in April when she interrupted it for a round of musical parties
with the Hambourgs. Then in May she went down to Washington to visit her cousin Howard
Gore, a professor at George Washington University, and in June went west to receive her first
honorary degree from her alma mater, the first such the University had ever given a woman.
She continued on to Red Cloud for a visit, but the heat was unbearable and drove her farther
west to Wyoming. When she got back to New York in the late summer she immediately went
to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, to recuperate from the rigors of the Midwest in July and August.
She spent three weeks in Jaffrey with the Hambourgs and settled down finally to finish My
Ántonia.

Jaffrey was a happy discovery. She rented two rooms on the top floor of the Shattuck Inn and
was able to look out over the woods and pastures toward Mount Monadnock in the distance.
She was so pleased with the accommodations and the setting that she returned to Jaffrey again
and again in subsequent years. She found it a congenial place to write. Her long- time
companion Edith Lewis remembered: "The fresh, pine-scented woods and pastures, with their
multitudinous wild flowers, the gentle skies, the little enclosed fields, had in them nothing of
the disturbing, exalting, impelling memories and associations of the past — her own past.
Each day there was like an empty canvas, a clean sheet of paper to be filled. She lived with a
simple sense of physical well-being, of weather, and of country solitude" (Lewis 105).
Two of her Pittsburgh friends, who rented a place about a mile from the Shattuck Inn, put up a
tent for her in their meadow, and every morning after an early breakfast she crossed the Stony
Brook Farm Road and cut through a hedge to the clearing where her tent was pitched. She
carried her pens and paper with her but left her ink bottles, table, and camp chair in the tent.
At midday she stopped working, climbed a stone wall, and returned to the inn through the
woods. There she finished Book II: "The Hired Girls." In the afternoons she took long walks
through the countryside and up Mount Monadnock, carrying with her a favorite book, F.
Shuyler Matthews's Field Book of American Wild Flowers. She stayed at Jaffrey about two
months, but when she left, the novel still was not completed. She had signed a contract for it
already, was pleased with the terms, and hoped she could make Houghton Mifflin's deadline
for a spring 1918 publication. She missed it by six months.

Publication

The problem of money kept nagging her and she again felt she had to turn to writing short
fiction. She sent the editor of the Century by way of her literary agent Paul Reynolds a letter
proposing a series of stories under the general title "Office Wives." The editor liked the idea
and was willing to run the stories first in the magazine and then bring them out in book form.
Nothing came of this venture, however, presumably because Cather had to spend all of her
time and energy finishing My Ántonia. She began sending copy to her editor at Houghton
Mifflin, Ferris Greenslet, in driblets in November 1917, but he did not get all of it until the
twentieth of June the following year. By that time she was reading proof on the early chapters
and had completed complicated negotiations over the illustrations by W. T. Benda. She was
depressed during the winter over her inability to get the book finished for spring publication.
She said she had pushed it along as fast as she could, but writing was a slow business for her.
There was no good reason, she said, why My Ántonia had taken two winters, and she felt
rather humble about the matter (Woodress, Willa Cather 287).

One of the obstacles to finishing the book was an attack of bronchitis that laid her out for two
weeks in February. Also, her French cook, Josephine Bourda, was ill. Fortunately, at this
point her operatic friend Olive Fremstad, who had been the model of the adult Thea Kronborg
in The Song of the Lark, took pity on her and, when Cather was well enough to go out, sent
her car and chauffeur to bring Cather to her apartment for dinner and music in the evenings.
Fremstad had plenty of time that winter because the Metropolitan Opera was not putting on
Wagner's operas during the war. Wartime shortages also made life difficult as Cather
struggled to get My Ántonia finished. Coal was in short supply and she was unable to heat her
study properly.

In late June 1918, Cather went to Jaffrey again, intending to stay three weeks and finish
reading proof there. It took longer than she expected and the three weeks stretched into six.
She had two problems. First, she had to insist that the publisher's proofreaders allow her to
use an occasional subjunctive. She complained to Greenslet that his copyeditor must be one of
that ferocious band who was out to exterminate the subjunctive along with the brown-tailed
moth. [7] In putting the subjunctives back she requested that Houghton Mifflin not charge her
for the corrections. Her second problem lay with the illustrations, about which she had been
writing her publisher for more than a year. She had been the one to choose Benda as
illustrator because he was familiar with the Midwest farm setting. She wanted his stark black-
and-white drawings to provide realistic balance to Jim Burden's nostalgic memory of his
Nebraska youth. [8]
As the proof came in, she saw that Houghton Mifflin had left no space among the pages for
the drawings. She wanted them printed on the book paper and placed within the text as
integral leaves in the gatherings where they illustrated the story. She feared that Houghton
Mifflin would print them on coated paper and bind them as inserts. This is exactly what the
publisher did, as 3,000 such sets of illustrations already had been ordered. Greenslet acceded
to Cather's wishes, however, to the extent of ordering additional sets of the drawings printed
on book paper, but all of them were bound as inserts, contrary to Cather's desire. She
apparently did not notice this, for the advance copies she received contained the illustrations
printed on book paper, and she expressed pleasure at the finished product. It was not until
later printings that the illustrations were run off as integral leaves, such as one sees in copies
of the novel now in print or in this new edition. [9]

Early Reception

After the book went to press, Cather returned to New York in early August but left soon
thereafter for another trip west. She spent two weeks in the Southwest and six more in Red
Cloud. She received her advance copies of My Ántonia while she was in Nebraska, and when
she returned to New York, the novel was in the bookstores. The publication date was 21
September 1918, and the first printing ran to 3,500 copies, selling for $1.60 each. There were
two more printings before the end of the year, but the book came out at an unfortunate time.
The country was preoccupied with the final days of World War I, which ended with the
signing of an armistice on 11 November. The novel never became a best seller; there was only
one additional small printing in 1919 and not another until 1921.

The book sold 3,500 copies in the first nine days it was on sale, then reached 5,000 by 5
December. By 4 March, however, it had dropped to 100 per week, and that rate of sale
continued during 1919. Cather's royalties for the first year came to $1,300, which represented
a sale of 8,666 copies. Her royalties the second year dropped to $400, from a sale of 2,666. By
the end of 1920 Greenslet wrote her that My Ántonia was selling at a steady rate of 500 copies
per year, but during 1921 it was briefly out of print because of a printers' strike. The novel
was unavailable for only a short while and this situation never happened again.

The book gathered momentum as the years went by and in 1922 it sold 5,000 copies. It
continued to sell steadily throughout Cather's life. In 1943 Cather wrote Greenslet that she
noted from her royalty statement that My Ántonia had sold 2,565 copies in 1942, which she
thought pretty good for a book that had been out for a quarter of a century, and in wartime
too! (Also, it should be noted that in those days the only edition available was in hard cover.)
Greenslet agreed that it was a book to be cherished, and when he wrote his memoirs he
recalled that his reading of My Ántonia in manuscript afforded him "the most thrilling shock
of recognition of the real thing of any manuscript" he ever received (119). The contemporary
reviewers also were nearly unanimous in their praise of the novel.

H. L. Mencken led the chorus of admirers with two reviews in consecutive issues of the
Smart Set. My Ántonia, he wrote, was merely one more "step upward in the career of a writer
who has labored with the utmost patience and industry, and won every foot of the way by
hard work." He also had praised her earlier novels, but he thought My Ántonia was a sudden
leap forward, "not only the best [novel] done by Miss Cather herself, but also one of the best
that any American has ever done." Then he continued, with the utmost enthusiasm, "It is
intelligent; it is moving. The means that appear in it are means perfectly adapted to its end. Its
people are unquestionably real. Its background is brilliantly vivid. It has form, grace, good
literary manners. In a word, it is a capital piece of writing, and it will be heard of long after
the baroque balderdash now touted on the 'book page' is forgotten" (140-41).

Randolph Bourne, who Cather thought was the best reviewer in the business, was equally
pleased: "Miss Cather convinces because she knows her story and carries it along with the
surest touch. It has all the artistic simplicity of material that has been patiently shaped until
everything irrelevant has been scraped away." He concluded, "[Cather] has taken herself out
of the rank of provincial writers and given us something we can fairly class with modern
literary art the world over that is earnestly and richly interpreting the spirit of youth" (557).
This review was especially important to Cather because Bourne had panned The Song of the
Lark as a novel greatly overwritten and lacking in authenticity, an estimate that she later came
to agree with.

The New York Sun carried a long anonymous notice that particularly pleased Cather because
the reviewer really understood what she was doing and made all the right comments. "The
most extraordinary thing about My Ántonia is the author's surrender of the usual methods of
fiction in telling her story." It could have been made into an exciting, dramatic novel, but then
it would have been just another piece of fiction. Her method left the reader with the
conviction of absolute authenticity. "You picked up My Ántonia to read a novel (love story, of
course; hope it's a good one) and find yourself enthralled by autobiography" (1).

This comment on Cather's method was elaborated on by Cather herself in interviews given
after the novel appeared. She said she had purposely avoided any formal structuring because
Jim Burden's memories had to shape the narrative. She had skirted the opportunity for
melodrama and dwelt lightly on the incidents that most novelists would have emphasized. She
made up the story from the little everyday happenings that for the most part make up the bulk
of most people's lives. She said that she was trying to create the other side of the carpet, the
pattern that is supposed not to count. There was no love affair, no courtship, no marriage, no
broken heart, no struggle to succeed. "I knew I'd ruin my material if I put it in the usual
fictional pattern. I just used it the way I thought absolutely true" (Bohlke 77).

Contributing to this impression of autobiography, of course, was the creation of a first-person

narrator. After Cather conceived of Ántonia as her protagonist, she had to work out a way to
tell the story. She picked the first-person narrative technique because she believed that novels
of feeling, such as My Ántonia, were best told by a character in the story. Novels of action, on
the other hand, she said, should be told in the third person. But who should the first-person
narrator be? She told an interviewer that she had rejected Anna's lover because most of what
Cather knew about Anna came from talks with young men: "She had a fascination for them,
and they used to be with her whenever they could. They had to manage it on the sly, because
she was only a hired girl" (Bohlke 44).

Cather had to defend her use of a male point of view, however, and when her old editor on the
Nebraska State Journal, Will Owen Jones, asked her why she had done it, she gave him a
long answer. She repeated her explanation that she had gotten the material from young men,
then added further defense. She reminded Jones that she had acquired a great deal of
experience in using a male point of view in 1913 when she wrote S. S. McClure's
autobiography for him. She had been so successful in masquerading as McClure then that she
felt confident in doing an entire novel from a male perspective. When she first began writing
McClure's autobiography, she said she found it awfully hampering to be McClure all the time,
but in the end it became fascinating to work within the limits and color of the personality she
knew so well (Woodress, Willa Cather 289-90). When the book came out even Mrs. McClure
and John Phillips, McClure's college classmate and business partner, found the presentation
completely convincing.

Other reviewers were no less flattering than Mencken, Bourne, and the anonymous Sun
writer. N. P. Dawson in the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser agreed with
Mencken that My Ántonia lifted Cather's art to new heights and commented on her "gift of
remembering" and her "passion for the truth." This reviewer also was deeply impressed by the
descriptions of the country in all its variety, which are not only "incredibly vivid, but are
poetic and excite the imagination." In short, "it is a story of great truth and great beauty." In a
brief notice the Independent singled out as the outstanding characteristic of My Ántonia its
style, which sweeps the reader along in the story of youth and courage. Ántonia's life was a
paradigm for the "making of Americans from the foreign born" (131). The New York Times
described the novel as "a carefully detailed picture of daily existence on a Nebraska farm" and
Ántonia as "a true daughter of the soil" (429). The Nation also called attention to Cather's
style: "Her style has distinction. . . . [It is] the style of an artist whose imagination is at home
in her own land, among her own people." In her novel Cather created "a notable portrait of
Ántonia, rendered too quietly, perhaps," for readers seeking melodrama and excitement but
nonetheless "among the best of our recent interpretations of American life" (523).

