Memory, Motherland, and Community in Willa Cather’s My Antonia
Jennifer Patient
Willa Cather’s My Antonia, published in 1918, rests on the bookshelf of other great American novels for its illustrations of early American westward expansion, employing the bildungsroman as its vehicle. [2] Cather’s protagonist and narrator, Jim Burden, recounts his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood throughout the novel, which is written by his adult self. As he ages, Jim develops not only physically but also intellectually and emotionally, and he drifts slowly away from his rural upbringing, which centers on the immigrant characters around him, primarily Antonia from Bohemia. [3] Ultimately, he cannot outgrow this beloved relationship, even as his life evolves from surviving on the Nebraskan prairie to pursuing law in New York. Cather’s novel explores community as a village, which includes relationships that fulfill different vital roles, such as teacher and advocate. She also explores how sometimes inequality and injustice arise in communities, like in the actions of Krejiek and Mr. Cutter, when they do not conform to these roles. The existence of community, in all its highs and lows, offers readers an opportunity to explore the novel through feminist and Christian lenses. In addition, nostalgia acts as the catalyst and glue for the formation and structure of immigrant communities in My Antonia, while children like Jim and Antonia, who reach adulthood in America, do not need such a force to solidify their relationships with each other. The novel also addresses how tragedy strikes when we lack community, as displayed through several characters’ deaths. On the other hand, to keep community also requires suffering through sacrifice, but the novel clearly indicates that we are better off living selflessly than selfishly. Finally, My Antonia demonstrates the different ways we can hold on to community when life inevitably creates separation. Memory creates and destroys, using our communities and motherlands, which never truly leave us, as a means of enforcing this giving and taking.
Literature Review
Scholarship on My Antonia often focuses on the novel’s use of community by exploring the role of the mother, especially pertaining to Jim’s perpetual orphanhood, using Freudian language like “preoedipal.” [4] Few sources discuss what community in the novel looks like outside of this role, proving how critical motherhood is to not only the novel but also to developing children themselves. Scholars explore memory in the novel, especially through the characters’ storytelling, which appears throughout with varying levels of accuracy to the real events they claim to portray. Sources often read between the lines of what is left out of the novel, such as accurate representation of minorities, by drawing upon what we know historically about the American West in the 1800s.
Khalil Eman Mukattash, Lisa Marie Lucenti, and Ann Fisher-Wirth focus on how the absence of mothers affects Antonia and Jim’s pursuit of community, while Bani-Khair, et al., briefly discuss how Antonia prioritizes familial community and how that pertains to the developing American prairie culture. For example, Mukattash compares and contrasts the differences between mother figures in Antonia’s life: her biological mother, Mrs. Shimerda; her emotional surrogate mothers,Mrs. Burden and Mrs. Harling; her motherland, Bohemia; and Mother Nature, specifically that of the Nebraskan prairie (42-44). Mukattash determines that Mrs. Burden, Mrs. Harling, and Mother Nature in the Nebraskan prairie represent the positive maternal roles in Antonia’s life who mold her into the fruitful wife, mother, and homemaker she is at the end of the novel (44, 51). Unfortunately, her biological mother focuses on her brother Ambrosch, neglecting her in the process and thus making her like orphaned Jim Burden (Mukattash 43). Similarly, her motherland is a cause of nostalgia and pain as she learns how to live a new life instead in the United States (Mukattash 44). Mukattash also attributes a similar, spiritual orphanhood to Mr. Shimerda, whose suicide is rooted in nostalgia for his motherland (45). Lacking support from her mother and missing her father, Antonia has no choice but to embrace masculinity to survive (Mukattash 46). However, she can recapture some of this lost parental support through the sisterhood she finds in the other hired girls (Mukattash 47). Mukattash also describes Antonia’s creative role as storyteller, which is possible because she embraces the “mother’s body,” unlike Jim (47-49). Like Mukattash, Lisa Marie Lucenti emphasizes orphanhood, asserting that Jim is perpetually an orphan. Even as an adult, he does not find a sense of home and belonging in his marriage, traveling away from home frequently to perform his job as a railroad lawyer (Lucenti 195-96). She suggests that he seeks a sense of home instead through his memories and ultimately by attempting to make Antonia his home (Lucenti 196). Of all the hired girls, Antonia becomes the most domestic and maternal, creating for Jim not only a literal home of refreshment that he visits after twenty years apart but also a mental foundation for his most impactful memories (Lucenti 207-209). Ann Fisher-Wirth draws upon maternal imagery, describing Jim’s experience as a continual cycle of possession and loss (41, 45). She lists the novel’s womb imagery, asserting that Jim experiences a rebirth into a second preoedipal stage, as found in the Shimerdas’ sod house and the Burdens’ underground kitchen (Fisher-Wirth 61). Antonia herself represents the mother he loses at the beginning of the novel (Fisher-Wirth 50). Finally, Baker Bani-Khair, et al., emphasize Cather’s intentionality in setting her novel in the Midwest plains, where adherence to gender roles plays an especially important part in society. Masculinity is so praised that women, as wives, homemakers, and mothers, often sink into the background. However, this region’s emphasis on gender roles further corroborates Antonia’s desire for motherhood and depicts how living in the United States causes her to adopt American values of domesticity (Bani-Khair 479).
