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Eassy of women empowerment
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“A plump, fair skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl neatly about her shoulders and a clumsy pocket book in her hand.” This is the first glimpse of the transformation from girl to successful woman of Lena Lingard in My Antonia, by Willa Cather. In the beginning of the book, Lena is portrayed as a struggling dressmaker, who because of her personality, goals, and motivation, becomes a successful individual.
Lena’s independence and obstinacy makes her a strong personality in My Antonia. Despite how easily she attracted men, Lena never wanted to marry. This is because she was afraid of losing the independence that she had all her life. Her independence was also shown when she arrived at Jim’s apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska. Lena wasn’t tied down, so she was able to go where she wanted, whenever she wanted. Obstinacy showed in Lena’s refusal to marry. In a conversation between Jim and Lena, Jim stated, “Every handsome girl like [Lena] marries.” All through Jim’s argument, Lena stayed true to her anti-marriage view.
Lena’s goals were simple: not to marry, yet, make something of herself. Within the book entitled, ‘Lena Lingard,’ Lena has a discussion with Jim about her unwillingness to wed. She would “prefer to be foolish when [she] feels like it, and be accountable to nobody.” In ‘The Hired Girls’ Lena stated her desire to go into business. A later paragraph expressed her wish to become a teacher. However, Lena found this goal impossible because she was not “born smart.”
Motivation was something that Lena never lacked. “I’m going to get my mother out of that old sod house where she’s lived so many years. The men will never do it.” Lena took her mother’s fate into her own hands when it was not socially acceptable for her to do so.
The warm blackness of summer nights, settling over your lawn and drifting down familiar street signs, over coffee shops closed for the night and broken down asphalt. Dust, collecting on creaking wooden floorboards and swirling through age-old sunlight. A song forgotten, notes away from your ears. Nostalgia is an emotion that all human beings experience and know well. Willa Cather expands on this fact, infusing her award-winning novel, My Ántonia, with sentimentalism and melancholy. Cather tells a tale of home, drawing from the idealistic “American dream” that all Americans know well. Jim Burden, a young orphan, moves to the countryside, spending his days watching men work in the dusty fields and find community amongst themselves. He adores
Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” is a collection of fictional memories loosely based off Cather’s own childhood. Throughout the novel young Jim Burden encounters several characters and befriends men and women alike, but two female characters become very close; Antonia Shimerda and Lena Lingard. Antonia and Lena both aid Jim throughout his life; one through childhood and the other through adulthood. While both characters have minor similarities, the differences between them are pronounced.
He is apprehensive about seeing Antonia, fearing that she will no longer be the idealized person who exists in his memory. Jim is not let down when they meet, as even though she is now a “battered woman … but she still had that something that fires the imagination, could stop one’s breath for a moment” (226). Age has not dampened the spirit that Jim was drawn to throughout his youth and now his adulthood. He speaks about her through a lens of true love and respect, telling her children that he “couldn’t stand it if you boys were inconsiderate [towards Antonia] … I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there’s nobody like her” (222). Jim refers to Antonia as a “rich mine of life,” and it is clear that Antonia’s type of richness is more valuable in Jim’s eyes. Through her, he is able to realize that tangible fiscal wealth is far less precious than the impalpable beauty of emotional connection and
He is apprehensive about seeing Antonia, fearing that she will no longer be the idealized person who exists in his memory. “I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it” (pg. 127). Jim is not let down when they meet, as even though she is now a “battered woman” (pg. 137), she possess the wonderful spirit that Jim adores. In contrast to Jim’s material prosperity and lacking personal life, Antonia has chosen to live the labor-intensive farmer and has a devoted husband and children.