The New York Call found the story of Ántonia "vivid and stirring" and the descriptions of the
country equally memorable: "The long and bitter winters, the scorching summers, the vast
stretches of uncultivated prairies, the hard struggle against poverty and actual starvation —
these things are described with a simplicity and directness that give us a real feeling of the
actuality" (10). H. W. Boynton in the Bookman paid tribute to the truth of the novel: "It is true
to the Nebraska soil of her own childhood, and therefore true to America and the world." He
also noted that some might think the novel artless and deficient in action, but declared, "Miss
Cather is an accomplished artist. Her method is that of the higher realism; it rests not at all on
the machinery of dramatic action." He summarized his review by saying that the effectiveness
of the portrait of Ántonia "depends in an unusual sense upon the skill of the painter. Casual as
her touches seem, no stroke is superfluous or wrongly emphasized; and we may be hardly
conscious how much of the total effect of the portrait is owing to the quiet beauty and purity
of the artist's style" (48).

In 1926 Cather revised her introduction to the novel, cutting it considerably to remove what
she then felt was unnecessary detail, and Houghton Mifflin brought out a new edition. Harry
Hansen of the New York World used the occasion to direct "attention to the fact that few
books of the last ten years have surpassed it in originality, in truth and in vitality. It belongs to
the basic foundation of our new literature." Then he analyzed Cather's revisions of the
introduction to show how her artistry had grown and concluded: "What a fine excuse this new
edition gives for rereading this splendid book! My Ántonia has the great quality of an
impeccable style. The theme is married to the method. The language is redolent of the soil,
clean-cut American writing, and yet dignified. It pulsates with the life of the people it
describes." [10]

Every one of the twelve reviews of My Ántonia that I have read was favorable, but as time
went on Cather convinced herself that the book's reception actually had been different. In
1922 she remembered that it took the critics two years to discover the book. She said they did
not like it at first because it had no structure. By 1941 she was writing an old friend that the
New York reviewers always lament the fact that her new book (whichever it might be) is a
marked decline from the previous one. Logically, she said, she should have reached the
vanishing point long ago. She added that she had read practically all the reviews of My
Ántonia and only two of them from coast to coast were favorable. All the others said the book
was formless and would be of interest only to the Nebraska State Historical Society
(Woodress, Willa Cather 301).

Continuing Reputation

Readers from 1918 to the present have read My Ántonia with the same enthusiasm displayed
at the outset by Greenslet, Mencken, and others. Twelve years after the book's publication
Greenslet sent a copy to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The old jurist, then 89, wrote
Greenslet, "[The book] lifts me to all my superlatives. I have not had such a sensation for a
long time. To begin with I infinitely respect the author's taking her own environment and not
finding it necessary to look for her scenes in Paris or London. I think it a prime mark of a real
gift to realize that any piece of the universe may be poetical if seen by a poet. But to be more
concrete, the result seems to me a wonderful success. It has unfailing charm, perhaps not to be
defined; a beautiful tenderness, a vivifying imagination that transforms but does not distort or
exaggerate — order, proportion. It is a poem made from nature from which only a genius
could make it: that being read establishes itself as true, and makes the reader love his country
more. I thank you deeply for having opened this door to me" (Sergeant 244-45). Cather
herself knew that she had accomplished something important in this novel and told an old
friend in 1938, "The best thing I've done is My Ántonia. I feel I've made a contribution to
American letters with that book" (Bennett 203). [11]

Textual Commentary

This second volume of the Cather Edition presents a critical text of Willa Cather's fourth
novel, My Ántonia, that is as close to Cather's intentions for it at the time of first publication
as current scholarship can establish. In the absence of manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, or
other materials antedating publication that might be considered, the first printing of the 1918
edition has been chosen as copy-text because it is the extant text closest to her own hand and
so most likely to preserve her use of accidentals; [1] Cather's careful attention to the details of
the production of her book lends further credence to this choice. Machine collations have
shown that plates of the 1918 first edition were used unaltered until 1926; except for a revised
and reset introduction and three alterations to the remainder of the text, the same plates were
used into 1938, when the last printing was made from them. [2]

The purpose of this essay is to set out three matters: (1) the history of the composition of the
novel and the production of the text by the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, in 1918; (2) an
analysis of the revisions made during the life of the book; and (3) the editorial policy upon
which emendations have been introduced into the copy-text in preparing this critical edition.
[3]

Composition and Production

Although no manuscript, typescript, or proof of My Ántonia survives, we can reconstruct the

composition and Cather's involvement in the publishing history of the novel from letters,
interviews, essays, and publication records. We know from her letters and interviews that
Cather characteristically wrote a draft in longhand, then revised as she typed a second and
then a third copy; she sent her revised typescript to a typist, who prepared a clean typescript,
and she made further changes and corrections on this typescript before sending it to the
publisher (Bohlke 41, 76). There is no reason to doubt that she followed this process while
writing My Ántonia.

On 8 March 1917 Cather first described what was to become My Ántonia in a letter to Roger
Scaife (the production editor at Houghton Mifflin) when she mentioned having dropped plans
for a projected story, "The Blue Mesa," to begin another novel. It was to be a new western
story about the same length and with similar background as O Pioneers!. If she were halfway
through the first writing of this story, as she reports in this letter (and she thought it would be
about the same length as O Pioneers!, or about 309 pages), she would have written to about
page 135, very near the end of what was to become Book I: "The Shimerdas." She asked
Scaife when she would have to have it before him to ensure fall publication (WC to Scaife, 8
March 1917). In his careful reply Scaife specified June, and mentioned the need to consider
illustrations if there were to be pictures in the book (Scaife to WC, 9 March 1917). On 13
March Cather wrote that she should be able to get the story done in time for the fall and, not
replying to his question about illustrations, described her wishes for head- and tailpieces and
for other details such as the color of the jacket (bright yellow), the type (very heavy black),
and the paper (not too expensive) (WC to Scaife, 13 March [1917]). So, very early in the
writing of the new story, even before she had completed a first draft, Cather was thinking as a
designer might about how to present her work.

During 1917 Cather worked on the new novel, all the while considering the details of
production; her letters to her editors in this year ask numerous questions about the illustrations
and make suggestions about the ideal form of the book as she saw it. She first suggested W. T.
Benda as the novel's illustrator in April (WC to Scaife, 7 April [1917]). [4] In October she
wrote Ferris Greenslet (her principal editor at Houghton Mifflin) about production details for
the book: she wanted a new color scheme for the jacket and binding and she was going to talk
with Benda about illustrations. She had even prepared some sketches to show Benda what she
wanted; if he couldn't echo them, she thought she'd rather not have illustrations at all (WC to
Greenslet, 18 October 1917).