Additionally, Lucenti, Peter Kvidera, and Blythe Tellefsen explore how storytelling, memory, and Western American immigration intersect, which impact characters’ understanding of communities. For example, Lucenti uses the novel’s myriad examples of storytelling, like the stories of Jim’s rattlesnake killing and Pavel and Peter’s wolves, to emphasize the novel’s display of gothic traits. For example, these stories are often dark, contain horror elements, and mix “fear and pleasure” (Lucenti 197-200, 202). She also emphasizes collective memory and claims that even the novel’s most horrific stories and narratives cannot be contained or controlled due to their many witnesses (Lucenti 199-201). Jim’s brief descriptions of black characters and indigenous people also reveal how memory can create false narratives, as his recollections feel racist and misleading (Lucenti 203-04). Like Lucenti, Kvidera explores storytelling and narrative in his essay. He provides context to My Antonia’s setting, exploring the United States government’s desire to homogenize the West, cleared of indigenous people, through settlement (Kvidera 204, 209). Contrastingly, the novel disrupts this idea through immigrant settlers who not only diversify but also create the nation’s identity (Kvidera 207, 209, 227). Furthermore, they leave literal marks on the land, such as Mr. Shimerda’s grave, that influence Jim’s memory of his home. Because of its location at the crossroads, the grave is seen by many other travelers, free to make up their own interpretation of its origins (Kvidera 217-19). Another marker in the land, the Indian circle, offers the settlers an invitation to speculate about who lived on the land before them (Kvidera 216-217). Roads also hold significance as land that holds memories, symbolizing the immigrant’s journey (Kvidera 220-21). Tellefsen compares the United States’ origins with that of Antonia’s, claiming she is the developing West’s representative (229). She asserts the novel is a romanticized version of the American Dream, classified as “myth” (Tellefsen 230). Additionally, because of the novel’s problematic depictions and lack of depictions of people of color—especially indigenous people—the novel proves that memory is sometimes just as much remembering as it is forgetting (Tellefsen 232-33). In the case of Blind De’Arneault, the story ignores the black American’s non-consensual immigration story through slavery (Tellefsen 237-38). However, using memory, the novel also positively highlights the efforts of some immigrants in the development of the United States, rejecting homogeny (Tellefsen 240-41).
Because several scholars’ writing justifiably focuses on the negative aspects of memory and immigration in My Antonia, such as racism and sexism, positive and hopeful outlooks on the novel’s themes have been largely set aside. For example, coexisting with the novel’s themes of exclusion include beautiful, life-giving examples of community. I agree with Fisher-Wirth that “orphanhood releases Jim into this pattern of surrogacy in which one’s true kin are not defined biologically, but emotionally or spiritually” (50). Consequently, I explore diverse relationships by revealing the importance of the village or a community that contains many different sorts of relationships, in addition to biological and spiritual motherhood. I argue that common memory and homeland tie characters like Antonia and Jim together in even greater ways than Jim’s search for his lost mother figure. Just as the immigrants in the novel diversify and, consequently, improve the United States, the diverse roles those in our communities fulfill improve us as individuals. Furthermore, while scholars discuss the turmoil of maternal loss, the loss of the community at large also manifests in the lives of Cather’s characters. Finally, in addition to storytelling, communities hold onto the people and places they love in myriad ways that offer permanence.
Analysis: Community As Seen Through Christianity
Cather’s focus on community in My Antonia stems from her personal and literary emphasis on Christianity. Cather herself identified with a couple Christian denominations during her life (Murphy 58), which help explain her novel’s focus on Christian themes and differentiation between sects. [5] For example, Mr. Shimerda demonstrates his Catholicism on Christmas night at the Burdens’ house as he “cross[es] himself, and quietly kne[els] down before the [Christmas] tree” (97). Mr. Burden, “narrow in religious matters,” responds by “Protestantizing the atmosphere” with his own prayerful gesture (97). Later, when Mr. Shimerda commits suicide, Mrs. Burden asks the Norwegians if they will bury Mr. Shimerda in their graveyard, since she is “sure that a man who had killed himself could not be buried in a Catholic graveyard” (109). In other words, religion informs the ritualistic decisions of Cather’s characters. Catholic social teaching, in particular, which includes pillars such as solidarity, the dignity of the human person, and the universal purpose of goods (Gruijters 17), fits Cather’s depictions of community. Her characters express mutually reciprocated generosity and revolve their lives around each other. [6]
Because these communities feature a variety of types of relationships, like mothers and sisters in the biological and spiritual senses, they are akin to a village. American individualism has severed our modern understanding of the necessity of the village, or collectivism, for survival and emotional fulfillment, as referenced in the popular idiom “it takes a village.” [7] This idiom uptakes in usage when we experience challenges in life. For example, with no immediate family to rely on, especially a supportive mother or older sister, Antonia prepares for her wedding day and marriage to Larry Donovan with the help of Widow Steavens. When Jim is inquiring with Widow Steavens about Antonia’s marriage, Widow Steavens admits that she has “watched her [Antonia] like she’d been [her] own daughter” (211). Also, when Antonia births her first baby, Widow Steavens acts as her midwife. Not only does Widow Steavens support Antonia, but Antonia also supports Widow Steavens. As a childless widow, she has the opportunity to remember her days as a wife and experience mother-daughter community through Antonia by becoming her spiritual mother who prepares her for marriage.
John J. Murphy recognizes Cather’s “ability to see beyond the weaknesses of people –their gullibility, corruption, [and] vanity – to their shared aspirations, ideals [and] visions” (60). Cather's respect for Catholicism, a faith to which she herself never converted, and her characters’ abilities to live in harmony with one another despite blatantly differing religious views, reflect not only Cather’s own ecumenical approach to faith but also the overarching importance of the community’s role in society, which forces it to defy barriers like religious difference.
The Feminist Lens
By observing gender roles and feminist themes in Cather’s life, we can conclude that, like Jim, Cather’s memory inspires her writing. For example, Cather’s main setting of choice, the Nebraska prairie where she grew up, thrives on gendered roles such as the “cowboy” and “farmer” (Bani-Khair 279; Downs 32-33), which are actualized by male characters like Otto Fuchs and Jake Marpole. 8 However, even as a child, Cather received a taste of the male-dominated business world by having her own desk at the insurance and loan business where her father worked. By taking messages for her father when he was away from the office, she reminds us of the character Frances Harling, who also performs business for her father when he is away from the office (Downs 33-34). Contrastingly, domesticity was no place for Cather, who observed her own mother’s chronic sickness “perhaps brought on by childbearing” and who preferred to dress in men’s clothing (Downs 36-37, 40-41). Cather desired to escape domesticity by attending the University of Nebraska, where Jim attends university in the novel, to study medicine in 1890 (Downs 34-37). Cather ultimately became a journalist, writing for news outlets such as the Nebraska State Journal, which inspired her to becomean author (Downs 41). Cather, like Antonia, had “opinions about everything, and... was able to make them known” (Cather 66). However, M. Catherine Downs argues that Cather’s feminism is not as radical as it might seem. For example, Cather continued segregating her columns by traditional women’s interests and traditional men’s interests, alternating between female and male pseudonyms, even after the “woman’s sphere” and “men’s sphere was outdated” (Downs 14). Furthermore, Downs claims that these segregated, gendered roles seeped into Cather’s fiction writing (14). Although she was not a part of the generation that pioneered women’s journalism, we may still argue that Cather’s personal rejection of the typical 19th century woman’s role, which did not include “earning money” and “holding power” by writing news articles and influencing the masses, earns her spot as a feminist figure (Downs 14-15).
Community Creates Fulfillment and Identity
To survive, the characters in My Antonia rely on each other's knowledge, proving that community creates intelligence through the symbiotic swapping of knowledge. For example, without Jim, Antonia may not have learned English, for he acts as her English tutor. At first, she “eager[ly]” asks Jim what the English words are for the natural objects around them, like “eyes” and the color “blue” (64). Soon after, her father insists that Jim “te-e-ach, te-e-each my An-tonia,” initiating her formal education with a language textbook in hand (64). From then on, “almost every day she [comes] running across the prairie to have her reading lesson” (66).
