Introduction

My Ántonia is a novel by American author Willa Cather and was published in 1918. This work is the last book in her "prairie trilogy," following O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. This novel, set in the prairies of Nebraska, is Cather’s best-known work and deals with themes of love, struggle, and the strength of human spirit.

Willa Cather was a prominent figure in American literature in the early 20th century, known for her vivid portrayals of life on the American frontier. She drew from her own experiences growing up in Nebraska, and her writing is imbued with a sense of the landscape and the people who lived there during the late 19th century.

What Happens

Narrated by Jim Burden, My Ántonia explores his life and relationship with Ántonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant whom he meets upon moving to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. The narrative begins with an adult Jim, now a successful New York lawyer, recounting his past after a chance encounter with a childhood acquaintance.

In flashback, we're introduced to a young Ántonia, a spirited girl of vitality and passion. Her family, like many immigrant families, is beset by the hardships of life on the frontier - poverty, harsh winters, and the struggle to cultivate the untamed land. Ántonia's father, unable to adapt, dies by suicide, leaving the family in dire straits.

The narrative traces Jim and Ántonia's separate and joint experiences, offering interesting glimpses into pioneer life. Jim is an excellent student and eventually leaves for college. The two lose touch for a time, but Ántonia remains a powerful presence in his memories.

While away at school, Jim hears that Ántonia had a failed engagement and bore an illegitimate child. Despite societal norms of the time, Ántonia remains undaunted and raises her child on the Nebraska farm.

The narrative returns to the present as Jim visits Ántonia years later. She is now married to a fellow countryman, Anton Cuzak, and is the mother of a large family. Jim notes that despite her struggles, Ántonia maintains her indomitable spirit, symbolizing the strength and resilience of pioneer women.

Why it Matters

My Ántonia matters because it explores the immigrant experience and the hard realities of frontier life in America, offering a powerful commentary on cultural diversity, gender roles, and human resilience. The book was an immediate success when it was published in 1919. One reason for this is that Cather's vivid descriptions of the Nebraska landscape are more than mere settings; they become integral to the characters' identities and evoke the broader themes of nature, freedom, and the human struggle against adversity.

The novel's perspective on the female experience in a harsh and changing environment is particularly noteworthy. Ántonia, unlike the stereotype of the submissive and demure woman of the time, is resilient and strong, a testament to the strength and spirit of pioneer women. Her determination to build a fulfilling life despite societal judgments remains a compelling and relevant theme, even in contemporary discussions on gender and society.

The narrative's use of nostalgia is also significant. Jim, reflecting on his past, infuses his memories with sentimentality and longing. This exploration of memory and its unreliability, coupled with the tension between the past and the present, adds a layer of complexity to the novel.

Furthermore, the novel presents a nuanced view of the American Dream. Both Jim and Ántonia pursue their versions of this dream, with varying results. Cather seems to suggest that the American Dream is multifaceted and that success can take many forms.

Burden farm

Burden farm. Ranch in pioneer Nebraska owned by Jim Burden’s grandparents. It is to this farm that the ten-year-old Jim Burden is brought from Virginia after his parents die, and it is here that he learns to love the prairie. It is also here that he meets the Shimerdas, a Bohemian family (immigrants from Bohemia) who are distant neighbors struggling to survive in this harsh new land.

Shimerda home

Shimerda home. Sod cave, built into a hillside, that is home to Ántonia and her family. The Burdens help out their Bohemian neighbors, who live in isolation and deprivation in their first year in America. The Shimerdas survive the brutal winter, but the father, homesick for the old country, kills himself. When the church refuses to bury Mr. Shimerda in the cemetery, he is laid to rest in a corner of his property. In the spring, the Shimerdas build a log house, and through hard work and economy begin to make their farm prosper.

Black Hawk

Black Hawk. Small town that is the center of this farming region (probably based on Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Cather grew up). When the farm gets too much for them, the Burdens rent it out and buy a house in town, where Jim can start school. Ántonia also moves to town to work for the people who live next door to the Burdens. Jim feels a loss of freedom in the move from the prairie to Black Hawk and becomes “moody and restless,” but life is made better by the presence of Ántonia and the other “hired girls” (immigrants from Europe like Ántonia) who work in town. Certainly, Cather shows, they have an energy and love for life missing in many of their neighbors. At the town dances, it is Ántonia and her friends who show the most spirit. Jim graduates from high school, dedicating his commencement oration to Ántonia’s father.

*Lincoln

*Lincoln. Nebraska’s state capital, largest city, and home to the university where Jim starts his separation from his family and the prairie life. After succeeding at the university, he goes on to Harvard Law School. Jim hears about Ántonia and her family during his years away but visits her only once before starting his legal career.

*New York City

*New York City. Center of American financial and cultural life by the end of the nineteenth century. Jim becomes a lawyer for the railroads in New York and marries. It is clear from Cather’s fictional introduction to My Ántonia, however, that his marriage is loveless and produces no children. In the greatest city in the country, he has lost something of what he had as a young man growing up with Ántonia on the American prairie.

Cuzak farm

Cuzak farm. Farm where Ántonia, her husband, and their many children live. In the last scene of the novel, Jim visits this farm years later and discovers the richness and happiness of immigrant life on the prairie. Ántonia has aged, but she has “not lost the fire of life.” With Ántonia and her family, Jim feels at home again, and the novel has circled back to the prairie. It is the land, Cather implies, and the immigrants who bring their dreams and energy to it, which sustains this country. Jim Burden no longer shares either the dreams or the land, but he personally understands the prairie’s power and the heroism of people like “my Ántonia.”

Jim Burden, a middle-aged, successful New York railway lawyer with a sterile marriage and a host of nostalgic memories, writes his reminiscences about his rural Nebraska youth. These reminiscences are My Ántonia, a coming-of-age story, but not primarily the story of Burden’s coming-of-age. His early life provides the plot’s framework. After three years on his grandparents’ farm, he moves with them to the prairie town of Black Hawk. From there he will go to college, law school, and his career in New York. Burden’s memories, however, center more on Ántonia than on himself. He remembers her early years as she struggled to overcome her father’s death and bore too much of the burden of her family’s hardscrabble fight to survive. He recalls his fears that Ántonia might be so coarsened by her experiences that she might become like her mother and her brother Ambrosch. After he moves to town and enters his teens, his feelings about Ántonia change. Ántonia also comes to Black Hawk as a hired girl in a neighboring home. Before, she had been a childhood playmate; now, she was a beautiful young woman. Ántonia will always respect and treasure Jim like a beloved younger brother. Jim’s feelings toward her grow more complex. He will come to love her, but his is love with little sexual desire. It will be more spiritual. She will embody all elements of woman—wife, mother, sister, sweetheart—and become a part of himself.

There were other immigrant farm daughters who came to work in Black Hawk. Free-spirited, they labored diligently, played hard, and saved their money. They particularly loved dancing and mingling with the boys. Black Hawk’s old stock citizens were scandalized, especially the women. Young females did not dance; indeed, exercise was seen as unladylike and possibly scandalous. These country girls seemingly threatened the prevailing morality, but they would not be intimidated. Ántonia and her friends Lena and Tiny Soderball were the leaders of these exuberant young women. Jim Burden thought that they brought vitality to the town’s barren social life. He also later realized that most of these girls would be extremely successful, either in their own careers, like Lena and Tiny, or as dominant heads of successful farm families.

Jim leaves for college and loses contact with Ántonia. After graduation, he returns home briefly to learn she had fallen in love with a young railroad conductor who had promised to marry her and then deserted her, unmarried and pregnant. Jim journeys out to visit the Shimerdas. Ántonia once more is working in the fields. Determined to make a good life for her baby, she will not despair. In an emotional scene, they assure each other that whatever else happens in life, spiritually they will always be close.