While editorial matters were the primary subject of her correspondence with Houghton
Mifflin, the writing itself was the subject of Cather's letters to childhood friends in Red Cloud.
In these letters Cather revealed not only how much the memory of Red Cloud lay behind My
Ántonia, but also how much its ongoing life was influencing her story. She had learned of the
death of Mrs. Julia Miner, and in a note of condolence (29 October [1917]) she wrote to
Carrie Miner Sherwood that she was giving her mother's tricks of voice and gesture to one of
the characters in her book, a character in other ways also very like Carrie's mother. Cather
wanted to dedicate this book to Carrie and her sister Irene, and said it would give her pleasure
to do so. The older one gets, she wrote, the more precious one's memories become. The
dedication did in fact read: "To Carrie and Irene Miner / In memory of affections old and
true."

Cather finished what was to become Book II: "The Hired Girls" while at Jaffrey, New
Hampshire, that fall. In early November 1917 one of Houghton Mifflin's production editors,
A. Van Tuyll, wrote a report on a discussion she had had with Cather about this new book:

I had a long talk with Miss Cather about her new book and find that she has about eight
chapters completed and expects to begin sending us copy very soon. The setting of the story is
the same as that of the first part of "O Pioneers!" and the book when finished, will be
probably 25,000 words longer than "O Pioneers!"

Miss Cather is very anxious to have a good sized square type — larger than is used in "The
Song of the Lark."

Benda will submit to Miss Cather this week, some specimen illustrations and if they are
satisfactory she wants him to do the work for the book, using merely line cuts as head and tail
pieces and placing them more with regard to the artistic appearance of the book as a whole
than to their logical connection with the story. She says that if we will send her galley proofs
marked in pages she can easily arrange the illustrations herself.

For paper she wants a rough cream color which will take the line cuts well and give a warmer
effect than dead white. If we can duplicate the paper used in "O Pioneers!" that will be
perfectly satisfactory, or a slightly deeper cream color would do.

She wants a pumpkin yellow jacket, with the title in bold black letters. No illustration. (A.
Van Tuyll, internal report, 6 November 1917)

Van Tuyll's first paragraph may indicate how far Cather actually was then in the composition:
"about eight chapters completed" past Book II would have put her near the end of Book IV:
"The Pioneer Woman's Story," in the final version. The remaining paragraphs testify to the
designer's approach Cather took to the production of her works: definite and detailed. She
envisaged clearly the features she wanted for her book, including font of type, stock of paper,
and placement of illustrations.

The final months of 1917 were annoying to Cather inasmuch as she became embroed in the
question of the remuneration for Benda's illustrations, which she had commissioned without
receiving approval of terms from Houghton Mifflin. Scaife, in Greenslet's absence, apparently
followed Houghton Mifflin's practice in offering Benda $150 for the illustrations; the artist
was accustomed to getting more. Cather objected that she had originally planned 12
illustrations and $150 would not cover that, nor would it cover Benda's conscientious work on
them or his special knowledge of Bohemia (WC to Greenslet, 24 November [1917]). In his
reply of 26 November 1917, Greenslet reassured her that Houghton Mifflin would use the
illustrations (finally only eight), the only question being "the going price for work of this
character." Scaife also wrote to Cather and his reply, at our remove, may seem astringent. He
found $15.00 per drawing "a perfectly reasonable rate for book" drawings, though he knew
that magazines paid much larger sums to artists than did book publishers. In fact, he declared,
"they have completely spoiled the artists, and have made it practically impossible for book
publishers to use their work." Scaife then extended the argument on cost by mentioning the
increasing price of paper, printing, ink, cloth for binding, and labor. For these reasons he
couldn't go along with her suggestions to increase the amount to Benda. Scaife closed by
pointing out that he had approached Benda on illustrating a book on the dance for Houghton
Mifflin, so he didn't feel that Cather need have any qualms (Scaife to WC, 26 November
1917). But she was to have more than qualms.

Cather responded in a letter of 1 December, wherein she contradicted Scaife's figures about
illustrations in books: Benda had received $900 for a set of pen drawings for Jacob Riis's The
Old Town, published by Macmillan. Scaife replied immediately. Several sentences from his
letter reveal the tension between them, his tone increasingly defensive and condescending:
"Perhaps Mr. Benda's courtesy concealed from me any sense of disappointment he may have
felt when I made an offer of the price which I named for the little head pieces for your book."
Scaife continued, "I hope you will not feel that we are niggardly in this matter nor do I want
you to form the idea that we are not enthusiastic over the book." He summed up his view: "I
had pictured an attractive little book with illustrations that would appeal to the dilettante,
rather than to the average novel reader" (Scaife to WC, 3 December 1917). [5]

Both Benda and Cather felt that the 12 chapter-end illustrations they had projected could not
be done for the price Houghton Mifflin was willing to pay. As Cather had planned them they
would have required not only study of the text and study of western photographs (which
Cather had gone to some trouble to collect), but also some work from models (WC to
Greenslet, 24 November 1917). Since Benda had already put in so much preliminary work, he
suggested that he could do sketches in a more conventional style in spare moments from
better-paying work. Cather planned to help him with this new series of drawings (WC to
Scaife, 1 December 1917). Her discussions with Benda and Greenslet led to the decision to
place them as full-page illustrations, the form that they finally took (WC to Scaife, 9
December [1917]). Despite the trouble they had caused her, Cather was pleased with the new
illustrations; she did her best to protect them from being omitted or replaced for as long as My
Ántonia should be reprinted.

In any case, Cather persisted through Scaife's apparent opposition to her purposes, and in
December she was deep in production details for My Ántonia, which would finally appear in
September of the following year. She revealed that she was cutting the novel in revision, WC
to Scaife, 1 December [1917]). She specified that each drawing for My Ántonia should have a
full page with plenty of margin around it to give an antique effect; each should appear on a
recto page, using the same black text ink. She wanted "Ántonia" accented in the running title,
and proofs of the drawings as soon as possible (WC to Van Tuyll, 4 December [1917]; WC to
Scaife, 9 December [1917]). She knew exactly what she wanted.

On the basis of decisions Cather had already made in 1917, we can see the features of her
book as she envisaged it:

1. bright yellow or pumpkin jacket, with very heavy black type;

2. navy blue binding (later changed to brown);
3. rough cream-colored paper;
4. good-sized square type;
5. an accent mark over the A in Ántonia on the cover and in the running title;
6. full-page drawings with plenty of margin;
7. text paper for the drawings.

These instructions would provide the editors at Houghton Mifflin with guides to their
production of the book and would actually serve as directions when it came, as it did, to stop-
press alterations in the earliest forms of the first edition. For example, in the first state the
illustrations were printed on coated paper; it was not until the second state that they were
printed on the same paper as the text (WC to Greenslet, 11 July [1918]). Not until 1919, in the
fourth printing, were the illustrations printed on integral leaves (Crane 63).

In December 1917 Cather wrote to Greenslet, sending him 50 pages of her manuscript and
asking him for his personal impressions of the story, following it soon thereafter with another
note letting him know that she could give him more copy if he wished it (WC to Greenslet, 26
December 1917; WC to Greenslet, undated [1917]). In January 1918 Greenslet responded to
Cather's request for his personal impressions of her manuscript: "I think the story is going
very soundly. Your method, I take it, is not to aim so much at the continuous increase of
attention that the romantic writers aim at as much as to proceed steadily and convincingly on
the level of life with an occasional 'big punch' increasing in force as the story develops. This, I
think you are doing very successfully" (Greenslet to WC, 2 January 1918).

In succeeding months Cather worked closely with Houghton Mifflin. In February 1918 she
turned her attention to her name on the cover: "Willa S. Cather." She asked Greenslet to have
the middle initial deleted because it looked too much like a business signature (WC to
Greenslet, undated [February 1918]). During one of Greenslet's absences, she requested Helen
Bishop, Greenslet's secretary, to have the illustrations moved lower and farther out on the
page to suggest a vast sky and brilliant light over the prairies (WC to Bishop, undated
[February 1918]). She also asked Greenslet to use the rough cream paper of the dummy to
produce the entire edition (WC to Greenslet, 7 March [1918]). As publication drew near, she
became perturbed about the cuts being printed on coated paper and not on the same paper as
the text (WC to Greenslet, 11 July [1918]).

By June she was finished with the story and sent it on to Greenslet along with the
introduction. Months earlier she had written Greenslet that she would have to see how far the
story went before she could write the preface (WC to Greenslet, undated [February 1918]).
The introduction reached to five and one-half pages, which were simply added to the
forematter as pages ix-[xiv]. Cather wanted no intervening half-title page with "Book I, The
Shimerdas" on it between the introduction and the first page of the text. The publishers had
already set the pagination (assuming the presence of such a half-title page), so the text of the
first edition begins on page 3, with no half-title page. She asked that the introduction be
placed directly before the first page of the narrative, giving instructions about the titles to
appear on that page. At this time she also returned 27 corrected galleys, so her proofing
accompanied her final steps of composition. She wished to see page proofs, as well as proofs
of Benda's eight drawings (WC to Greenslet, 20 June [1918]).

The printing of the Benda drawings was a matter of special concern to Cather. Since she
wanted the illustrations on text paper, she apparently assumed that they would be printed on
the sheet with the relevant text, and told Houghton Mifflin that she could mark where each
drawing should go so that the make-up man could compose them with the text pages (WC to
Greenslet, 20 June [1918]). When Cather received the page proofs, however, she saw there
were no blank pages left for the illustrations. This was evidently her first intimation that
Houghton Mifflin planned to print the illustrations separately and bind them as inserts; she
immediately wrote that she did not want the illustrations printed on coated paper (WC to
Greenslet, 11 July [1918]). A note from the Art Department at Houghton Mifflin assured her
that the illustrations would be printed with the text and on the same paper, though not "paged
in" (Houghton Mifflin to WC, 13 July 1918). Nonetheless, she feared the Art Department's
plans to print the cuts on inserts instead of in the forms with the text, and questioned the
placement of these inserts; if they were to be mechanically placed, there would be nothing to
prevent the picture of Ántonia in the snowstorm from appearing in the midst of Tiny's
Klondike adventures, or that of the Bohemian woman gathering mushrooms from appearing
opposite the passage describing the grandmother digging potatoes (WC to Greenslet, 17 July
[1918]). Greenslet wrote to reassure her that the drawings would indeed be on the text paper
and that the inserts could be tipped in anywhere, not merely at the end of gatherings, as she
had feared. The drawings were to be printed separately, he said, "for the sake of getting a
sharper and more artistic impression" than would be possible by printing them with the text
(Greenslet to WC, 18 July 1918).

However, the publisher's records indicate that Houghton Mifflin had ordered 3,000 sets of
illustrations on coated paper in December 1917 (see also Crane 67). When they realized how
important the matter of paper was to Cather, they presumably ordered some sets on text paper;
the first printing of the first edition consists of two states, the first with illustrations on coated
paper, the other with illustrations on text paper. Houghton Mifflin continued to use up their
stocks of coated-paper and text-paper illustrations in the second and third printings in 1918. It
was not until the fourth printing, in 1919, that the illustrations were presented on integral
leaves as Cather had first envisaged.

In July 1917 Cather was still reading proof, complaining to Greenslet that she had had to
reverse his copy reader, who had changed all her "Mamas" to "Mammas." And she insisted on
occasional uses of the subjunctive, despite the copyeditor's attempts to delete them (WC to
Greenslet, 2 July [1918]). Proofs for the last section, "Cuzak's Boys," had not reached Cather
by early August (WC to Houghton Mifflin, 3 August [1918]).

In mid-September Scaife sent Cather an advance copy of the book, noting that they had done
their best to give it the appearance she wished, including the use of text paper for illustrations.
He added, "It seems to me that all these suggestions which you have made have been most
helpful" (Scaife to WC, 18 September 1918). Cather wrote back to say how much she liked the
book and the illustrations (WC to Scaife, 30 September [1918]). Her description suggests that
she had received a copy of the second state, with the text-paper illustrations; with all the care
she had devoted to the matter, it seems unlikely that she would have overlooked illustrations
on coated paper.