Because of her family’s struggles with the language barrier, they are taken advantage of by shrewd Krajiek, who sells them a cave that is “no proper dugout at all,” “an old cookstove” for an exorbitant price, and “bony old horses for the price of good work-teams" (61). Before Antonia learns English, “Krajiek [is] their only interpreter, and [can] tell them anything he chose[s]. They [cannot] speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known” (60). In other words, Antonia’s desire to help her family achieve equity motivates her to learn English. 9 Furthermore, unlocking the English language allows Antonia to personally act as a pillar of boldness and outspokenness, which ironically irritates her ten-year-old tutor Jim and dismantles his boyish ideas of feminine timidity. Utilizing her newfound language immediately, Antonia delivers some of the most powerful quotations of the novel. Jim describes her voice as “the husky, breathy voice [he] remember[s] so well” (223), making it the most distinctly described voice in the novel. Jim himself becomes a student when he learns from the knowledge of Gaston Cleric, a newly hired professor at his university, who “introduce[s] [him] to the world of ideas” (186). Growing up among the working class in rural Nebraska, Jim would not have received this classical instruction in his hometown from his home community. Jim’s friendship with Gaston mutually benefits the professor, who is ill and forbidden by doctors to travel to his home in New England. Instead, Jim keeps Gaston company while Jim learns from his East Coast education.
Sometimes, community members must not only speak into the minds of their fellow community members but must also speak into their lives and decisions to act as advocates. Even some of the most outspoken members, like Antonia, need help fighting injustice by being offered an alternative perspective to create opportunities for personal growth. For example, after the Burdens move to the outskirts of Black Hawk, Mrs. Burden finds Antonia a job with the Harlings performing housekeeping duties. This job gives Antonia a chance to experience the city’s community, full of other immigrant girls like herself, and learn “cooking and housekeeping” (229). Her adult self, who has a household of her own to manage, recalls this experience away from her family farm and is grateful for the ways it helps her nurture her own home. Mrs. Harling, with Antonia in her care, further protects the young woman’s future by insisting to her family that Antonia ought to keep some of her earnings for “her own use” (129, 132).10 Mrs. Harling also advocates for Jim’s university education to his hesitant grandparents. Ultimately, Mr. Burden respects Mrs. Harling’s opinion significantly enough to allow it to soften him and his wife’s “misgivings” (174). Without such intervention, Jim would not have left Black Hawk as early as he does, missing out on the formative experiences he encounters in Lincoln with Gaston Cleric and Lena Lingard.
Despite the two aforementioned means of support, education and advocacy, in which characters of both sexes participate, female characters overall disproportionately support male characters in the novel. By including this distinction, Cather draws attention to sexism in 19th-century American gender roles, whose remnants may still be observed today. For example, without the managing expertise of Mrs. Gardiner, the wife of the owner of Black Hawk’s hotel, Mr. Gardiner “would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man’s hotel” (153), because Mrs. Gardiner performs so many managing tasks. Likewise, Mrs. Harling and her eldest daughter, Frances, manage the family household and business, respectively, when Mr. Harling frequently leaves town. Although these women spend much time keeping these systems running smoothly, when Mr. Harling arrives home, his way is law. In true sexist fashion, Frances does not experience the same sort of recognition for her work as her father. Her circumstance reminds us of generations of hard-working but unrecognized women, hustling behind the scenes for successful men. Similarly, Antonia picks up the slack at her family’s farm when her father dies, literally wearing his boots and fur cap as she works, symbolizing her new role as a provider. She later becomes known as one of the hired girls or daughters of immigrant farming families who send themselves into town to work and send back their earnings to their families so they can survive. Perhaps the most successful of these girls, Lena Lingard, pursues an entrepreneurial career in dressmaking. Her motivation is to “get [her] mother out of that old sod house where she’s lived so many years. [because] The men will never do it” (179). As a young female business owner, she confesses to a romantically interested Jim that she rejects marriage and children for herself. Marriage and motherhood, based on her own experiences, mean that she would have to spend the rest of her life providing tirelessly and thanklessly for others. Overall, the hired girls’ work generally pays off, as Jim reports, “One result of this family solidarity [is] that the foreign farmers in [his] county [are] the first to become prosperous” (157). Instead of staying inside and adhering to society’s roles for women’s propriety, which include staying out of the sun and not working as a man, the hired girls continue to work hard, marry other industrious immigrants, and craft a life for themselves that allows them to live in relative comfort and ease. They provide their children an easier youth than what they had to experience.
