Psychoanalytical Analysis Of O Pioneers By Willa Cather

769 Words2 Pages

Type B Psychoanalytical Analysis of O’ Pioneers! Published in 1913, Willa Cather is the author of O’ Pioneers!. Set in the Nebraskan Prairie, Cather tells the story of Alexandra Bergson. Far from stagnant, Alexandra is a very complex character because of her independence as a woman and her acceptance of others. Analyzing some aspects of Cather’s life provides insight into O’ Pioneers! , specifically, why Alexandra’s character traits and choices make sense. If Cather consciously or subconsciously influenced Alexandra’s character with her own, then Alexandra’s independence could be due to Cather’s career success and Alexandra’s tendency to welcome outcasts and to judge gently could be due to Cather’s gender struggles and to her lesbianism. …show more content…

From a young age, Cather showed signs of gender struggle. Her mother once walked her into a parlor and directed her to greet the people inside, instead of a typical polite greeting Cather responded with, “I’se a dang’ous nigger, I is!” (Carlin 50). This quote can be thought of as young Cather straying from the typical classifications of a young girl (Carlin 50). It is also known that Cather went through a phase of crossdressing and trying to change her appearance to be more masculine (Carlin 51). Cather’s community thought this to be repugnant and outcasted her (Carlin 51). Potentially insecure, Cather felt inclined to conceal her lesbianism and was not outwardly queer (Carlin 52). Linking these facts to Alexandra is somewhat straightforward; Cather was outcasted and rejected so she made Alexandra accepting and not one to judge harshly. The proof is in the pudding; Alexandra welcomed Ivar, a feared social outcast, to stay on her farm and treated him kindly (Cather 36), she also did not bear wrath upon Frank for murdering her brother (Cather 117). Cather knew what it was like to be outcasted by society, therefore she wrote Alexandra to treat others as she wished she had been treated. Cather wanted the respect and understanding Alexandra gave Ivar. Cather also wanted people to be less harsh in their judgments of her, for she knew too

Show More
Related

  • The Female as the Eternal Pariah in “Her Kind”

    1080 Words  | 3 Pages

    Everyone has once been someone that they aren’t necessarily ashamed of, but something they aren’t anymore. When you’re in school, everyone is different; between the popular kids, the jocks, the cheerleader, the dorks, the Goths, and all the other “types” of people. In “Her Kind,” Anne Sexton shows that she has been a lot of different women, and she is not them now. In this paper we will be diving into the meanings behind the displaced “I,” the tone and reparation, and who Anne Sexton really is and how that affects what she is trying to let people see through this poem.

    Read More

  • O Pioneers By Willa Cather Summary

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    Alexandra Bergson is a hard working women. She struggles at first but does not give up. Alexandra’s hard work finally pays off. She is really successful and really wealthy. She is a mentor to her under brother. She does not want him to be like her. She motivates and pushes him to become someone better than her. Alexandra was always kind and caring to all the people around her. She would try her best to be friendly and helpful with everyone. She was forgiving to people even if they did or said something to her. Alexandra was also a lonely single lady. She spent most of her time staying on top of her farm and younger brother. She was loving

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Anne Bradstreet And Margaret Fuller

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women have faced oppression in the literary community throughout history. Whether they are seen as hysterical or unreliable, women writers seem to be faulted no matter the topics of their literature. However, Anne Bradstreet and Margaret Fuller faced their critics head-on. Whether it was Bradstreet questioning her religion or Fuller discussing gender fluidity, these two women did not water down their opinions to please others. Through their writings, Bradstreet and Fuller made great strides for not just women writers, but all women.

    Read More

  • Willa Cather Describes Erotics of Place in her Novel, A Lost Lady

    2966 Words  | 6 Pages

    Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski with Kari Ronning, Charles W. Mignon and Frederick M. Link. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997.