In the end Houghton Mifflin satisfied most of her wishes for production detail. The binding
was brown, rather than the navy blue she had first requested (WC to Scaife, 13 March [1917]),
but the embossed title was in the pumpkin- colored ink she had asked for. The pumpkin-
colored jacket, as she had wished, had no illustration on it and the lettering was a heavy black.
The type was square and black on rough creamy paper, with fairly wide margins. The
introduction came directly before the first chapter, with no chapter half-title page, in
accordance with her instructions. Although they were not exactly as she had planned with
Benda, the illustraÁntonia was printed on the binng and title page as she wanted, but the
printers did not use the accent in the running title, apparently for the practical reason that the
accent was "very apt to be broken off in using the plates" (Houghton Mifflin to WC, 4
December 1917). This was the form in which the book appeared through the ninth printing of
the first edition.

Just after My Ántonia was published on 21 September 1918, Greenslet wrote Cather, "I don't
know whether I have ever written you just how fine I think that book is. I ran through it
yesterday in its manufactured form, and was more than ever impressed both by its human
appeal and its clearly drawn structure. Unless I am much mistaken, it will hit the critics in the
eye, and take its place as one of the outstanding American novels" (Greenslet to WC, 23
September 1918).

Revisions
The next stage of the printing history of My Ántonia emerged from plans made by Cather and
her editor for a revised edition, which would be announced on the title page as a "new
edition." Early in 1926 Greenslet wrote Cather to suggest, as he put it,

some change in the Introduction and opening machinery of MY ANTONIA . . . with a view to
its reissue as a definite new edition. . . . With its established position as one of the classic
American novels and, in the opinion of a large number of your readers, perhaps the best of
your books, I think that a very great increase — both in the immediate and in the continuing
sales — would result from such a step. Will you not think the suggestion over and at your
convenience let me know your own views? (Greenslet to WC, 26 January 1926)

Cather agreed to this proposal (WC to Greenslet, 15 February 1926), and early in April
Greenslet replied with specific suggestions:

I wonder whether it wouldn't be feasible to omit all of the paragraph that begins on page X
with the words "When Jim" and of almost all of the paragraph on the following page which
begins "As for Jim". As for the first paragraph mentioned, I think your own statement "I do
not like the wife" sufficiently does for that lady, while Jim's character and temperament — his
persistent romanticism — are sufficiently exhibited in what follows. Three strokes of the
blue-pencil, in short, would — at least so it seems to me — do all that is really necessary.
Won't you think it over? (Greenslet to WC, 8 April 1926)

Think it over Cather did. She eliminated some and condensed other background details about
Jim Burden and his wife, reduced her own role in transmitting the manuscript, and generally
refined the style. She was prompt in her work on the introduction and, sending it to Greenslet,
told him not to lose it, for she'd never be able to redo it (WC to Greenslet, undated [1926]).
Greenslet acknowledged the receipt of her revisions on 5 May 1926. She received the proofs
before she left for New Mexico on the fifteenth of May and wrote him a hasty note that she
would mail the corrected proofs back to him on her way west (WC to Greenslet, undated
[1926]). When she found pause, she wrote Greenslet to request a correction of the text. She
acknowledged an error in her botany and wished a change: "The yellow tassels that were
ripening and fertilizing each other day by day" on page 156 should instead be fertilizing "the
silk" day by day (WC to Greenslet, undated [May 1926]). [6] We have confirmed that this
change was made in the first printing of the "new" 1926 edition (B). She added her wish that
the dedication page be retained for what Houghton Mifflin would now advertise as a new
edition (WC to Greenslet, undated [May 1926]). This revised form of the 1918 edition,
employing the original plates except for a substantially revised introduction reset in a different
typeface from that of the original version, with minor corrections of the text, and with such
alterations in the physical appearance as a new illustrated jacket, was the source of 14
additional printings. [7]

The next chapter in the story of My Ántonia occurred early in 1930 when Cather asked
Greenslet for a clean copy of the novel in order to make corrections for her English publisher,
Heinemann (WC to Greenslet, 6 February 1930). Heinemann had first published the novel in
England in 1919 (A1), using the sheets of the American edition sent over by Houghton
Mifflin; they now proposed to publish the book as part of their Windmill Library. The text of
this edition (C), which appeared in July 1930, is that of the 1926 revised edition with two
additional corrections Cather requested and without the illustrations. Cather wanted Houghton
Mifflin to make the same corrections in their editions (WC to Greenslet, 20 February 1930).
On page 121 (first edition), line 14 from the top, the word "Austrians," she specified, should
instead be "Prussians," and on page 311 (first edition), line 10 from the bottom, instead of
"misterioso, misterioso" she wanted "misterioso, misterios' altero," (WC to Greenslet, 20
February 1930). (What Heinemann actually printed was "misterioso, misterios' altero"
without the final comma. In fact, the Windmill Edition is in general riddled with
compositorial errors.)

Greenslet assured Cather that the changes she wanted would be "duly made" (Greenslet to
WC, 24 February 1930). The earliest American impression of the revised edition (B) which we
have found that contains these corrections is the ninth (1932), which impression we cite as D.
[8]

In December 1930 Cather wrote Greenslet about the disappearance of the Benda drawings
from the book, although the phrase "with illustrations by W. T. Benda" remained on the title
page. (According to Crane the illustrations had been dropped from the fifth printing, in June
of 1929.) She cautioned him that unless he brought them back in future printings, this line
should be removed from the title page. She hoped, however, that the line from Virgil in italics
on the title page could be kept (WC to Greenslet, 4 December 1930). Greenslet replied, after
investigating, that the illustrations had been dropped to effect savings, and that the reference
to the drawings would be dropped in the next printing (Greenslet to WC, 6 December 1930).
Cather then suggested they might find some cost-effective way to bring back the illustrations
in subsequent printings (WC to Greenslet, 26 December [1930]). The illustrations were finally
restored in 1932, in D, the ninth printing (Crane 68), and in November Cather wrote to
Greenslet to say she was glad the illustrations were back (WC to Greenslet, 2 November
1932).

