Ántonia Shimerda

Ántonia Shimerda, a young immigrant girl of appealing innocence, simple passions, and moral integrity, the daughter of a Bohemian homesteading family in Nebraska. Even as a child, she is the mainstay of her gentle, daydreaming father. She and Jim Burden, the grandson of a neighboring farmer, become friends, and he teaches her English. After her father’s death, her crass mother and sly, sullen older brother force her to do a man’s work in the fields. Pitying the girl, Jim’s grandmother finds work for her as a hired girl in the town of Black Hawk. There, her quiet, deep zest for life and the Saturday night dances lead to her ruin. She falls in love with Larry Donovan, a dashing railroad conductor, and goes to Denver to marry him, but he soon deserts her, and she comes back to Black Hawk, unwed, to have her child. Twenty years later, Jim Burden, visiting in Nebraska, meets her again. She is now married to Cuzak, a dependable, hardworking farmer, and the mother of a large brood of children. Jim finds her untouched by farm drudgery or village spite. Because of her serenity, strength of spirit, and passion for order and motherhood, she reminds him of stories told about the mothers of ancient races.

James Quayle Burden

James Quayle Burden, called Jim, the narrator. Orphaned at the age of ten, he leaves his home in Virginia and goes to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. In that lonely prairie country, his only playmates are the children of immigrant families living nearby, among them Ántonia Shimerda, with whom he shares his first meaningful experiences in his new home. When his grandparents move into Black Hawk, he misses the freedom of life on the prairie. Hating the town, he leaves it to attend the University of Nebraska. There, he meets Gaston Cleric, a teacher of Latin who introduces the boy to literature and the greater world of art and culture. From the university, he goes on to study law at Harvard. Aided by a brilliant but incompatible marriage, he becomes the legal counsel for a Western railroad. Successful, rich, but unhappy in his middle years and in the failure of his marriage, he recalls his prairie boyhood and realizes that he and Ántonia Shimerda have in common a past that is all the more precious because it is lost and almost incommunicable, existing only in memories of the bright occasions of their youth.

Mr. Shimerda

Mr. Shimerda, a Bohemian farmer unsuited to pioneer life on the prairie. Homesick for the Old World and never happy in his Nebraska surroundings, he finds his loneliness and misery unendurable, lives more and more in the past, and ends by committing suicide.

Mrs. Shimerda

Mrs. Shimerda, a shrewd, grasping woman whose chief concern is to get ahead in the world. She bullies her family, accepts the assistance of her neighbors without grace, and eventually sees her dream of prosperity fulfilled.

Ambroz Shimerda

Ambroz Shimerda, called Ambrosch, the Shimerdas’ older son. Like his mother, he is insensitive and mean. Burdened by drought, poor crops, and debt, he clings to the land with peasant tenacity. Even though he repels his neighbors with his surly manner, sly trickery, and petty dishonesties, everyone admits that he is a hard worker and a good farmer.

Yulka Shimerda

Yulka Shimerda, Ántonia’s younger sister, a mild, obedient girl.

Marek Shimerda

Marek Shimerda, the Shimerdas’ youngest child. Tongue-tied and feebleminded, he is eventually committed to an institution.

Mr. Burden

Mr. Burden, Jim Burden’s grandfather, a Virginian who has bought a farm in Nebraska. Deliberate in speech and action, he is a just, generous man, bearded like an ancient prophet and sometimes speaking like one.

Mrs. Burden

Mrs. Burden, his wife, a brisk, practical woman who gives unstinting love to her orphan grandson. Kindhearted, she gives assistance to the immigrant families of the region, and without her aid the needy Shimerdas would not have survived their first Nebraska winter.

Lena Lingard

Lena Lingard, the daughter of poor Norwegian parents, from childhood a girl attractive to men. Interested in clothes and possessing a sense of style, she is successful as a designer and later becomes the owner of a dress shop in San Francisco. She and Jim Burden become good friends while he is a student at the University of Nebraska. Her senuous beauty appeals greatly to his youthful imagination, and he is partly in love with her before he goes to study at Harvard.

Tiny Soderball

Tiny Soderball, a young woman who works at the hotel in Black Hawk. She moves to Seattle, runs a sailors’ boarding house for a time, and then goes to Alaska to open a hotel for miners. After a dying Swede wills her his claim, she makes a fortune from mining. With a comfortable fortune put aside, she goes to live in San Francisco. When Jim Burden meets her there, she tells him the thing that interests her most is making money. Lena Lingard is her only friend.