    Read More

  • The Relationship between the People and the Land in Willa Cather's O Pioneers

    2267 Words  | 5 Pages

    'For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of the geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning'

    Read More

  • The Symbolic Nature of the Land in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    Willa Cather’s O Pioneers presents the land as symbolic and vital to the course of the plot. As a force of nature so powerful that it can crush the efforts of any settler in a fleeting moment. This display of supremacy presents itself in the opening lines of Cather's novel, in which she introduces the land as not only the setting but an active character within the story. When Cather’s states, “One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away,” she incarnates the spirit of the settlers within the land. As the novel progresses, the idea that one must be a force equal in strength to the land is apparent in the protagonist character of Alexandra Bergson. O Pioneers brings the works of Fredrick Jackson Turner and Solomon Butcher to life, through Alexandra and her affection for the land, Cather, gives a voice and a human persona to the expanding frontier, showcasing the lands innate ability to shape its own destiny.

    Read More

  • Symbolism Inherent in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.

    Read More

  • The Descent of Alette: Confronting the Male Hegemony

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Descent of Alette Alice Notley has created an epic poem that confronts male hegemony. The tyrant symbolizes the corrupt patriarchy while Alette symbolizes the capabilities of a female to overcome their gender specific personality traits placed on them by society. Notley addresses the thesis continuously throughout the poem using form, symbolism, and historical context.

    Read More

  • Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Mr. Peebles' Heart

    2405 Words  | 5 Pages

    In both Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "Mr. Peebles’ Heart" present the reader with strong, successful female characters. Alexandra Bergson, the heroine of O Pioneers!, becomes the manager and proprietor of a prosperous farm on the Nebraska frontier while Joan R. Bascom of "Mr. Peebles’ Heart" is a successful doctor. Cather and Gilman create competent, independent female characters that do not conform to the perceived societal standards for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Both women must struggle against society’s perception of what they should be and how they should behave, however, Alexandra’s struggle leaves her emotionally distant while Joan’s struggle does not hinder her emotional attachments.

    Read More

  • Psychoanalytic Criticism In Girl, Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movie Girl, Interrupted, written by Susanna Kaysen, is a good text to use for a Psychoanalytic Criticism lens. A memoir turned into a movie about a young girl being admitted to a psych ward after trying to end her life and living with a mental illness and finding treatment is a great example to show what Psychoanalytic Criticism really is. “The forgetting or ignoring of unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events, so that they are forced out of the conscious into the realm of the unconscious” (Barry, 97). In applying psychoanalytic criticism the definition of psychoanalysis itself must be understood. It is a form of therapy that is used to help cure mental disorders “By investigating the interaction of the conscious

    Read More

  • The Chrysanthemums Compare And Contrast

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    In our departure and adieu, both Mrs. Whipple and Elisa cared about how the world perceived them. They were afraid if either of them peered into a crystal creek then they might see an unholy beast abhorred by man. While Elisa’s sympathy and compassion was pure, Mrs. Whipple only cared about her own ego. Mrs. Whipple even smoke ill of the doctor when it meant her ego was threatened. She didn’t want people to think her family was poor or suffering. Her desire was personal concern, while Elisa cared about the emotions of others.

    Read More

  • Coming of Age in Alice Munro’s "Boys and Girls"

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.

    Read More

  • 19th Century Women

    1610 Words  | 4 Pages

    Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: The Role of Women

    2160 Words  | 5 Pages

    In her novel, My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "creat[ed] images of strong and resourceful women upon whom the fate of a new country depended" . This responsibility, along with the "economic productivity" Gilbert and Gubar cite (173), reinforces the sense that women hold a different place in this frontier community than they would in the more settled areas of America.

    Read More

  • Feminism Vs Virginia Woolf

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    What I have discussed are two women authors that have faced trials in their lifetimes pertaining to feminism that society had forced upon them. We are given insight into the ways and values of their time and how these experiences influenced their writings. In conclusion, we can see how societal issues concerning the roles of women have differed in principles, but remain the same in the way that there is an unbroken tradition regarding how men and women differ in their roles as well as their perceived rights. Female writers and advocates of women’s rights show these influences with Mary Wollstonecraft using her strong personality and direct writings and Virginia Woolf using her narratives, and both giving us insight to the struggles of an ongoing debate.

    Read More

More about Psychoanalytical Analysis Of O Pioneers By Willa Cather

Open Document