Feminism In Willa Cather's 'O Pioneers !'

“Coming to America/Escaping to Europe” by Janis Stout offers a detailed background and interpretation of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. By providing a brief historical biography of Willa Cather, Stout raises numerous reasons regarding Cather’s decisions for the novel’s setting, characters, ethnic identities, and plot. Through the article, the reader learns that the life of Jim Burden reflects Willa Cather’s. Because Cather is positively impacted by Russians, Austrians, Norwegians, and Bohemians during her move to Nebraska, the characters play central roles in Jim’s life as well. Similarly, they both share a language of loneliness and homesickness with the immigrants, which greatly contributes to their lifelong relations.

Many things influence a person’s overall perception and opinions about the world around them, such as their education, geographic location of upbringing, or religious views. All of these factors, combined with countless others, shape each person into who they are and how they interact with society. The time period a person lives through is another exceptionally important contribution, as it is creates the entire backdrop of their experiences -- socially, economically, and politically. A psychoanalytical look at O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, explains how the social and cultural implications of Willa’s life are transferred to this piece of literature. I believe that Willa Cather created the primary, male characters in O Pioneers! based on the unfortunate experiences she had with men in her early adulthood, which caused these strongly biased characters, while the female characters are given exaggerated positive personality traits.

Throughout history, men and women experienced life changing situations that impacted their lives in many different ways. The roles of both genders in society show the narrow thread of their gender specific roles and social standards. The customs of masculinity and femininity in the eastern part of the U.S, contributed tremendously to the roles men and women played in the Overland Trial. However, the development of the west showed the orthodox practices of American cultural and the way in which many American identified themselves. The novel by Kenneth Holmes called “The covered wagon”, illustrates the lives of the women who traveled the west in covered wagons during the 19th century through their letters and diaries. Women like Tamsen Donner as well as Virginia Reed, members of the donner party. In addition, there are letters and diaries from a Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail and Rachel Fisher, who had to bury her husband and daughter before getting to Oregon. Through the text of Holmes, current historians are able to visualize the different places and details revolving around the trail, crafting scenarios that are both devastating and heart-warming to its audience. Holmes focused primarily in the roles of women in the expansion to the west and how the absence of women history shows the physical barrier crafted by gender roles.

Beginning with Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron-Mills, readers can find within the text a clear oppression of lower class peoples that is also an indirect oppression of women as lower-class individuals. Davis tells this story with a man named Hugh Wolfe as her main

Men where the decision makers. Women’s whole lives were set up to marry a man and be controlled by them, I soon came to find that the men ruled everything they did. They controlled where they went, what they wore, even if they got divorced if the man didn't want her to see her kids she couldn't, in the 1850s the industrial revolution changed women's lives they had more freedom and got their own money, but this little freedom they got, had some consequences. Berengera was one example of the women who left their families to get their own jobs and make their own money, she was just a young Canadian girl who came down with her sister from their family farm in lowell Massachusetts to working the textile mill. When she was there she met a man and had an affair. They decided to split up, she went to Manchester mass and he went to Biddeford and Saco area. She soon found out that she was pregnant, so she decided to follow her boyfriend and tell him. After she told her boyfriend, he said he didn’t want to marry her and set up an illegal abortion. Berengera she knew if she didn't see the doctor she'd be a disappointment to her family so she went to Saco to see Dr James Harvey Smith but during the operation something happened leading her to die. The doctor panicked and decided to strap her on a board and put her in the brooks to lead to the ocean, but his plan got screwed up and the board got stuck in a brook and a young boy found her and once it got out, she got her name Mary

In the 21st century, many women, myself included, take for granted that we can wear whatever we desire and say what we want, in public, without the fear of being thrown in jail. However, that was not always the case. While the fight for the continued advance of women’s rights rages on, women of the 19th century lived a very different life than the one, us women, lead today. The feminist agenda was just emerging on the horizon. One particular woman was preparing to do her part to further the cause of women’s rights: Sarah Willis Parker. Parker was better known by her pen name, Fanny Fern. After facing and overcoming extreme adversity, she made the decision to start writing. To understand how truly ground breaking Fanny Fern was, we need to understand that in a 1997 edition of an anthology of American satire from colonial times to present, Fern was the only woman writer from the 19th century in that text. Her satiric style and controversial subject matter was just what the oppressed needed to gain some support and give them a voice.

In the past and today, women have struggled to be equal with men. However, during the progressive era in the 1890s through the 1920s, women voiced and participated greatly in the society to create an impact and a change. The Hossack case was evidence of women’s struggle during the progressive era because of Margaret’s role in the household, voice in the family, and work in the farm. Margaret’s role in the household was to be a mother and wife. A mother tends to the children by nourishing them mentally and physically.

The book describes how complex societal dictation dominated the lives of women and left no room for growth as a unique individual with a passion other than homemaking. It called upon women to take a stand against these so called norms and “seek new opportunities for themselves” (“Betty Friedan”). It instantly became sensation and “continues to be regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century” (Michals). It struck a nerve with all women alike, leading to a “feminist explosion” (Kaplan) because of the recognition of themselves in Friedan’s work (Parry) and the familiarity shared between the women created a sense of community. It also brought public awareness to the glamorized domestication of

   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 Story of a Pioneer, Anna Howard Shaw utilizes imagery to convey the variety of women’s rights activists that she met as she transitioned from being a pastor to being a suffrage lecturer. Louise May Alcott, for example, was “a fresh breeze blowing over wide moors” in Shaw’s eyes, creating an image of the dominating wind and indicating Alcott’s strong personality (110). The wind is powerful and loud as it blusters much like Alcott was when it came to issues she cared about. Conversely, Shaw describes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife as “an old New England garden,” painting Mrs. Emerson as refined and traditional (110). She was not wild like Alcott- instead, she was grounded and elegant.

Literature changes as current events change and as the structure of society begins to shift. American feminist literature started to become prevalent during the Victorian era, or around the latter part of the 19th century. This is the time when the first wave of feminism in the United States hit. The Seneca Falls Convention - the first women’s rights convention - and the emergence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s American Equal Rights Association in the middle of the 19th century are among some of the noteable events that sparked this movement in literature. Women across America were inspired by the changing of the times, and that is reflected in many American female authors’ writings.

In this essay I will discuss and analyze the social forces that influenced American women writers of the period of 1865 to 1912. I will describe the specific roles female authors played in this period and explain how the perspectives of female authors differed from their male contemporaries.

Willa Cather draws a stark contrast between the respectable women of Black Hawk and the “hired girls” in books II and III of My Antonia through Jim’s unavoidable attachment to them.  The “hired girls” are all immigrants who work in Black Hawk as servants to help support their families in the country.  They are hardworking and charming.  They are simple and complicated.  They are sad and joyful.  They work all day and dance all night.  For Jim they are the most interesting people who  reside in Black Hawk.  The respectable women are boring and predictable.  They all go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning.  Their

      Willa Cather's novel My Ántonia dramatizes the effect the frontier has on both native-born people and immigrants that come to the West in search of new beginnings. The story centers around two families living in a remote area of Nebraska from completely diverse backgrounds. This tale suggests that regardless of where a person comes from, the trials and tribulations of living under such tough conditions will ultimately impact his/her future existence. Cather's characters, no matter the age or heritage, are continuously re-defined, as if reborn, into a new life by surviving the harsh realities of the frontier. Much of the creation of these characters takes place in the very

Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.