The penultimate chapter in the publishing history of My Ántonia was initiated by Cather's
inquiry to Greenslet about the proposed subscription ("Autograph") edition of her books: she
wished to look over the books in order to make corrections (WC to Greenslet, 8 March 1936).
This new edition, which we cite as E, did not simply entail the resetting of type; to her it
meant an opportunity to revise. Greenslet replied that the return of her materials in the autumn
would be perfect: "To that end we should begin manufacture early in the year [1937], so that
if you could make whatever corrections you wish to make this Summer [1936] and let us have
the text in the Fall, the matter of times and seasons would work out perfectly" (Greenslet to
WC, 11 March 1936).

In September 1936 Cather sent three of the Knopf books, with her corrections, to Greenslet
for safekeeping. She had made corrections in the margins of pages and attached a list of them
on the end-pages of each book (WC to Greenslet, 8 September [1936]). These books were
Shadows on the Rock, One of Ours, and The Professor's House (Greenslet to WC, 15
September 1936). Cather worked on corrections for the new edition into the fall, taking up My
Ántonia in October and returning the corrected copy of it to Greenslet, noting that she had
made very few changes (WC to Greenslet, 30 October [1936]). The corrected copy of My
Ántonia that Cather prepared for the Autograph Edition apparently has not survived. Thus the
evidence concerning Cather's revision exists only in the Autograph Edition as published. The
list of changes on the end-papers, as described above, would be unlikely to account for the
full range of revisions actually printed; our knowledge of Cather's relationships with her
editors leads us to believe they would have consulted her about any classes of changes that
were made.
Cather also wanted the plates ofB, the revised and corrected edition of 1926) repaired. Her
observations on frequent instances of broken type and destrod letters (WC to Greenslet, 30
October [1936]) have been confirmed by machine collation: copies of B and later impressions
reveal broken letters — some mashed or gouged, some askew, even some with elements
missing. Greenslet responded immediately, "I think instead of patching the plates of the
current edition of that book, we shall use the new, revised plates when they are ready for the
Trade as well as for the Subscription edition" (Greenslet to WC, 2 November 1936).
Henceforward the new 1937 plates would be used. These preparations for trade publication
lead us to the final chapter in the publishing history of the book.

As Greenslet had planned, new plates were produced for the Autograph Edition of My
Ántonia (E). These plates were used unaltered, except for the removal of the limitation notice
and the Autograph Edition announcement on the half-title page, for the Library Edition (E1),
also published in 1937. They were also the basis for the regular trade printings (E2), beginning
in 1938. Internal memoranda at Houghton Mifflin discuss ways to make the trade printings
look as different as possible from the Autograph Edition with the least possible expense, by
means of altering the Autograph Edition plates: the running heads for title (verso) and chapter
(recto) were rendered by caps in roman typeface (the Autograph had italic capitals); the
running heads were all ruled; the page numbers were moved from page-foot center closer to
the outer margin; and the large initials beginning each chapter were replaced by small capitals
in the type font, which necessitated resetting part of each opening paragraph. The regular
trade printings were sometimes clothbound, sometimes paperbound, and sometimes a mix of
both, as Crane reports. The trade edition plates, including Benda's illustrations, were also used
for the Sentry paperback edition (E3) of 1961. [9]

In one important aspect the trade printings were closer to Cather's earlier intention in that they
included Benda's illustrations, which the Autograph Edition did not. In December 1937
Cather had declined a request from Greenslet that the new edition of My Ántonia be illustrated
by none other than Grant Wood. She was unequivocal in her feeling for the novel; she wanted
it left as it was: no colored plates, no school editions, no book club printings. She wanted the
Benda illustrations and the original type and paper kept (WC to Greenslet, 29 January
[misdated: actually December] 1937). [10]

World War II created a demand for cheap editions for wartime use. Heinemann, in England,
produced an edition (F) in 1943 for distribution only to members of the Readers Union, a
book club. A year later Houghton Mifflin, with Cather's subsequent approval, authorized a
special edition of My Ántonia, the Armed Services Edition (G), for distribution to the troops
overseas (Greenslet to WC, 3 October 1944). The Armed Services Edition uses the 1937
Autograph Edition as copy-text; it corrects one typographical error found therein, but makes
no other substantive or accidental changes. The format of the Armed Services Edition differs
in that the print is very small, appearing in two columns on each page; it omits the Benda
illustration found between the introduction and Book I of the Autograph Edition; there are no
separate title pages for the five parts of the novel; and the running heads appear at the bottom
of the page and consist of the novel title and author's name rather than the novel title and part
titles.

Cather succeeded in saving My Ántonia throughout the copyright period from all the
anthologizers and would-be screenwriters, and from most of the cheap editions she deplored
(WC to Greenslet, undated [1938]). And she did this caring for the integrity of the book, not
just for its money-making potential. In 1938 she wrote that My Ántonia had succeeded on its
own, without any of the changes Houghton Mifflin had proposed over the years (WC to
Greenslet, undated [1938]). She was sure that it was better for a book to make its own way, if
it could. In 1944 she responded to Frank Woods's pleasant memories of Nebraska stirred by
My Ántonia: She was pleased that her book had reminded him of Nebraska in hunting season,
for she also was homesick for the autumns there. She even reminisced a bit about the novel:
The publishers had been cool and some readers thought it formless, but those who liked it had
liked it well, and after that first year the book moved and never quit going along (WC to
Woods, 14 June 1944). Cather seems almost to have seen My Ántonia as a living thing that, in
spite of a disadvantaged beginning, had found a modest but obdurate identity and had
persisted uncompromisingly, loved and cared for by friends old and new. My Ántonia had in
fact made its own way.

Analysis of the Revisions

There are two groups of changes to the first edition: (1) the revision of the introduction, the
one correction incorporated into the 1926 revised edition text, and two additional corrections
of the 1926 revised edition made sometime after 1930; and (2) the revisions for the 1937
Autograph Edition.

