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My Ántonia

DEBORAH G. LAMBERT (ESSAY DATE JANUARY 1982)

SOURCE: Lambert, Deborah G. “The Defeat of a Hero: Autonomy and Sexuality in My Ántonia.” American Literature 53, no. 4 (January 1982): 676-90.

In the following essay, Lambert asserts a lack of character development in Cather’s My Ántonia attributable to the author’s personal distress about her sexuality at the time she wrote the novel.

My Ántonia (1918), Willa Cather’s celebration of the American frontier experience, is marred by many strange flaws and omissions. It is, for instance, difficult to determine who is the novel’s central character. If it is Ántonia, as we might reasonably assume, why does she entirely disappear for two of the novel’s five books? If, on the other hand, we decide that Jim Burden, the narrator, is the central figure, we find that the novel...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Willa Cather (Essay Date 1931)
4. General Commentary
   1. Susan J. Rosowski (Essay Date Autumn 1981)
   2. Joan Acocella (Essay Date 2000)
5. Title Commentary
   1. O Pioneers!
   2. The Song of the Lark
   3. My Ántonia
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Willa Cather
2. Feminism