Burden goes to law school and will not see Ántonia for twenty years. Although his business for the railroad often involves western travel, he avoids her, afraid he will find her aged and broken. Finally he seeks her out, discovering that she has flourished. Happily married, she has a home full of children and is the undisputed mistress of a prosperous farm. Although she is older in looks, her irrepressible vitality is undiminished. Awash in memories and believing that Ántonia has achieved true fulfillment, he is determined never to be so far away again. He will take some of her sons on hunting trips, befriend her husband, and maintain vital connections with Ántonia and her own.

My Ántonia is Willa Cather’s most important contribution to American women’s literature. Appearing at a time when old Victorian standards were crumbling and debate raged over women’s rights and responsibilities, Cather argued for women’s freedom to choose their own lifestyles. She also clearly suggested that females were superior to men. Willa Cather will be known by feminists for her creation of strong, dominant women. By 1918, Cather had already published two novels, O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915), with powerful female figures, but the mythic Ántonia stands as Cather’s most complete, transcendent heroine.

My Ántonia received favorable critical reviews, eventually becoming an American classic. Its position on women’s concerns was not the only reason for its success. Cather’s eulogizing of the land clearly struck a chord. This theme had also been present in O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark, but as was the heroine motif, it was most fully realized in My Ántonia. Many Americans, unhappy about the spread of industrialism, with its blighting of the landscape and destruction of the rural heritage, would be drawn to Cather’s romantic evocation of the prairie and its pioneers.

Cather continued to write after My Ántonia, but her concerns changed. There was less autobiography. Increasingly, she became more interested in a remoter past, and the prairie gave way to a fascination with the arid Southwest. Her focus on women diminished, became blurred. The females became weaker, while the males gained somewhat in stature. One should look to her earlier works for Cather’s true impact on the discussion of women’s issues. These works, such as My Ántonia, made Willa Cather one of the major American women writers.

Immigration

Until 1825, fewer than 10,000 new immigrants arrived in the United States each year. However, by the late 1840s, revolutions in Europe and the catastrophic potato famine in Ireland drove hundreds of thousands to this country. Immigration continued to rise throughout the 1850s, and by 1860, one-eighth of America's 32 million residents were foreign-born. Many of these immigrants settled in the mill towns of the East and larger urban areas. The railroads' promotional efforts, however, directed many straight to the prairies. Railroad companies even sent representatives abroad to attract settlers to the plains and prairies. It is often said that the transcontinental railroad could not have been constructed without immigrant labor. The railroad was not only vital to the economic success of both towns and countryside, but it also held a powerful monopoly, setting its own prices for shipping grain to market. Another wave of immigrants arrived during the 1860s and 1870s, following the Homestead Act of 1862. This law offered 160 acres of Western public land for a small fee to citizens or prospective citizens willing to settle and cultivate it for five years. These settlers primarily came from Western and Northern Europe. They became known as the "old immigrants" when the influx of "new immigrants" from Eastern and Southern Europe surged in the 1880s and 1890s.

In Willa Cather's Nebraska, the population quadrupled between the Civil War and 1880, and then doubled again during the 1880s. Low farm product prices in the late 1880s and early 1890s, combined with drought in the mid-1890s, made success elusive for many on the Great Plains until nearly the turn of the century. By the time Cather was writing My Ántonia, immigration to the Great Plains had slowed. However, urban immigration continued to create dire situations in the cities. As a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York City, and later as a newspaperwoman and editor for the radical magazine McClure's, Cather witnessed the conditions in which many urban immigrants lived. She also saw the growing fear that the influx of cheap foreign labor was not only unwelcome competition but also contributed to the widening gap between rich and poor. During World War I, German-Americans were particularly suspect, and stories of their victimization are common in many Midwestern state histories. Even the Czechs, who were eager to help liberate their homeland from Austrian-Hungarian rule, suffered during the war years. The nation's anxiety over the role of immigrants in society did not subside, even as the "tide" of immigration was briefly stemmed by World War I.

