CRITICISM

Byatt, A. S. “Willa Cather.” Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings, pp. 197-216. New York: Turtle Bay Books, 1992.

Discusses O Pioneers! in light of Cather's literary development.

Cather, Willa. “My First Novels.” On Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art, pp. 91-7. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949.

Discusses the origins of O Pioneers!

Daiches, David. “Early Novels.” In Willa Cather: A Critical Introduction, pp. 15-35. New York: Collier Books, 1951.

Asserts that “episodic and unevenly patterned as it is, O Pioneers! has nevertheless moments of strange force and beauty and a general air of power and assurance which are remarkable enough and proclaim a significant talent.”

Horwitz, Howard. “O Pioneers! and the Paradox of Property: Cather's Aesthetics of Divestment.” Prospects 13 (1988): 61-93.

Considers Cather's novel in light of Alexandra Bergson's role as landowner, contending that “the novel is a mediation on the interior structure and limits of property.”

Laird, David. “Willa Cather's Women: Gender, Place, and Narrativity in O Pioneers! and My Ántonia.” Great Plains Quarterly 12, no. 4 (fall 1992): 242-53.

Explores the roles of gender and landscape in O Pioneers!

Mayberry, Susan Neal. “A New Heroine's Marriage: Willa Cather's O Pioneers!” The Old Northwest 16, no. 1 (spring 1992): 37-59.

Maintains that in O Pioneers! Cather presents a reinterpretation of traditional concepts of marriage and adulterous passion in American literature.

Munn, Debra D. “A Probable Source for Glasgow's Barren Ground.” The Markham Review 11 (winter 1982): 21-5.

Identifies O Pioneers! as a likely source for Ellen Glasgow's novel, Barren Ground.

Rosowski, Susan J. “Willa Cather and the Fatality of Place: O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and A Lost Lady.” In Geography and Literature A Meeting of the Disciplines, edited by William E. Mallory and Paul Simpson-Housley, pp. 80-94. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987.

Examines the relationship between geography and Cather's early novels.

———. “Willa Cather and the French Rural Tradition of Breton and Millet: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia.” In The Rural Vision: France and America in the Late Nineteenth Century, edited Hollister Sturges, pp. 53-61. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Evaluates the influence of French painters Jules Breton and Jean-François Millet on Cather's early work.

Tandt, Christophe den. “On the Threshold of the Metropolis.” In The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism, pp. 218-44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Analyzes female empowerment and the role of artist in society in Cather's O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.

Wussow, Helen. “Language, Gender, and Ethnicity in Three Fictions by Willa Cather.” Women and Language 18, no. 1 (spring 1995): 52-5.

Investigates “the connection between language and gender identity and between language and women's oppression” in O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia.

Additional coverage of Cather's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: