Analysis Of Willa Cather's O Pioneers By Alexandra Bergson

During the late 19th and early 20th century in America, the rise of Feminism challenged the traditional gender roles. The female authors of this time period represented realistic aspects of women’s struggles, which often reflected limitations from society and their own lives. The three female authors who advocated women’s struggles in their writings were Sojourner Truth, Willa Cather, and Edith Wharton. In the speech to the American Equal Rights Association, Truth reveals that women do not have rights to present their voices in the court. Cather addresses women’s devastating labor life after the marriage in “A Wagner Matinee.” Likewise, in “April Shower”, Wharton portrays men’s criticism upon economically successful women. American female authors of the late 19th and early 20th century demonstrates the ideas of Feminism by men objecting to representation in politics, prohibiting career over marriage, and criticizing economic self-sufficiency.

After Alexandra’s father, John Bergeson became sick he knew that she would have to be the one in charge of their land. His two older sons were hard workers but knew nothing in comparison to Alexandra when it came down to the logistics of the farm. John even stated “the boys were not as half intelligent as their sister” (Cather, 1987, p. 76). John’s dying wishes were to keep the land going and to never leave even when times were tough and that is exactly what Alexandra did. By leaving Alexandra in charge of the land Cather is showing her beliefs that women are beyond capable of being in charge and making decisions without men. She built her own empire by turning the untamed land into prosperous country side and she became one of the most successful farmers on the divide even after a long sixteen-year struggle.

Many things influence a person’s overall perception and opinions about the world around them, such as their education, geographic location of upbringing, or religious views. All of these factors, combined with countless others, shape each person into who they are and how they interact with society. The time period a person lives through is another exceptionally important contribution, as it is creates the entire backdrop of their experiences -- socially, economically, and politically. A psychoanalytical look at O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, explains how the social and cultural implications of Willa’s life are transferred to this piece of literature. I believe that Willa Cather created the primary, male characters in O Pioneers! based on the unfortunate experiences she had with men in her early adulthood, which caused these strongly biased characters, while the female characters are given exaggerated positive personality traits.

It seems that everything in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, aside from the land, starts out so full of life and ends so utterly devoid of it. It could even be said that the characters in the novel become imprisoned by their own lives. Marie is barred by her love, which, in the end, leaves her quite literally lifeless. Alexandra, who initially is so full of life, begins to view her life as unimportant and as a prison house. Even the spirituality of the pioneers is ever declining and dying away. Ultimately it is Frank who embodies the idea most obviously; in his youth Frank lives the life of a happy, handsome man, yet his life ends in utter despondence and literal imprisonment. How is it that all of these things can be drained of life while the American land is thriving with it? One could see the relationship between the land and the people that live on it as the American dream and those who live that dream. Invariably, the people who contribute to the flourishing of the land also contribute to the fallowness of their own life, just as those who indulge in the American Dream lose not only themselves, but their own dreams to it.

O Pioneers!(1993) by Willa Cather begins on a blustery winter day, in the town of Hanover, Nebraska, sometime between 1883 and 1890. The narrator introduces four main character: the very young Emil Bergson; his older sister, Alexandra; her friend Carl Linstrum; and a little girl, Marie Shabata. Alexandra's father, John Bergson, is dying. He tells his two oldest sons, Lou and Oscar, that he is leaving the farmland, and all of what he has accomplished, to their sister.

In the novel O Pioneers! the author Willa Cather?s vision of Alexandra Bergson is consistent in character treatment with other authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter), and Stephan Crane (Maggie: A Girl of the Streets). In each novel, all authors possess a central character that has an obvious tension between themselves and their community. Unlike the previous authors, Cather?s sympathies lie toward Alexandra. She makes Alexandra seem artificial because she has given a woman (also being her main character) strength and courage, along with power to overcome those who wish to pull her down.

Willa Cather’s, book O Pioneers represents a completely different way of life than traditional life is the early 1900’s . Traditionally, a man’s main job consists of hard labor and a woman’s job involves having children and focusing on home life. Although this happens to be the “norm” of the time, charcters in O Pioneers do quite the opposite. Carl Linstrum, a male character in the novel, does not come across as your “typical” 1900’s man. Another bold character, Alexandra Bergson, defies the social stereotype widely accepted at the time of O Pioneers. She supports herself and does everything that people of her time period believes a man should do. Most relationships being male dominated, it’s obvious that a lot men don’t have respect for women during this time.

Considering I am one of the only two males in the Intro to Women’s Literature class, I felt moved to touch on Willa Cather’s flipping of the gender roles in the book O Pioneers! I will be using my own opinion in this essay, along with textual evidence to back up my claims. I will also be establishing connections between Cather’s portrayals of herself within the themes and characters in the book.

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.

The early twentieth century, a time of debates over women’s rights, paved the way for two conflicting definitions of feminism. There was one definition, referred to as humanist or identity feminism. It asserts that women are essentially human, and therefore deserve the same liberties as men in all scenarios, because they are fundamentally more the same than different, to their male counterparts. In contrast, there is the other definition, named difference or complementarity feminism. It says women and men are different but equal, because they posses distinct qualities that complete each other, when a union is formed. The utopian novel, Herland, by feminist Charlotte Gilman, pulls from both

Literature changes as current events change and as the structure of society begins to shift. American feminist literature started to become prevalent during the Victorian era, or around the latter part of the 19th century. This is the time when the first wave of feminism in the United States hit. The Seneca Falls Convention - the first women’s rights convention - and the emergence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s American Equal Rights Association in the middle of the 19th century are among some of the noteable events that sparked this movement in literature. Women across America were inspired by the changing of the times, and that is reflected in many American female authors’ writings.

Willa Cather imaginatively went against the “norms” of the society that she lived in, in her famous work My Antonia, she expressed ideas that were very different than what was universally believed regarding the roles of women; Cather redefines women through her exploration of conflict, setting, and characterization.

The difficult coexistence between individuals and society is a common theme in American culture, and is prominent in American literature. Among the first to feel the effects of this struggle were seventeenth century Puritan Europeans, who called America home in order to find refuge from the religious oppression of their former society. America has encountered the complex relationship between person and public through the anomalies of individual dreams and the “great American Dream.” This complex correlation is also integrated within in Willa Cather's novel, ​O Pioneers!​ . Illustrated through the story of Alexandra Bergson, Cather establishes the capabilities of the ambitious individual, in opposition to universal human desires and the influences of historical background.

For this essay, we focused strictly on critics' reactions to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. For the most part, we found two separate opinions about The Handmaid's Tale, concerning feminism. One opinion is that it is a feminist novel, and the opposing opinion that it is not. Feminism: A doctrine advocating social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men as recorded in Webster's Dictionary. This topic is prevalent in the novel The Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood, a Canadian writer, spends most of her time featuring women in her books, novels, and poetry that examine their relationships in society. In the book Atwood centers her novel on a girl whom

Feminist theory analyzes the gender inequality that women have faced throughout the years due to a patriarchal society. Women were expected to fit the traditional female and conform to the gender norms that society has constructed. According to A Brief Introduction to Critical Theory, “Feminism embodies a way of reading that investigates the text’s investment in or reaction to the patriarchal power structures that have dominated Western culture” (227). Patriarchal power has oppressed women economically, socially, and politically. Women were associated more with domesticity than with politics and financial situations. They were not provided the same educational opportunities as men. These issues have been addressed by people, such as Mary