Theories of Americanization

During the period when Willa Cather was composing My Ántonia, the significant influx of European immigrants in the nineteenth century had given rise to two conflicting theories of Americanization. These theories, known as the "melting pot" and the "salad bowl," continue to shape the discourse on cultural diversity even today, nearly a century later. In the 1890s, Frederick Jackson Turner popularized the concept of the American West as a crucible where European immigrants would be "Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race." My Ántonia can be interpreted as a tribute to this perspective, with Ántonia herself symbolizing "the rich mine of life, like the founders of early races," transforming the diverse raw material arriving on American shores into a unified people. This view, at its best, serves as a model for assimilation. However, at its worst, it supports nativism, a preference for native-born citizens, which can lead to xenophobia or hostility towards foreigners. Indeed, American Nativists in the 1910s and 1920s vehemently opposed the waves of immigration. Conversely, another perspective on Americanization was presented by philosopher Horace M. Kallen in an article in the Nation, published three years before My Ántonia appeared. Kallen argued that each nationality should express its "emotional and voluntary life in its own language, in its own inevitable aesthetic and intellectual form." This concept has since been known as cultural pluralism, with Carl Degler later coining the term "salad bowl."

Style

Cather's exceptional prose style is deceptively clear and straightforward, focusing on a direct narration of facts. However, it also carries a subtlety, using carefully chosen images to vividly depict the prairie environment. She meticulously crafted this effect by deciding which details to include and which to omit. Additionally, she accumulated incidents to create a realistic portrayal of life, known as verisimilitude. In an essay titled "The Novel Demeuble," Cather described this prose style as "unfurnished." She likened it to removing all the furniture from a room, leaving it as bare as a Greek theater stage. To achieve this, she minimized the use of adverbs, employed strong verbs, and included numerous figures of speech.

Imagery

Cather's sparse yet evocative style depends on the quality and depth of her imagery. She deliberately used the land, its colors, seasons, and changes to evoke emotions and moods. Summer represents life (Ántonia can't fathom why anyone would want to die during the summer), while winter symbolizes death (Mr. Shimerda takes his life during the winter). Animals serve as symbols of the survival struggle faced by the Shimerdas during their first winter. The haunting image of Mr. Shimerda's frozen corpse, with his coat, neckcloth, and boots carefully laid aside for the survivors, epitomizes the cost of this struggle. At the novel's conclusion, Cather employs animalistic imagery to symbolize fertility and abundance. Ántonia's children emerge from the well-stocked larder like "a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight." One particular image has become almost emblematic of the novel: a plough, magnified by distance to appear "heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun," captures the moment when Jim picnics with his childhood friends for the last time. As the vision fades and the sun sets, "that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie."

Realism

Jim Burden expresses a romanticism, or an overly sentimental and positive perspective, that Cather herself was not entirely free from. The German, Danish, Bohemian, and Scandinavian homesteaders embodied a cultural tradition she deeply valued. However, the novel avoids becoming overly sentimental through its evocative depiction of the harsh realities of pioneer and immigrant life and the complexity of its characters, who are rarely, if ever, purely sympathetic or purely despicable.

Jim’s nostalgic portrayal of his life with Antonia on the wild prairie receives his most passionate focus, shaping the flow and structure of his entire narrative. Despite his efforts to romanticize his youthful world, he acknowledges the tension between the idealized agrarian myth and the harsh agrarian reality. He juxtaposes his romantic vision with episodes that, despite his attempts to soften their severity, reveal the bitterness of frontier life. This blend of mythic and realistic perspectives gives the novel its strength, steering clear of the pitfalls of escapism or nostalgia.

