My Antonia Essay: Role of Women

1. Why did Cato object to repealing the Oppian law? What was the basis of his objections?

Throughout the novel especially in the beginning it focuses a lot on the relationship between Antonia and Jim. While Jim does her a great deal by helping her learn English, it turns out that he really isn’t the one who’s learning the most from the relationship. It turns out that as these two kids grow up together through the book that Jim learns a lot more. Antonia without even trying ends up teaching Jim a lot about life and makes him reevaluate some of his previous opinions.

As a senior revising and expanding this essay, I realized how much I have grown as a writer and a student of literature. When I began revising, I realized that the focus of the paper needed to be narrowed and focused more on the play Arcadia, in which Thomasina is the exception to the types of women characters stereotypically

Gender roles are the roles that men and women are expected to occupy based on their sex. Traditionally, many Western societies have believed that women are more nurturing then men . . . . One way that a woman might engage in the traditional feminine gender role would be to nurture her family by working full-time within the home rather than taking employment outside of the home. (Blackstone)

In my writing assignment I chose two of the essay questions about the novel “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. I chose question number three and question number four to write my essay. And question number three the author uses symbols from nature to express essential aspects of the lives of the characters. I chose three symbols and discussed how they convey information about the daily lives of the characters, and how the characters relate to each other and how the author views life. The fourth question that I chose to write about is how the author admires the character, Antonia. I wrote about the three characteristics that the author admires and added quotes from the book and also the reading about the author.

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

In the late 19th century, gender roles were strictly enforced. Being a woman did severely affect the possibilities or the chances to succeed. Success depended on how badly the person wanted to succeed. Men were meant to be the main source, and women were meant to get married and care for her family. But Ántonia, does not want to obey to the typical female role. On the prairie, after her father dies, she insists on working in the fields with the men. This disappoints Jim and even agitated him by Antonia's change to a more "masculine" attitude.

Why do many immigrants make the long and usually costly move to America? Is it the largely idolized notion that Americans are wealthier with better opportunities? Moreover, is the price some pay worth the risk? In Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, Ántonia faces struggles as a young child, including language barriers, poverty, harsh living conditions, and her beloved father’s death. However, as Ántonia grows into a woman, she must face struggles of a social nature, such as the division of social and economic classes, as well as social opprobrium. While immigration to America may open many doors for immigrants, it is equally fraught with obstacles. Likewise, Ántonia must face many adversities after her emigration from Bohemia to Nebraska, which

The role of the women in My Antonia as the showcased laborers and workers in the new community does not, certainly, alleviate the questions of patriarchal influence offered in the discussions of gender above. Certainly, the fact that Antonia is deprived of the education she longs for and yet cannot have, because it is she who is responsible for her family's success--"'School is all right for little boys. I help make this land one good farm'" (94)--cannot be seen as entirely good, if we agree that "the value of education is among the greatest of all human values" (Woolf 45); and in spite of her protests to the contrary, the bitter recognition of exclusion brings Antonia to tears. However, recognizing the women's relationship to the development of national culture does suggest some alternative readings to the conclusions often reached, even as Antonia's sacrifice of her own education does not exclude the contribution she makes to American culture, as we shall see.

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.

Modernism is the term of deviating from the norm. In the early 1900s, modernism influenced women’s role in society by providing more opportunities, jobs, and role models for girls today, in society.

In her essay, “Housewives and Homework: The Lacemakers of Narsapur,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty focused on how men sold products that women produced and profited from women’s work. The essay basically pointed out how work can be defined according to sexual identity. It made me wonder if American women are still perceived by men in society as being housewives even though some of us are doctors, lawyers, teachers etc. Is the work that women do seen as what Mohanty pointed out in her essay as “leisure time activities”? I think that to some extent men believe that women’s sole purpose on Earth is to be their wives/partners and to be good mothers to their children. Even though we “leisurely,” as Mohanty so

Jim’s relationship with Antonia shapes him as a character and provides him with the tools to grow from a child to a young adult.

As you and Rhymini mentioned, women in Antonia’s Line are very different from the women written in Enloe’s and Shiva’s articles. The readings stressed the power imbalance between men and women which is shaped by development, industrialization, and globalization. In contrast, Antonia’s Line introduces new characters of women and their lives. Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, are totally opposite of the image of women whom we have seen in a patriarchal society. Danielle wants a baby but not a husband, and her mother, Antonia, respects Danielle’s decision and supports her. Also, Antonia herself rejects Bas’s had in marriage, and Bas move into Antonia’s farm and help her in chores and farming. They break patriarchal ideology and socially structured

Men and women are different. How different depends on what stereotype one chooses to believe. Although it has been argued that some stereotypes are positive, they are never beneficial. Society creates gender stereotypes and perpetuates them through societal institutions. In this paper the roles of gender will be analyzed regarding education, public policy, and the workplace. How education shapes gender, the gender norms in government, the law, policies, and the role of gender in the workplace will be discussed.