Analysis Of Willa Cather 's ' My Antonia '

In the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather is a book based upon the main characters memories. Many critics have criticized this novel, and have focused on such literary elements as setting,theme, tone and etc. However the strongest argument is the one that states that the foundation of every element in the book is based on the personal memories of Willa Cather. After researching Willa Cather you can discover many biographies that talk about her life. In many instances I found stories about her life that I found similar to Jim and Antonias. Since she used personal experiences and turned them into a story it adds a special touch to her writing.

The setting of the story has tremendous impact on the characters and themes in the novel "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Cather's delicately crafted naturalistic style is evident not only in her colorfully detailed depictions of the Nebraska frontier, but also in her characters’ relationship with the land on which they live. The common naturalist theme of man being controlled by nature appears many times throughout the novel, particularly in the chapters containing the first winter.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the United States gained many new citizens – immigrants from other countries in search of the American Dream. However, the immigrants, who came from countries like faced a large obstacle in the form of prejudice. The belief that foreigners were less than native-born Americans was prevalent, and this nativism was present in both society and the laws. Sometimes foreigners were the subject of a museum display in which Americans viewed them as spectacles, not people, and laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limited or even banned immigration from certain countries. Social Darwinism was a popular theory used to support these nativist views; the fact that many immigrants lived in poverty was used as evidence that they were inferior and failed because natural selection, so to improve American society immigrants should be removed or banned. However, some citizens viewed these policies and beliefs with distaste, including Willa Cather.

The central narrative of My Antonia could be a check upon the interests, and tho' in his fib Jim seldom says something directly concerning the concept of the past, the general tone of the novel is very unhappy. Jim’s motive for writing his story is to do to change some association between his gift as a high-powered any professional person and his nonexistent past on the NE grassland ; in re-creating that past, the novel represent each Jim’s retention and his feelings concerning his recollections. in addition, inside the narrative itself, persona usually look rachis yearningly toward the past that they need losing, particularly when Book I. Life in blackness Hawk, Jim and Ántonia recall their Day on the farm Lena appearance back toward her spirit together with her family; the Shimerdas and therefore the Russian mirror on their lives in their several home countries before they immigrated to the United Country .

Willa Cather draws a stark contrast between the respectable women of Black Hawk and the “hired girls” in books II and III of My Antonia through Jim’s unavoidable attachment to them.  The “hired girls” are all immigrants who work in Black Hawk as servants to help support their families in the country.  They are hardworking and charming.  They are simple and complicated.  They are sad and joyful.  They work all day and dance all night.  For Jim they are the most interesting people who  reside in Black Hawk.  The respectable women are boring and predictable.  They all go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning.  Their

Throughout My Antonia, the difference between immigrants and native lifestyles are shown. While neither Jim not Antonia is rich, Jim is definitely more well off than her. He knows the language and has enough that he can have more opportunities. Antonia realizes that her life is going to be more difficult and that she will have to work more because of her mother’s decision to move to America. She tells Jim that “if I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us,” (90) and knows that her gentle personality might be at stake. This also foreshadows future events where Antonia struggles as an immigrant farmer. It adds obstacles to her life which might lead to them drifting apart in their friendship, even complete separation. This relates to the world in how immigrants had a harder time getting going in life. Antonia’s mother has already become changed because of poverty. She is grasping, selfish, and believes everyone should help her family. Jim’s grandmother defends her, knowing that, “a body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in them,” (60), though it is socially unacceptable. The pressures of helping her family led Antonia to not be educated and become a farmer. She is happy, but this leads to Jim being away, “twenty years before I kept my promise,” (211) as he is a successful lawyer and travels. They still have old connections, though being from Bohemia did change Antonia’s life and where it could have gone.

In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men

The play ?Trifles?, by Susan Glaspell , is an examination of the different levels of early 1900?s mid-western farming society?s attitudes towards women and equality. The obvious theme in this story is men discounting women?s intelligence and their ability to play a man?s role, as detectives, in the story. A less apparent theme is the empathy the women in the plot find for each other. Looking at the play from this perspective we see a distinct set of characters, a plot, and a final act of sacrifice.

In My Antonia, Willa Cather emphasizes the importance of the past through Jum Burden's narration. Jim Burden realizes at the conclusion of the novel how much he enjoyed his childhood days and how much his memories mean to him. There are three events that Cather included in the novel which contribute greatly to the overall theme, concerning the importance of the past.

Willa Cather admired the indomitable spirit of Antonia. Antonia demonstrated a strong spirit when hard circumstances came her way. She always stood tall and was never defeated during those hard situations which I think Cather admired them. The defeats she endured were the death of her father, the Harling’s’ situation. Another temporary setback she endures was when she gets pregnant and is abandoned by her fiancée.

   In her novel, My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "creat[ed] images of strong and resourceful women upon whom the fate of a new country depended" . This responsibility, along with the "economic productivity" Gilbert and Gubar cite (173), reinforces the sense that women hold a different place in this frontier community than they would in the more settled areas of America.

Susan Glaspell uses a variety of symbols in her play to demonstrate the stereotypical view and treatment of women by men during the start of the twentieth century. She intricately portrays the female characters in her story as intelligent, but passive due to the fact that males dismiss their ideas and conversations as unimportant. The play, Trifles, uses multiple symbols to show how men fail to recognize the intelligence of women, and oppress the feminists’ way of thinking throughout society.

My Antonia was published in 1918, two years before all American women were granted the right to vote in 1920. Willa Cather lived in a bustling time where women were heavily vouching for fundamental rights and breaking free from what had been considered societal norms. While Cather mentions the conventional duties and housewives of the time the book was written, her story’s focus differs. “My Antonia’s,” narrative centers around women, many of whom are immigrants, who transcend the gender norms of their time on their journeys to create successful lives, much to Jim’s admiration.

My Antonia is a classic story originally published in 1918 by Willa Cather. Cather was a famous author in the early-mid 1900s, placing her work in an era of a formal, illustrative, sophisticated writing style. She wrote numerous books about life on the great plains, where she was born and raised. She received many awards for her artistic novels throughout her lifetime. She died in 1947, and the public continues to praise her work almost a century after its publishing date. Her free-spirited writing has made her an icon ever since her books reached the shelves.

      A common trait for Willa Cather's characters is that they possess a certain talent or skill. This art usually controls the lives of these characters. According to critic Maxell Geismar, Cather's heroines who possess a skill often either do not marry or marry men whom they dominate; if they do marry the marriage is without excitement because their passion is invested in their art. In a sense, Geismar accuses Cather's heroines of sacrificing their marital roles for their art (172). However, marriage is not the only aspect that raises the subject of sacrifice for Cather's protagonists - there is also the issue of family. This is because a woman artist, or any