Though Jim claims his story lacks form, it is meticulously structured. It comprises two long sections and three shorter ones. The first two sections, focusing on his childhood on the prairie and his adolescence in Black Hawk, gather material for reflection, while the remaining sections revisit these experiences from various angles. Throughout the narrative, Jim skillfully reconstructs the past from a multitude of swiftly recalled moments, events, stories, and impressions. He imbues his regional materials with broad significance, making the people and events of Nebraska represent America and humanity. Moreover, he proves himself adept at creating vivid images, particularly of Antonia, whom he portrays with a few strong descriptive strokes that capture her essence. Many of these images depict her unsentimentally as a hardworking woman of the land, leading some critics to compare them to the portraits of robust peasant women by 19th-century French Realists Jules Breton and Jean-Francois Millet.

The expansive panorama of untamed land that dominates the novel’s first half is depicted both as a realistic element in the characters’ lives and as a symbolic landscape. Symbolically, the land connects the lives of the protagonists, as their shared love of nature and the prairie forms a crucial bond between Antonia and Jim, regardless of their differing aspirations, experiences, and destinies.

The plough, momentarily magnified to heroic dimensions against the setting sun, serves as the symbol that best captures Cather’s vision of the pioneer era. For Cather, the triumph on the prairie was the spirit of agriculture, which led to the creation of homesteads, settlements, and communities, laying the foundation for the blossoming of civilization. Just as the plough experiences a brief moment of glorification before returning to its realistic size on the prairie, so too did the pioneer era burst forth with vitality in late 1800s Nebraska before receding into the annals of history. This symbol also reflects Cather’s overall technique in her Nebraska novels, where her imaginative illumination transforms and elevates ordinary materials.

Considered the finest of Cather's Nebraska novels, My Antonia draws heavily from her childhood memories on the prairie and her teenage years in Red Cloud. The immigrant pioneer characters, struggling to establish themselves in their new surroundings, are inspired by the Bohemian, Swedish, and German farmers Cather knew as a child. Similarly, the townspeople of Black Hawk are based on her adolescent experiences. The protagonist, Antonia Shimerda, is modeled after Annie Sadilek Pavelka, who emigrated from Bohemia to Nebraska in the 1880s and endured many of the same hardships and successes depicted in the novel. Cather attributes her own early life story to the narrator, Jim Burden, beginning with her move from Virginia to Nebraska at the age of nine.

On one level, the novel, narrated by Jim from his middle age, encapsulates the story of America's settlement. The first part focuses on the land and the few families settled on it—sod-busting pioneers striving to conquer the environment and derive material success from nature's resources. The physical essence of the prairie is vividly portrayed, and the people are preoccupied with basic needs such as shelter, warmth, and food. Jim's grandfather articulates the broader significance of their efforts, recognizing they were transforming the primitive land into part of the modern world. Jim's recollections of his youth on the prairie highlight a crucial aspect of the national experience: the pioneer effort, its brief flourishing, and its swift fading from national memory. These memories present a series of episodes and images that balance both the predominantly positive nature of his personal dream of the past and the optimistic agrarian vision of the frontier, as celebrated by political theorists and many artists from the founding of the Republic to the end of the nineteenth century.

As in all her works, Cather avoids overt didacticism and the pessimistic extremes of naturalism. However, through the lives of the Shimerdas — which can be meaningfully compared to mythic concepts like "free" land, agrarian uplift, primitivism as rebirth, and the "melting pot" — she underscores the tragic aspects of the pioneer experience and its immense cost in terms of human suffering and sacrifice. Like many of their peers from the Old World in the decades following the Civil War, the Shimerdas migrate to the Midwest plains seeking the Jeffersonian ideals of decency, independence, and prosperity through honest farming. What they actually encounter is an untamed wilderness that needs subduing, an unending struggle with the basic realities of labor, exhaustion, and deprivation, along with loneliness and isolation due to language and cultural barriers. Essentially, they face everything contrary to the idyllic dream of a harmonious farming community. Rather than entering a world of social cohesion where previous differences disappear in the crucible of the frontier experience, they find that their life in Nebraska is defined by social distinctions and ethnic tensions.

True to the developmental pattern outlined in the Turner thesis — the most significant statement about the frontier's role in shaping American history and character — the Shimerdas experience a reversion to the primitive. However, theirs is not a restorative return to nature accompanied by regeneration, but rather the harsh primitivism of poverty and alienation. Having left behind their homeland and civilization, lacking the tools and skills of their Anglo-American neighbors, and bewildered by their unfamiliar new environment, they are forced to forget their previous knowledge and achievements and start from scratch. They live, like badgers and prairie dogs, in a dwelling dug out of the ground and, with animal-like tenacity, they struggle against the land and elements for their most basic needs. Additionally, the economic system keeps them subjugated as they are indebted to Krajiek, the man who sold them their farm and demands a portion of all they produce. Mrs. Shimerda and her sullen son Ambrosch endure the brutalization, but for the gentle Mr. Shimerda, a weaver by trade and a violinist by passion, the experience is fatally traumatic, leading him to commit suicide shortly after Christmas.

When Jim's grandparents move from the prairie to the town of Black Hawk so he can attend high school, Jim is introduced to the beginnings of commercial and social life on the frontier and the accompanying intensification of economic and class distinctions. For Jim, this historically inevitable progression represents a decline in heroism, as the pioneer spirit begins to fade in the face of prudence and conformity.

In the American imagination, the myth of rural virtue often encompassed not just the farm but also the small town. Seen as the next stage in a cycle of positive development, pioneers established permanent communities, setting up schools, churches, and government and legal centers on the frontier. The small town was believed to maintain classic rural virtues like innocence, simplicity, and goodness. It was celebrated for its sense of community and human solidarity, and viewed as a wholesome alternative to the vices and complexities of urban life. This idyllic vision of the small town as a sort of Eden persisted through the Industrial Revolution and well into the twentieth century.

Through Jim's reactions to life in Black Hawk, Cather challenges this positive vision. For Jim, the constraints, prejudices, and lack of imagination in this budding provincial town are most evident in the prevailing belief that the daughters of Black Hawk merchants were "refined," while the country girls who "worked out" were not. He similarly criticizes the unwarranted superiority that townspeople often feel towards immigrants, shown by their refusal to see them as individuals or respect their Old World heritage. Cather's critique of the self-satisfied and narrow-minded attitudes in the prairie town, just emerging from its pioneer phase, is reminiscent of those later expressed by Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Sinclair Lewis in Main Street (1920).

After graduation, Jim moves to Lincoln to study at the University of Nebraska, with the city and university symbolizing the spread of learning and refinement on the frontier. When he returns to the prairie several years later, he finds it has reached a stage of fulfillment. As Jim heads to the countryside to visit Antonia, he notes with pleasure the changes on the prairie, which clearly reference both the agrarian myth of cultural evolution on the frontier and the georgic vision of work as a civilizing force ordained to create good order out of chaos. However, Jim chooses not to share the farmers' destiny and leaves for the East to become a lawyer for a railroad company, thus linking his life to one of the institutions that, for better or worse, helped transform America into a modern world power. Many years later, Jim returns to the prairie and spends an idyllic day and night with his old friend Antonia on her fertile farm. Yet, the world of his childhood that the farm evokes, and the pioneer era in which he grew up, are fading away, remaining vivid and cherished only in memory and myth.

1880s: Immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe during the 1880s were seen as a potential threat to the "American" character. In 1882, Congress took action to selectively restrict immigration for the first time, although the criteria were not very strict. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ended the influx of cheap Chinese labor, which had previously led to violent racial riots in the West.

Post World War I: Congress enacted the Immigration Act of 1924, establishing a quota system based on the U.S. population in 1920. This was a clear effort to maintain the country's ethnic composition as predominantly Northern European.

Today: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 legalized millions of undocumented immigrants who had been living in the U.S. since January 1982, and it introduced penalties for employers hiring illegal aliens. Immigration preferences now prioritize family connections and needed skills rather than the country of origin. In the 1990s, states like California attempted to pass laws restricting government services to legal immigrants.