These hired girls serve each other not only through friendship but also through spiritual sisterhood, which acts as a form of community. [11] Contrastingly, by performing heavy farm work and housekeeping, Antonia acts as more of a provider figure, like a mother or father, for her biological sister Yulka, than an actual sister. [12] Similarly, Jim rarely mentions Yulka in the text, but he does describe her as “mild and obedient,” which further portrays her as childlike (62). To alleviate this absence in her familial community, Antonia forms a girlish sisterhood with the hired girls, like Tiny, Lena, and Anna, with whom “she [goes] downtown nearly every afternoon” (165) to socialize and dance. Jim, arriving to Nebraska by himself, also lacks sisters as well as brothers. [13] His reflective confession to Antonia, “I’d have liked to have you for...my sister—anything that a woman can be to a man” (219), insinuates that he does not realize the spiritual siblinghood that already exists between him and some of the other hired girls.
How We Create Community
Immigrants intentionally form communities with others from the same land, uniting themselves in their common ground as countryfolk and foreigners and creating community based on shared memory. For example, Willa Cather’s novel My Antoniaintroduces AntonJelinek, a young Bohemian, when he arrives at the prairie “on his only horse to help his countrymen in their trouble,” having heard of Mr. Shimerda’s death (106). Furthermore, he offers to help Mrs. Shimerda dig her husband’s grave. Finding kinship in common homeland propels us to help others who can relate to our origins. These origins become especially precious once we lose access to our motherlands by moving away and have limited means to remember them. In these circumstances, we will cling even to people we have never met; we feel an intrinsic bond with them.
Community in My Antonia forms in creative ways despite barriers like culture, language, and privilege, with which children in the novel display particular alacrity. For example, although Jim struggles to understand Antonia when they first arrive at the prairie, both culturally and linguistically, he maintains a bond with her that extends well into their adulthood. Young Antonia even views her time with Jim as an opportunity to “forget [her] troubles at home”; she explores the prairie with him and creates a friendship in this alternative way (67). In other words, the children use the nature around them as a sort of communication when words fail. On the contrary, shrewd Krajiek uses the Shimerdas’ lack of understanding to his advantage.
Furthermore, when discussing Krajiek’s deceitfulness, Mr. Burden claims he would have “interfered” in the unwise sale, “but Bohemians has [sic] a natural distrust of Austrians” (61). He lets his stereotyping block aid to his neighbor. To fully enjoy one’s community, one must set aside biases like this, which present themselves throughout the novel. For example, the Burdens, although generally an accepting people who exhibit Christ-like hospitality, provide further displays of stereotyping. For example, upon meeting the Shimerdas, Jim narrates, “My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if they were deaf” (62). Jim later “remember[s] how horrified we [he and his family] were” looking at sourdough for the first time, baked by Mrs. Shimerda for her family (66). While Jim is no stranger to making ignorant judgements about different cultures, children generally are more trusting and less set in their biases than adults. This child-like adaptability and simplicity paves a way for Jim and Antonia to become lifelong friends despite disagreements and stereotypes. The children mirror the simplicity of their prairie farming lifestyles by exhibiting tenderness for each other. They see each other through a simpler lens than that of adults andblockout most cultural differences that could bar their friendship’s progression. In other words, like the Kingdom of Heaven, meaningful and lasting friendship belongs to those who are childlike (Matthew 19:14).
Child Jim’s biggest grievance with Antonia is her perceived masculinity, which, ironically, makes him feel more alienated from her than their language barrier and cultural differences. The novel’s strongest example of Jim’s sexism toward Antonia is when he narrowly saves them both from a rattlesnake, and Antonia praises him as a manly hero. Jim declares she “never [takes] a supercilious air with [him] again,” referring to how she previously acted superior towards him, as modern readers would say her older age afforded her right to do (77).
Jim, however, in accordance to 19th-century gender roles, does not see their age differences relevant to their dynamic but rather his gender. Yet his attitude regarding gender dynamic shifts for the better. For example, his adolescent self recognizes the inherent attractiveness of hired girls like Antonia, who develop muscles during their labors and cultivate a comfortability in their bodies. He respects how they make particularly appealing dance partners compared to the other Black Hawk girls, who are not as hard-working. While Jim’s positive appraisal of Antonia rests on him putting other women down, he still displays a dynamic opinion on Antonia that only improves as he ages and matures.
While privilege complicates relationships, it does not ensure their demise. For example, before he discovers that Mr. Shimerda is dead, Jim notices the horrified reactions from his grandparents when hearing the news. He narrates, “I looked forward to any new crisis with delight” (101), which displays how shielded and decentered young Jim is to actual tragedy.