In the book, "My Antonia", nostalgic views can be compared to those from narratives of Indians personal experiences. The experience that can be compared is the relation that they had regarding the westward movement and the plans the Americans had for the different races. The hardships they had experienced had been uncomfortable and unfair. The Indians had it harder than the immigrants, because they were moved from their own homes and sent to reservations and their kids were taken to the east to learn to become white. The immigrants came to the west expected great opportunities. They experienced hardships which involved new culture, religion, and the racist ways of the white men. Although these images can be compared to hardships they had the Indians had a more difficult outcome to experience.
My Ántonia brings together the life of a young boy and young Bohemian female in the old prairie. The book details this hardships and memories together as they grow older and their lives change in the ever-different worlds. The one thing that keeps them close through all of the turmoil is their personal memories. Neither Jim or Ántonia ever recall large historical events though but rather only the ir personal memories which keeps them closer than they think if when they are separated for long periods of time through the novel.
My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a book tracing the story of a young man, Jim Burden, and his relationship with a young woman, Antonia Shimerda. Jim narrates the entire story in first person, relating accounts and memories of his childhood with Antonia. He traces his journey to the Nebraska where he and Antonia meet and grow up. Jim looks back on all of his childhood scenes with Antonia with nearly heartbreaking nostalgia. My Antonia, is a book that makes many parallels to the sadness and frailty, but also the quiet beauty in life, and leaves the reader with a sense of profound sorrow. One of the main ways Cather is able to invoke these emotions in the reader is through the ongoing theme of separation. Willa Cather develops her theme of separation through death, the changing seasons, characters leaving and the process of growing apart.
Rosowski, Susan J., ed. Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Antonia. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 1989.
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.
In the words of entrepreneur Brandi Harvey, “You are enough, without anyone else’s stamp, without anyone else’s validation or approval.” In this quote, she validates the fact that people, women in particular, do not need somebody to tell them they are sufficient enough— a woman does not need a man to provide for her needs, make her happy, or make her feel good about herself. It shows that women who lose their independence often lose their dreams as well. This idea centers all throughout the book, “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. In this book, the author focuses on the life of a young man named Jim and the many diverse women that surrounds him all from he was a small boy to a grown man. The idea of independence
She is very close to her father so this impacts her deeply. She feels the need to step up and care for her family. This turns Antonia into a very hard worker. She begins working with Ambrosch, her brother, by plowing the fields. She takes on the responsibilities of a man. This makes her stop going to school. This worries Jim until he finds out that Antonia is actually very hurt by the event of her father dying. Antonia cries in secret and longs to go to school.
Although Lena encounters hardships of disapproval from her reversal of stereotypical gender roles in the beginning of the novel, she finds a place of belonging in her society as a fashion designer towards the end. Throughout the novel, other women do not approve of Lena or how she lives her life. However, when Jim visits Lena at work, he observes her interactions with her female customers. She shows great customer service, and the clients say that she “has style” (193). Cather illustrates to the readers that Lena has eventually found her place in society. Lena is an independent business woman who embodies strength and establishes that in her response to Jim’s concerns about her relationship with Pole. She states that “Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones… I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody” (200). Instead of focusing on her relationship with men, Lena soon becomes a successful dressmaker in
In the Hired Girls Antonia and Lena are depicted as strong, independent women who work to support themselves and their families and enjoying themselves as they see fit. ³...Country girls who had come to town to earn a living, and in nearly every case, to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family to go to school.²(My Antonia, Willa Cather. p.172) In this case it is the father who needs the daughter as opposed to the more tradit...
The landscape and the environment in Willa Cather's, My Ántonia, plays several roles. It creates both a character and protagonist, while it also reflects Cather's main characters, Jim and Ántonia, as well as forming the structure of the novel. Additionally, it evokes several themes that existed on the prairie during the time in which the story takes place. Some of these themes that directly relate to the novel, which are worth exploring, are endurance, hardship, and spirituality. Additionally, the symbolism of the "hot and cold" climate will be examined, revealing the significance it has on the novel in an overall manner. The analyses will further explain Cather's construction of the novel, which is based on three cycles: the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life and physical development and lastly, the cultural cycle.
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or fa...