1880s: Following the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment granted black males the right to vote. However, women of all races were still excluded from voting. The women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the 1880s and consolidated into the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890.

Post World War I: In August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied by the United States or any State on account of sex."

Today: Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique revitalized a dormant women's rights movement. Key issues such as equal pay, child-care services, and gender stereotyping became focal points for the contemporary feminist movement.

Cather's use of Virgil's phrase "optima dies . . . prima fugit" (the best days are the first to flee), and more significantly, the self-reflexive moment when Jim discovers the beauty and depth of Virgil's Georgics, encourages readers to view her novel as part of the pastoral tradition. In this literary mode, memory and imagination paint a near-past of relative innocence and joy as more enjoyable than a disappointing present marked by unwanted social changes and technological advances. Jim's vision of a fulfilling life set in the rural past clearly embodies pastoral sentiments, as do his contrasts between country and city life, and youth and adulthood. Additional elements linking My Antonia to this tradition include its poetic depictions of the landscape, focus on seasonal cycles, the georgic insight that labor allows man to experience nature, and its juxtaposition of the real and the ideal, pleasure and suffering, and achievement and loss.

My Antonia can also be positioned within the American female literary tradition, particularly in relation to works by women regionalists like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and Sarah Orne Jewett. These authors, in addition to rooting their works firmly in the local realities of their regions, often focused on a rural matriarchy and celebrated female creativity. At their best, like Cather, they elevate their regional subjects to universal significance. Lastly, My Antonia can be interpreted against the backdrop of literary Romanticism, not only for its themes of love of nature, exaltation of youth, and reverence for the past, but also for its emphasis on the imagination's power to create a new order and transform the past into myth.

My Ántonia was transformed into a television movie in 1994 by Victoria Riskin and David W. Finteis, produced by Fast Track Films, Inc. and Wilshire Productions, and distributed by Paramount Home Video. The cast features Neil Patrick Harris as Jim Burden, with Jason Robards Jr. and Eva Marie Saint playing Jim's grandparents, and Elina Lowensohn portraying Ántonia. The movie was directed by Joseph Sargent.

Charles Jones adapted My Ántonia for the stage, and this adaptation was published by Samuel French in 1994.

Audio recordings of My Ántonia are available from Bookcassette Sales, Brilliance Corp., and Blackstone Audio Books.

Sources:

Randolph Bourne, "Morals and Art from the West," in The Dial, Vol. LXV, No. 779, December 14, 1981, pp. 556-57.

E. K. Brown, Willa Cather: A Critical Biography, Knopf, 1953.

Sister Peter Damian Charles, "My Ántonia: A Dark Dimension," in Western American Literature, Vol. II, No. 2, Summer 1967, pp. 91-108.

David Daiches, Willa Cather: A Critical Introduction, Cornell University Press, 1951.

Maxwell Geismar, The Last of the Provincials: The American Novel, 1915-1925, Houghton, 1947.

Richard Giannone, Music in Willa Cather's Fiction, University of Nebraska Press, 1968.

Granville Hicks, "The Case against Willa Cather," in English Journal, Vol. XXII, No. 9, November 1933, pp. 703-10.

Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1942.

Terence Martin, "The Drama of Memory in My Ántonia," in PMLA, Vol. 84, No. 2, March 1969, pp. 304-10.

H. L. Mencken, "Willa Cather," The Borzoi 1920, edited by Alfred A. Knopf, 1920, pp. 28-31.

Review of My Ántonia, in The Nation, Vol. 107, No. 2783, Nov. 2, 1918, pp. 522-23.

John H. Randall, III, The Landscape and the Looking Glass: Willa Cather's Search for Meaning, Houghton, 1960.

Susan J. Rosowski, The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism, University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Carl Van Doren, Nation, July 27, 1921, reprinted in his Contemporary American Novelists: 1900-1920, Macmillan, 1922.