Instead of fearing an impending “crisis” and its effects on him and his family, he views it as gossip. In other words, he is privileged to live with his grandparents, who live in more comfort and establishment than the Shimerdas, who live on the brink of starvation and are freezing to death. The Shimerdas, as a newly immigrated family, have yet to build for themselves a life of stability in the United States and must construct one from scratch. However, although Jim cannot personally relate to the Shimerdas’ struggles, Antonia still loves him and accepts help from his family.
Lastly, Jim finds the “attitude of the town people toward these girls [the hired girls] very stupid” (158). He disagrees with the blanket statement that “all foreigners [are] ignorant people who [cannot] speak English” (158). Even as a privileged, native-born American raised by other native-born Americans, he recognizes nuance among immigrants and that many of them lived lives that would be deemed impressive in the United States had they not left them behind in pursuit of a better life. As a result, he allows them, especially Antonia, to create joy in his life that he remembers fondly for the rest of his days.
Memory Creates Who We Are
The characters of My Antonia use negative childhood memories as motivation to create better lives for themselves. For example, when Antonia births her first baby, she informs Jim that she is “going to see that [her] little girl has a better chance than [she] ever had” (218-219). Antonia’s craving for healthy parental figures and adequate food and shelter as a child manifests positively in her adulthood when she raises a healthy, thriving family of her own that Jim appraises as “a sight any man might have come far to see” (Cather 234; Bani-Khair, et al. 479). Knowing that Antonia is desperate for love and stability, we can sympathize with her seemingly reckless choices in marrying Larry Donovan, moving far away from her home to live with him in Denver, and becoming pregnant by him. She reasons that these choices are her ticket to creating the family unit she wanted as a child. Lena Lingard, like Antonia, also makes decisions in her adult life according to her childhood memories. Contrastingly, she forsakes motherhood and marriage; she confesses to Jim that “she remember[s] home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man, and work piling up around a sick woman [her mother]” (204). While both women remember similar childhood experiences, they each react and cope with them differently.
Community Destroys Selfishness
If we want to reap the benefits of community and avoid the consequences of loneliness, we must be willing to live selflessly, which is costly. The Burdens embody the Biblical idea that we are all our “brother’s keeper” (91), which they especially demonstrate in their conviction and dedication to looking after the Shimerdas. Even their name points readers to their “burden” to care for their neighbors by “bear[ing] one another’s burdens...[to] fulfill the law of Christ” (Galations 6:2). For example, when Mr. Shimerda kills himself, the Burdens elect their “gray gelding, [their] best horse” to ride into the harsh, unplowed roads to “fetch the priest and the coroner” (103). However, just a few pages earlier, the Burdens choose to have a country Christmas instead of traveling with one of their horses into the snowstorm to buy Christmas presents from town, saying Grandfather “would never allow one of his horses to be put to such strain” (93). Not only do the Burdens sacrifice their best horse and forsake their typical standards, but they also set aside their Protestant faith in the process to seek out a Priest and sooth the Catholic Shimerdas’ worries about their loved one’s soul. The Burdens also sacrifice their own wood, purchased and hauled from town, for the intention of making “a new floor for the oats bin” (108), to craft Mr. Shimerda’s coffin. Also, when Mrs. Shimerda visits the Burdens’ home and sees Mrs. Burden’s great collection of pots, she complains how she herself has no pots. Mrs. Burden responds by sending her home with one of the pots, which Jim thinks to be “weak-minded” of her (98). Finally, in Black Hawk, Jim sleeps in Antonia’s place at the Cutters’ when she feels unsafe staying there by herself overnight. Jim’s negative narration of Mr. Cutter leading up to this incident foreshadows its horrors while condemning Cutter’s character in general, which includes sexism. Through this gesture, Jim protects Antonia from implied sexual assault, but he is badly hurt and humiliated in the process when Mr. Cutter returns in the night and angrily attacks him.
While the Shimerdas do expect help from the Burdens, they also freely give of themselves, too. Because the Shimerdas give from a state of want, their generosity demonstrates an even greater example of Christian charity. For example, the Shimerdas give the Burdens a small sack of what the Burdens later discover are mushrooms from Bohemia. The Burdens do not think much of the shavings with the “penetrating, earthy odor” (92), but Jim reflects that the Shimerdas “treasure them so jealously” (98). They are faithful with the “little” material possessions they have, and, consequently, members like Antonia are blessed with “much” further on, such as enough food to feed her many children (Luke 16:10-13). Mr. Shimerda also promises Jim his gun from Bohemia when he grows up (73). In this way, the Shimerdas demonstrate that while sentimental objects from our motherlands matter dearly, the people we connect with in our community carry greater importance. Jim discovers this truth for himself when he visits Black Hawk for the first time in twenty years, finding it deserted of those he knew. Consequently, the visit proves to be “disappointing” (242).
