My Antonia Gender Roles

What is a gender role? It is the behaviors that are considered acceptable for people based on their sex. Throughout history, societies have constructed gender roles. As times change, roles tend to change. In the twenty-first century, American society has created the role of women being great academics and men only being athletes. This has not always been true in the past. Although America is not perfect, it is working on intellectual and physical equality.

During the summer Jim and Antonia spend a bit more time together. They end up together in a rainstorm watching the sky from the top of the chicken coop. Antonia tells Jim that things will be ok for him, but harder for his family.

In January Mr. Shimerda commits suicide in his family’s barn. They hurry him on the corner of the land where the roads will cross when they are built. Spring arrives and Ántonia decides to work in the field with her brother instead of attending school with Jim. Their friendship starts growing apart. When Jim turns thirteen him and his grandparents move to town so they are closer to the school. Ántonia ends up working at several different places. Jim and she even rekindle their friendship. Jim ends up moving to Lincoln to attend college. At college he meets Ántonia’s friend Lena Lingard. The two end up dating, but Jim is really in love with Ántonia. He then transfers out to Harvard and moved to Boston. He finished college and decided to visit his grandparents in Black Hawk. While he is there he discovers Ántonia has a child but is not married. He decides to confess his love to her, but she rejects him. Jim then returns to Boston for law school. Ántonia and Jim do not see each other for another twenty years. They have both moved on with their lives. Jim is a married successful lawyer in New York City and Ántonia is a married farmer with 11 kids. Jim still cherishes all of his memories with Antonia but realizes he has to move on. Even though the two have gone their separate ways, there will always be memories that keep them in each other’s hearts.

Throughout Literature the role and position of women has been constantly one of debate and controversy. For centuries women have struggled to exert any power or individual identity through times of male dominance. The novel The Great Gatsby as well as the play A Streetcar Named Desire and lastly the poetry of Anne Sexton, were all written during the 20th Century in America. Throughout the 20th Century, attitudes towards women in the USA were changing,

Willa Cather imaginatively went against the “norms” of the society that she lived in, in her famous work My Antonia, she expressed ideas that were very different than what was universally believed regarding the roles of women; Cather redefines women through her exploration of conflict, setting, and characterization.

As we know, Willa Cather was very open about her sexuality and her feelings towards women. She dressed like a man for most of her life and even in her college days at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, she had a haircut much like mine. One fact that is very impressive about Willa Cather is that she lived this life of “manhood” during a time when that was extremely taboo. During the time Willa Cather grew up, men were the dominant ones that could do anything they please. The fact that Willa Cather broke through that stigma is inspiring to me, even as a male in the 21st century. I am confident in saying that Willa Cather wrote very strong women characters, because she wanted to show the women of the time that anything is possible. While winning a Pulitzer Prize and writing many best selling books, I believe she accomplished that challenge very well.

Cather shows the uniqueness of the female perspective and demonstrates the American Dream using her characters of the pioneer era. She uses landscapes to describe females of her time and how they maintained the household. Feminism is used merely throughout the text to represent strong women such as Antonia, who build their future on terms of hard

Cather’s work, My Antonia, is a memoir told from Jim Burden’s perspective, as he recollects his youth moving from Virginia to life on the plains of Black Hawk, Nebraska. Upon moving in with his grandparents, Jim begins to admire Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant who moved to Black Hawk alongside the rest of her family, the Shimerdas. As Jim spends more time in Black Hawk, he bears witness to the many hardships which the Shimerdas faced, such as their limited proficiency with English, their horrible financial situation, and the death of the father, Mr. Shimerda. Later in the novel, Jim moves into town to further his education, while Antonia moves into town to find work. In town, Jim finds more hard-working immigrants, known as the “Hired

Most of the authors we have studied all have their own different views on culture and gender roles. Sappho is a very talent poem writer who has written a variety of poems such as: “Don’t ask me what to wear”, Religions and occupational poems. Sappho poems were love poems for both women and men. Sappho poems became popular on one hand and the hand some thought that some of her poetry was disgraceful due to Sappho talking about same sex relationships ( South university online lecture---Sappho’s Poems,2016, para 1,2). Sappho most interests me given the fact that she speaks in first person.

American Literature has always been about men and for men. In this essay, we are going to analyze the women’s role in the book, as inferior and weaker gender.

She needed to help support her family now and took up working in farms and in the city. Ambrousch, her brother, seemed like he didn't work, but just ordered around Antonia. " Ambrousch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the threshers. The farmers liked her and were kind to her, said they would rather have her for a hand than Ambrousch". Tiny, Lena, and Antonia went to Black Hawk to work.

He wants to protect her but at the end he realizes that she took her own path. Then, deep inside he really understands her different choices which leads her back to their lovely land. At the begging of the novel, we understand that the protagonist learn several things from her friend Jim, but at the end we can say that the one who truly learns something is Jim Burden. Ántonia’s life is much harder than Jim’s, who has a life o privileges.

Throughout time, the role of women in society has slowly undergone changes. Now so more than ever do females have more freedoms socially, economically, and politically compared to the past. Before, women were expected to act demure and subservient to their husbands, while also taking responsibility of the domesticity of the family. These unspoken rules restricted women from seeking out opportunities away from the home, but it didn’t stop them all. For example, Willa Cather, an illustrious author of the early 1900’s who followed the beat of her own drum, rather than the whims of others. Her success as a writer is a testimony to this strong spirit and her works reflect it dubiously. Her novel “ My Antonia” in particular is full of strong female

Gender can be defined as the socially preconceived roles that are thought to be fitting for either men or women in a particular culture. These preconceived roles, stereotype men and women, ensnaring them into provincial boxes that prevent gender identity and expression (Fisher and Silber). Traditional gender roles, especially in the 18th and 19th century literature depicts women as delicate maidens, who are weak and submissive or as nurturing and sensitive characters taking the roles wives and mothers. Men on the other hand are portrayed as strong, rational, and assertive taking on the roles that require authority (Fisher and Silber). To better understand the role of fixed gender expectations, we will analyze four short essays namely: Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”; Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Admontillado”; William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” All these essays except Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Admontillado,” describe the lives of women protagonists in different environments which influence how they act in an era when women played second fiddle to men. This we will accomplish by analyzing how major characters in this stories are utilized by the respective authors. Their interactions with other characters, their instincts, and their reactions provide a window into their world, and the society at large.

When reading “My Antonia,” I learned a lot about her character. Antonia seems down to Earth and excited to explore new things. Antonia has a strength that helps her succeed in many things. I believe she has the power to make bad situations beautiful in her own way.