Willa Cather, My Antonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977.

For Further Study

Joan Acocella, "Cather and the Academy," in New Yorker, November 27, 1995, pp. 56-71.
This insightful essay explores how the "literary establishment" has responded to Cather's fiction throughout the century.

Mildred R. Bennett, The World of Willa Cather, Dodd, Mead, 1951; University of Nebraska Press, 1961.
A valuable resource for understanding how Cather's childhood influenced her fiction.

Edward Bloom and Lillian Bloom, Willa Cather's Gift of Sympathy, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962.
This in-depth evaluation of Cather's place in American literature compares her work to that of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, and James, and is particularly useful for its insights into Cather's literary theories and practices.

Harold Bloom, editor, Willa Cather's My Ántonia, Chelsea House, 1987.
A helpful collection of essays on Cather's novel, offering a variety of critical viewpoints.

Brent L. Bohlke, editor, Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters, University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
This compilation of Cather's writings and speeches provides valuable insight into her fiction.

Willa Cather, The World and the Parish, University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
A two-volume collection of Cather's early articles and reviews, published in periodicals between 1893 and 1902.

Robert W. Cherney, "Willa Cather's Nebraska" in Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Ántonia, edited by Susan J. Rosowski, Modern Language Association of America, New York, 1989, pp. 31-36.
An essay focusing on the socio-economic and demographic context of Willa Cather's Nebraska at the end of the 19th century.

Judith Fryer, Felicitous Space: The Imaginative Structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
This book examines the painterly quality of Cather's landscapes, highlighting the influence of Millet and the Barbizon painters on her work.

Blanche H. Gelfant, "The Forgotten Reaping-hook: Sex in My Ántonia," American Literature, Vol. 43, 1971, pp. 60-82.
Gelfant questions the reliability of Jim's narration and contends that "Jim Burden belongs to a remarkable gallery of characters for whom Cather consistently invalidates sex."

Philip Gerber, Willa Cather, Twayne, 1995
A recently updated critical overview of Cather's life and works, including a brief character analysis of Ántonia.

Sally Allen McNall, "Immigrant Backgrounds to My Ántonia: A Curious Social Situation in Black Hawk," in Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Ántonia, edited by Susan J. Rosowski, Modern Language Association of America, 1989, pp. 22-30.
An informative essay on the social conditions that influenced Cather's My Ántonia and the questions that arise from the novel.

John J. Murphy, My Ántonia: The Road Home, Twayne's Masterwork Studies, Twayne Publishers, 1989.
A comprehensive book featuring textual analysis, critical summaries, chronology, and historical context.

Paul A. Olsen, "The Epic and Great Plains Literature: Rolvaag, Cather and Neihardt," Prairie Schooner, Vol. 55, 1981, pp. 263-85.
This article argues that by applying a redefined epic tradition to My Ántonia, Ántonia emerges as the heroic creator of a new civilization, with Jim as the hymner of her achievements.

Susan J. Rosowski, editor, Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Ántonia, Modern Language Association, 1989.
Though primarily aimed at educators, this collection of essays also provides first-time readers with several insightful approaches to Cather's novel.

David Stouck, Willa Cather's Imagination, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975.
A book-length study that uses the pastoral mode as a key to understanding Jim's compulsion to revisit the past.

William J. Stuckey, "My Ántonia: A Rose for Miss Cather," Studies in the Novel, Vol. 4, 1972, pp. 473-83.
This article compares Cather to Fitzgerald and criticizes her for not clearly distinguishing between realistic skepticism and romantic vision.

James Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life, University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
A recent biography in which the author commends My Ántonia for its broad appeal and deep intellectual and emotional content.

James Woodress, "Willa Cather," in Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Realism, Nationalism, and Local Color, 1865-1917, Gale, 1988, pp. 36-51.
A comprehensive essay on both Cather's life and work by her biographer, with a special focus on her novels.