Sometimes, the sacrifices required to enjoy community with others include sadness and loss. In addition to the Shimerda family’s loss of Mr. Shimerda, other characters also experience loss. For example, when Antonia decides she would rather attend dances in Black Hawk than submit to the Harlings’ rules against them, she leaves the family to work for the cruel Cutters.
Consequently, “Mrs. Harling declare[s] bitterly that she wish[es] she had never let herself get fond of Antonia” (162). To allow ourselves to engage in community is to love, which is to allow our hearts to be broken when those people inevitably disappoint us.
Memory and Lack of Community Destroy Us
Nostalgia and lack of community literally destroy Mr. Shimerda’s life, which further corroborates the novel’s themes on community being necessary for survival. Antonia claims that she hears her father laugh for the first time since immigrating to the United States when he spends time with other immigrant men, Pavel and Peter. When Mr. Shimerda visits the Burdens’ house on Christmas night, partaking in their quiet and comfortable festivities, he has a look of “pleasure” and is "utterly content.” The reason for his visit is, in fact, to thank the Burdens for their generosity to his family. This generosity, ironically, helps create a meaningful friendship between Antonia and Jim. Unfortunately, pockets of joy do not suffice to sustain Mr. Shimerda. Shortly after leaving this sweet, communal Christmas scene, Mr. Shimerda kills himself with a pistol in his barn. His motive for this tragic act is his “sad[ness] for the old country,” as explained by Antonia to Jim, who classifies his killer as “homesickness” (98, 104). Ultimately, he misses his “old friends” and his “violin,” which he stops playing upon arriving to the United States (98). Furthermore, Mr. Shimerda is proud of his status in Bohemia, where he “made good wages...[and] his family [was] respected” (90). Contrastingly, in the United States, he faces unforeseen problems and must essentially build his life again from scratch.
In other words, Mr. Shimerda’s death reveals the dark underbelly of the American Dream. [14] Many characters achieve the Dream, including hired girls like Lena, Tiny, and Antonia, affirming that the American Dream sometimes inspires hope. However, this message is not so inspiring to those who have already experienced success in other places, like their motherlands. Nothing can replace memories, no matter how hard we try to replicate them. The sweet interactions with the Burdens on Christmas Day simply act as shadows of the real country and community that Mr. Shimerda longs for. Sometimes, it is actually these interactions that trigger recollections of similar moments from our past, like counterfeit recreations of memories, that reveal to us the even greater depth of our longing. Ultimately, Mr. Shimerda’s grief for Bohemia cannot be satisfied like Antonia’s was with the Burdens. Her experiences are all new and turn into intimate community, whereas Mr. Shimerda’s memory cannot allow him to deceive himself and put down roots in the United States. In this way, Krajiek’s scams at the novel’s beginning foreshadow the way the American Dream does not always live up to expectations for immigrants and native-born citizens alike. The Shimerdas should have been able to trust Krajiek, a fellow immigrant from Bohemia, especially considering the way other immigrants, like the hired girls and Jelinek, band with them in solidarity and commonality. However, what makes Krajiek different from these other more communal immigrants is that he chases money, the quantity of which being the key indicator of achieving the American Dream. By pulling himself up by his bootstraps, Krajiek steps on his own people.
A second male character’s death by apparent suicide, an unnamed drunk who stumbles on to Antonia’s farm, also raises the reader’s awareness to the issue of male loneliness and its affect on mental health and male suicide rates. Had the drunk received treatment or help from a community, he could have beaten his addiction and found a reason to live other than pursuing alcohol consumption. Mental health issues prevail, seemingly, only in male characters, but certainly, men are not the only characters battling with suffering like poverty, homesickness, and public scrutiny. [15]
When the places we love house memories of better times, they can destroy present chances at fulfillment. For example, when Antonia comes back to the prairie after her husband leaves her pregnant in Denver, she avoids Widow Steavens’ house despite the fact that it “ha[s] always been a refuge for her” (213). Widow Steavens believes it is “because [her] house remind[s] her of too much” (215). Widow Steavens is not only referring to their time together preparing for Antonia’s wedding but also the years that the Burdens lived in the house with Jim before selling it to Widow Steavens when they moved to the outskirts of Black Hawk. In other words, Antonia’s entire American childhood with Jim as well as the beginnings of her womanhood are housed as memories in that house, which would destroy Antonia emotionally if she steps foot in there.