Understanding Cather's introduction and her revisions means recognizing "how

revolutionary . . . My Ántonia was . . . in America" when Cather wrote it (Lewis 107). In
1918, having completed her story and perhaps anticipating confusion, even resistance, to its
lack of conventional form and love story, Cather wrote her introduction, in it describing the
idea of her novel by imagining discussions between herself and her narrator. [11]

In altering her introduction for the 1926 revised edition (see "Rejected Substantives"), Cather
condensed or eliminated information about the adult lawyer Jim Burden that she felt might
distract from his story of Ántonia and his childhood. In 1918 Jim's "naturally romantic
disposition "is seen in the enterprises for which he had raised capital, whereas in 1926 that
enthusiasm is conveyed by general descriptions of his love, faith, and knowledge of the
country. In 1918 he arrives "with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur overcoat,"
and within the legal portfolio a manuscript he "tapped . . . with some pride"; in 1926 he
arrives without the fur overcoat. Cather also greatly reduced the story of Jim Burden's wife. In
1918 Jim's wife is named (Genevieve Whitney), given a background (rumor had it that,
having been jilted by her cousin, she married Jim out of bravado), and provided with a list of
activities. These personalizing and historical details are eliminated in the 1926 version.
Finally, Cather reduced her own presence in the introduction, eliminating her statement that
she had not written about Ántonia herself, her proposal that both she and Jim "set down on
paper" all that they remembered of her, and her admission that "[her] own story was never
written."

Other minor changes alter meaning in the introduction. Adverbial variants heighten, for
example, the adult Jim's pull away from New York. In 1918 Jim is "sometimes" gone from his
office, but is "often" gone in 1926; whereas in 1918 Cather reflects that "we do not often
meet" in New York, in 1926 they "seldom" meet. By eliminating Jim's description of
Ántonia's effect on him ("To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to
set a quiet drama going in one's brain"), Cather avoids repeating his later reflection on
Ántonia's ability "to leave images in the mind that did not fade," and his description of the
"succession of such pictures" in his memory (342).
The three corrections Cather made to the body of the text (described in more detail on pages
495-97) were the only changes made in the text until those made for the Autograph Edition. In
describing the classes of revisions made in the Autograph Edition we must remember that
Cather, in order to indicate her wishes to the publisher, made marginal corrections in the
novel, attaching a full list on the end-papers. This corrected copy of My Ántonia has not
survived. In any case, the fuller record of changes actually printed in the 1937 edition
suggests the publishers as a source of change as well as the author.

Substantive corrections and changes made for the 1937 (Autograph) edition (see "Rejected
Substantives") illustrate Cather's usual concern for accuracy and clarity; they also suggest a
later and somewhat different authorial intention for the work. [12] The many revisions in
accidentals reveal a shift toward greater restraint and more formal grammatical usage. For
example, the expansive and flexible forms of the 1918 first edition were tightened to more
conservative forms in the Autograph Edition, in keeping with Cather's practice in her later
novels. [13] The use of capitals and abbreviations is normalized, [14] and, in a few cases,
dialect forms are regularized. [15] There are many changes in spelling, [16] in the use of
nonrestrictive nouns, [17] in the forms of compound words, [18] and in paragraphing. [19]
Finally, all the spaced contractions of the 1918 edition are, in 1937, made to conform to the
convention current at the later date. All in all, these changes deserve further critical attention.
[20]

Textual Policies and Procedures

The policy of the Cather Edition is to present the work as Cather intended it at first
publication in book form, emended only to admit corrections authorized by Cather herself or
deemed necessary by the present editors. Such a policy necessarily precludes incorporation of
those later revisions made by Cather that alter the substance of the work or its aesthetic
intention.

In terms of editorial procedure, we begin with a bibliographical survey of the history of the
text, sorting out the problems it presents. Having then made a calendar of extant texts, we
collect and examine examples of all authorial texts, that is, those forms of the text that
involved or may have involved Cather's participation or intervention. All these forms are then
collated against a standard of collation, that individual form of the work most likely to be
finally identified as the copy-text. The collations provide lists of substantive and accidental
variations among these forms. The conflation, a gathering of the collations, then provides us
with a list of all substantive pre- or post-copy-text changes in all relevant (authorial) editions.
From this conflation we prepare a critical text (an emended copy- text). The conflation also
provides us with an emendations list, which identifies changes the editors have made in the
copy-text; a list of variants, which provides a history of the work as contained in its various
forms; and a list of hyphenated compounds. [21] In each volume of the Cather Edition, we
provide in essay form an account of the history of the text and a rationale for emendations
made.

The Text of My Ántonia

The first printing of the first edition (A) of My Ántonia was offered for sale on 21 September
1918. Machine collations have confirmed that, except for the resetting of the Introduction and
one correction of error in the text of the 1926 "revised edition" (B) and two corrections in a
later printing of this (D), the plates of A were used unaltered through 3 March 1938, when the
last copies of the fourteenth printing of B were offered for sale. Sheets of the fourth printing
of A were sent to Heinemann in London for issue under their imprint in 1919 (A1). The plates
of A were also used for the text of the novel in B, which we designate a revised edition
because it was issued with a revised and reset introduction and a new title page, which labels
it a "new edition." [22] Sheets of B were then issued in England under the Heinemann imprint
in 1927 (B1). A later form of B that included two corrections (D) was issued by Houghton
Mifflin beginning some time after 1930; our best evidence at present suggests that the ninth
impression (1932) is the earliest printing into which these corrections were introduced.

The Autograph Edition (E) was produced in 1937. The substantive variants (following Greg;
see note 1) are likely to be Cather's; the accidentals may be hers because of their coherence
with her later practice, as illustrated in holograph changes to the surviving typescripts of her
last novels. From slightly altered plates of this edition (see the earlier discussion on pages
499-500) were printed the Library Edition of 1937 (E1) and two succeeding series of trade
printings, one beginning with the second printing from the Autograph Edition plates (E2), the
other beginning with the printings of the Sentry paperback in 1961 (E3). Houghton Mifflin's
Armed Services Edition of 1944 (G), a E, had no textual descendants.

There were also two English editions. The Windmill Edition, published by Heinemann in
1930 (C), incorporates the two corrections requested by Cather both for it and for subsequent
U.S. printings of B. Heinemann also published a wartime Readers Union Edition in 1943 (F)
which had no textual descendants.