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Respect Over Passion in My Antonia
Throughout the book "My Antonia" by Willa Cather, there is a twisting and turning of Sexual and Gender issues. There also tends to be a tension surrounding the different classes between the Black Hawk towns people, and what are called, "the hired girls" or the people from the country. These distinctive qualities in this novel start being shown in the very beginning or the story where Jims' best-friend speaks about the life of Jim and the path with whom he chose to travel. We watch the love of Jim grow farther and farther distant due to the inevitable tensions of classes, sexuality, and gender.
In the beginning of the story when Antonia and Jim are still becoming acquainted the audience meets these two characters in a "prairie-dog town" on their way back from picking up a spade for Antonia's' brother Ambrosch at Russian Peter's House. Antonia had suggested that herself and Jim see if the prairie-dog town holes "ran straight down, or were horizontal, like mole holes."(pg.30) Within the time that Jim and Antonia were there the two young kids cam across a large snake, as Jim says, "He was not merely a big snake, I thought--he was a circus monstrosity. He was abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick."(pg.31) Jim kills the snake and we see a change in position for Antonia and Jim. Antonia goes to say, "I never know you was so brave, Jim, you is just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go for him. Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show everybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawn-tree so big snake like you kill." This was the beginning of the gender break between the females and ...
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...od times go in and out of Jims life. As he gets older he realizes what he has missed out on much of life.
Works Consulted
Bloom, Harold, ed. Willa Cather's My Antonia. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. 1987.
Bourne, Randolph. "Review of My Antonia." Murphy's Critical Essays 145-147.
Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.
Dyck, Reginald. "The Feminist Critique of Willa Cather's Fiction: A Review Essay." Women's Studies 22 (1993): 263-279.
Ferguson, Mary Anne. "My Antonia in Women's Studies: Pioneer Women and Men-- The Myth and the Reality." Rosowski's Approaches to Teaching 95-100.
Helmick, Evelyn. "The Mysteries of Antonia." Bloom's Willa Cather's . . . , 109-119.
Rosowski, Susan J., ed. Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Antonia. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 1989.
The hired girls are important characters in My Antonia both as a connection to the country and contrast against the respectable women in Black Hawk; and as comparison figures for the most important hired girl, Antonia. Their success is ironic because of their meek beginnings, and says something about the value of poverty. Through them, the reader is shown the value of overcoming obstacles with hard work. The vivid descriptions of them, as well as Jim’s attraction to them really make them objects of poetry to read about. They ultimately show a lot about Antonia in their similarities and dissimilarities to her.
In My Antonia by Willa Cather, there are many dark overtones that pervade the novel. It is through the use of symbolism and contrast these overtones are made real. The prairie is the predominant setting of the novel. It may be shaped, and it conforms to the desires of those working it. The prairie¹s loneliness, shown by the wide open spaces, is a brilliant way of revealing internal conflict by using a setting. Also, it brings out the characters true meaning. Cather shows through the character of Lena Lengard that society¹s next generation would not be as good, or quite as noble as that of Cather¹s childhood. The primary inscription on the first page states that the best days are the first to flee. Cather contrasts these ideas with Antonia¹s personality, which is always bright. This contributes to the dreariness of the novel.
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.
Recognition of nation-construction effects our reading of the play of gender in the text. One such instance is in the case of narrative authority, which has frequently been cited as Jim's patriarchal subsuming of Ántonia, as we have seen. While Jim appends the "my" to his transcription of Ántonia's history, however, it is worth reiterating that Ántonia is never, in fact, Jim's; rather, his possessive "My" reflects a failed attempt at possession, as his amorous advances were firmly rebuffed and as the adult Ántonia never seeks his assistance or support. At the same time, that the tale is proffered via an anonymous female narrator further undermines Jim's narrative authority, for his masculine presumption to speak for Ántonia undergoes...
In Willa Cather's My Antonia a special bond is formed, shattered, mended, and eventually secured between the main characters, Antonia Shimerda and Jim Burden. Jim and Antonia seem to be destined to affect each other's lives dramatically, from the beginning of the novel.
Narratives such as Rowlandson’s gave a voice to women in the realm of written words, but at the cost of the Native voice. According to the website www.maryrowlandson.com,
Much of the earliest criticism of My Antonia focuses on the apparent failure of the narrative. Many critics take the title of the story and its introduction at face value. When the story says it is to be about Ántonia, it must be about her! Therefore, many critics see the stunningly crafted pieces of "variation from a theme" -- the stories of Peter & Pavel (the Russians and their wolves) and the sections of the novel dealing with the hired girls Lena Lingard and others-- as divergences which weaken the overall structure of the novel. In other words, these stories distract us from the real story, that of Ántonia and her relationship with Jim. Other critics talk mostly about the landscape of Cather's stories, the way the pioneer story and the struggle with nature is a vital piece of her work. This is partly why, I think, Cather has been viewed as a minor writer of "local color" for so long. Because she sketches her landscapes with such simplicity and yet detail, many critics do not look past the landscape to see the characters and the true drama that they play out.
Willa Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia is often celebrated for its complimentary depiction of the immigrants that flocked to America at the turn of the twentieth century and hailed for its progressive approach to the ever-relevant immigrant debate. Despite the novel’s superficial benevolence towards foreigners, Janis Stout questions the authenticity of the book’s (and, by extension, Cather’s) kindnesses in her critical article “Coming to America/Escaping to Europe.” Stout argues that Cather’s ethnic characters (or lack thereof) reflect the popular, discriminatory views of her time, and extracts evidence from both the novel and the author’s personal life to buttress this claim. Stout’s criticism inspired my own interpretation-- that Cather’s treatment
Brown M. & Crone R. Willa Cather the Woman and Her Works. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970.
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.
My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a novel about Jim Burden and his relationship and experiences growing up with Antonia Shimerda in Nebraska. Throughout the book Jim reflects on his memories of Nebraska and the Shimerda family, often times in a sad and depressing tone. One of the main ways Cather is able to provoke these sad emotions within the reader is through the suicide of Antonia’s father, Mr. Shimerda. His death was unexpected by everyone and it is thought that homesickness is what drove him to take his own life. Homesickness was surely felt by Mr. Shimerda, as it was by many, but it was the failure to adequately find a way to provide for his family that sent Mr. Shimerda into a depressing downward spiral that left him no foreseeable alternative but to take his own life.
Rosowski, Susan J. “Willa Cather’s “A Lost Lady”: The Paradoxes of Change.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 11.1 (1977): 59. JSTOR. Web. 07 March 2012
From a report of Dating Safety and Victimization in Traditional and Online Relationship, Koeppel, Smith and Bouffard concluded that with the use of Internet helps increasing online dating and they use it to broaden their social circles and find their partner. People are more willing to accept online dating but their attitude towards online dating is still negative because of the negative impacts (6).
The article “Love Via The Internet”[3]. The writer started the article by showing her own opinion clearly about the long distance relationships through the dating websites “I'm having doubts about a long-distance relationship that started through a dating site.”[3]. Then she started to give an example of a relationship via the...