Wycliffe Cutter

Wycliffe Cutter, called Wick, a miserly moneylender who has grown rich by fleecing his foreign-born neighbors in the vicinity of Black Hawk. Ántonia Shimerda goes to work for him and his suspicious, vulgar wife. Making elaborate plans to seduce Ántonia, he puts some of his valuables in his bedroom and tells her that she is to sleep there, to guard them, while he and his wife are away on a trip. Mrs. Burden sends her grandson to sleep in the Cutter house, and Wick, returning ahead of his wife, is surprised and enraged to find Jim Burden in his bed. Years later, afraid that his wife’s family will inherit his money if he should die first, he kills her and then himself.

Mrs. Cutter

Mrs. Cutter, a woman as mean and miserly as her husband, whom she nags constantly. He murders her before committing suicide.

Larry Donovan

Larry Donovan, a railroad conductor and ladies’ man. He courts Ántonia Shimerda, promises to marry her if she will join him in Denver, seduces her, and then goes off to Mexico, leaving her pregnant.

Mrs. Steavens

Mrs. Steavens, a widow, the tenant on the Burden farm. She tells Jim Burden, home from Harvard, the story of Ántonia Shimerda’s betrayal by Larry Donovan.

Otto Fuchs

Otto Fuchs, the Burdens’ hired man during their farming years. Born in Austria, he came to America when a boy and lived an adventurous life as a cowboy, a stage driver, a miner, and a bartender in the West. After the Burdens rent their farm and move into Black Hawk, he resumes his drifting life.

Jake Marpole

Jake Marpole, the hired man who travels with young Jim Burden from Virginia to Nebraska. Though a kindhearted man, he has a sharp temper and is violent when angry. He is always deeply ashamed if he swears in front of Mrs. Burden.

Christian Harling

Christian Harling, a prosperous, straitlaced grain merchant and cattle buyer, a neighbor of the Burden family in Black Hawk.

Mrs. Harling

Mrs. Harling, his wife, devoted to her family and to music. She takes a motherly interest in Ántonia Shimerda, who works for her as a hired girl for a time, but feels compelled to send her away when the girl begins to go to the Saturday night dances attended by drummers and town boys.

Pavel

Pavel, Russian neighbors of the Burden family and Mr. Shimerda’s friends. Just before he dies, Pavel tells a terrible story of the time in Russia when, to save his own life, he threw a bride and groom from a sledge to a pack of wolves.

Anton Jelinek

Anton Jelinek, the young Bohemian who makes the coffin for Mr. Shimerda’s funeral. He becomes a friend of the Burdens and later a saloon proprietor.

Cuzak

Cuzak, Anton Jelinek’s cousin, the sturdy farmer who marries Ántonia Shimerda. Though he has had many reverses in his life, he remains good-natured. Hardworking, dependable, considerate, he is a good husband to Ántonia.

Martha

Martha, Ántonia’s daughter by Larry Donovan. She marries a prosperous young farmer.

Gaston Cleric

Gaston Cleric, the young Latin teacher who introduces Jim Burden to the classics and the world of ideas. When he accepts an instructorship at Harvard, he persuades Jim to transfer to that university.

Genevieve Whitney Burden

Genevieve Whitney Burden, Jim Burden’s wife. Though she does not figure in the novel, her presence in the background helps to explain her husband’s present mood and his nostalgia for his early years in Nebraska. Spoiled, restless, temperamental, independently wealthy, she leads her own life, interests herself in social causes, and plays patroness to young poets and artists.

My Antonia features two protagonists, simultaneously telling Antonia Shimerda's story and narrating how Jim, the narrator, comes to see her as a symbol of his childhood and the pioneer era. From their arrival in Nebraska on the same train—Jim, an orphaned boy from Virginia moving to live with his grandparents on their prosperous farm, and Antonia, an immigrant from Bohemia facing the challenges of a first-generation pioneer—the story unfolds until their reunion in middle age. Throughout, Jim serves as a poignant parallel to Antonia. Being male, American-born, and Protestant, he enjoys economic privilege, education, and the opportunity to explore the world. Antonia, on the other hand, is female, an immigrant, and a Catholic, living in poverty, uneducated, and tied to the land. While Jim is reflective, Antonia is proactive. Jim achieves professional success but finds solace only in the past; Antonia, despite her numerous mistakes, is able to cherish the present and look forward to the future, always honoring the past.

Cather never allows Antonia to directly disclose herself to the reader. Instead, her growth and self-realization are shown through Jim's observations at various stages of her life: as a child discovering the prairie and shouldering adult responsibilities; as a teenager in Black Hawk excelling in domestic skills and resisting attempts to stifle her vivacity; as a young woman deceived and abandoned by her fiancé; and finally, as a mature woman who fulfills her life's mission by raising many happy children and cultivating a bountiful farm and idyllic orchard and garden. As Jim ages alongside her, each new perspective he provides of her becomes increasingly complex.

The impact of Antonia's story stems from Cather's success in making her a believable character while simultaneously elevating her to a mythic heroine. Her story contrasts conventional frontier myths in several significant ways. Antonia does not speak of "taming" or "conquering" the land; she loves and respects it. Her "heroic" tasks involve creating and sanctifying a home and transforming the wilderness into a farm and garden. Rather than seeking independence and freedom, she finds her identity within a community. In her creation of order, fertility, and beauty on the frontier, and her nurturing of children, plants, and trees, she embodies an earth mother and fertility goddess, as well as a true frontier heroine—unlike the legends of hunters, cowboys, and gunfighters.

Like Antonia, Jim also serves as a symbolic figure. His story begins with a train journey at the age of nine, traveling from his birthplace in Virginia to the unfamiliar terrain of Nebraska. Orphaned, he is set to be raised by his paternal grandparents. This long and arduous trip symbolizes his entry into a destiny that will unfold across various settings. These settings are not only the physical surroundings of his childhood and youth but also serve as metaphors for change, growth, and his evolving mental states. In terms of his personal history, Jim's childhood memories capture the essence of a pastoral life, drawing pleasure and tranquility from the land. His narrative offers a tribute to the beauty of the rural landscape and recaptures the childhood wonder that once imbued the world with the romance of discovery.

Jim's prairie homestead is a well-organized agricultural haven managed by a kind patriarch and a capable farm wife, assisted by respectable and affectionate hired hands. All of them share a reverence for the land and accept its demands, fostering simplicity and goodness. Jim first experiences joy and harmony within the cycles and rhythms of nature in the warm, luxuriant embrace of his grandmother's garden. This sense of unity with nature leaves a lasting impact on him, ensuring he never loses his ability to personally appreciate the prairie or his desire to find happiness amid life's ripeness and fulfillment.

As his name implies, Jim carries a "burden" of guilt for what he and the nation lost during their respective developments. The country's rush toward material fulfillment betrayed the promise and idealism of the pioneer era. By leaving the prairie, Jim unwittingly embarked on a journey toward an empty future. When Jim reunites with Antonia in middle age, he finds himself diminished compared to his youthful self, while she has retained the qualities that made their friendship the pinnacle experience of his life. He clings to her image as the purest embodiment of what was most valuable in America's agrarian past.

While Antonia and Jim are central to the novel, Cather introduces a diverse array of characters, each fully developed regardless of their minor roles. Jim's grandparents resemble the affectionate guardians from a fairy tale. The grandfather stands as an imposing patriarch with a generous heart, and the grandmother is a resourceful and energetic woman, capable of handling any situation—from defending herself against rattlesnakes in her garden to offering a basket of food to seemingly ungrateful neighbors.

Antonia's parents present a stark contrast. Mr. Shimerda, refined and melancholic, is so overwhelmed by the isolation and harshness of frontier life that he ultimately takes his own life, symbolizing the spiritual and physical perils of settling the frontier. In contrast, Mrs. Shimerda is depicted as a grasping, shrewish woman, yet also a frightened mother doing her best to carve out a life for her family in a hostile environment.

The immigrant farm girls, like Antonia, who move to town to earn money for their families, are depicted with affectionate nostalgia by Jim. To him, they embody the frontier spirit. Some, such as the sensual Bohemian waitresses and the giggling Danish laundry girls, marry within their ethnic communities and become efficient managers of prosperous farms. On the other hand, Lena Lingard and Tiny Soderball leave the prairie for the larger world, finding material success but never discovering a place where their lives can achieve moral grounding and spiritual fulfillment.

Through her skills as a dressmaker, Lena becomes a successful entrepreneur in the fashion industry, eventually establishing a thriving business in San Francisco. However, her financial success does not bring emotional contentment, and she remains unmarried, unable to find an outlet for the qualities that once distinguished her among the women of Black Hawk. Tiny ventures to the Klondike, where she opens a hotel for miners, inherits a claim from a romantic Swede, and amasses a fortune during the Gold Rush. Yet, over time, the excitement of her adventures wanes, and she lives "like someone in whom the faculty of becoming interested is worn out."