Our Loved Ones Never Leave Us
Preserving memory is how we survive after losing members of our community, proving that they never truly leave us. For instance, Antonia asks Jim to remember her father, telling him about his distinguished accomplishments in Bohemia (116). Later, as a grown woman, she still talks about her father to Jim and feels that he is still with her all those years later. She claims, “The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him” (218). Additionally, communities we have lost often influence the communities we seek as we look for those we have lost in new community members. For example, the orphanhoods of Jim and Antonia drive them both to community in their search for the mothers they lack but whose influences they cannot forget.[16] For many who have lost loved ones, keeping their memory alive is a way they find meaning for their lives after tragedy.
Sometimes we lose people not through death or apathy in our relationships but rather through typical life changes, such as the beginnings of careers and families, which beckon us away from those with whom we grew up. Just as when we grieve the loss of life, we can alleviate the lost presence of those we love by talking about them. Antonia practices this with her children, who “know all about [Jim]...like as if they’d grown up with [him]” (224). The novel’s characters use storytelling as their chief means of preserving memory.[17]
Occasionally, we have the opportunity to relive our old memories through new experiences and people. When Jim reflects on going to see Antonia and meeting her family after twenty years of separation, he writes, “Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again” (221). In other words, he feels apprehensive about seeing the youthful version of Antonia in his head turn into the real-life version of her that is an aging woman. However, while Antonia loses some aspects of youth in her adult self, she gains many children. In these children, Jim sees Antonia, perhaps even the youthful version of her that no longer exists. Consequently, he develops a deep love for them nearly instantly, making plans for the next summer to take a hunting trip with two of Antonia’s sons. One of the boys exclaims, “I don't know what makes you so nice to us boys,” but we as readers know the answer (242).
Children, because they typically carry the likeness and tendencies of their parents, are like physical manifestations of those parents along with the memories their community members have of them. Consequently, this connection can create a natural loyalty to those children in the hearts of those who love their parents. In knowing the parents, we know the offspring, just as how aunts and uncles often feel an instant bond with their nieces and nephews. Because of Antonia and Jim’s spiritual siblinghood, his uncle-like affection makes further sense.
Preserving memory of lost land is very similar to that of lost loved ones, which the novel displays through the various ways immigrant characters throughout the novel remember the lands from which they arrived. For example, while visiting Antonia and her family, Jim also sees how Antonia teaches her children about Bohemian culture, which they feel very attached to, without having ever lived there themselves. They feel pride for Bohemia and even prefer it to the United States in some respects. The Shimerdas’ sourdough bread and treasured mushrooms also act as physical manifestations of memory, or symbols of nostalgia, just as children also act as such manifestations.
Occasionally, our loved ones physically enter back into our lives unexpectedly, creating meaning and recollections of our past as they go. Jim reflects on the beginning of his collegiate career: “some of the figures of [his] old life seemed to be waiting for [him] in the new” (186). For example, Terence Martin describes the scene when Lena visits Jim for the first time in college, interrupting his study of Virgil (310). After talking to Lena, Jim’s mind floods with memories of the other hired girls and determines that he now comprehends Virgil’s poetry: “If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry” (Cather 193; Martin 310). Jim’s memories of loved ones, triggered by seeing Lena, helps him understand his current musings better.
Conclusion
Preserving memory and forming community intersect when we join communities of others who share our experiences, just as the immigrants in My Antonia cling to one another. Nostalgia is both life-giving and deadly; the novel was created out of the written words of the adult Jim Burden’s memory, while memory gave Mr. Shimerda a reason to end his life. Readers today relate to the double-edged sword of memory, especially as it pertains to immigration.
Although My Antonia focuses on 19th-century European immigration to the United States, many modern-day non-European immigrants can relate to the anxieties of language barriers, familial poverty, and stereotypical judgments from those who do not know them personally. My Antonia embraces these issues while illustrating success stories, such as that of Lena Lingard’s financial independence and entrepreneurship, and Antonia’s proficiency in English and joyful life in the absence of her father and first husband. In Lena’s case, her memory of childhood struggle motivates her success. Antonia’s memories of her father and motherland provide emotional comfort and a sense of identity that encourage her to begin again after loss. The narrative of using the past as a catalyst for self-improvement applies universally, including for those who lack the immigrant experience.
Cather’s novel also fosters hope for women in particular, as her novel exposes women’s issues, such as sexual assault and negative gender stereotypes. For example, Lena Lingard’s character arc reveals the fruitlessness of the blaming assault and harassment on women’s beauty as it reveals Lena’s pure-of-heart nature. Her relationship with Jim in Lincoln further asserts her innocence and instead highlights how men flock to her regardless of how disinterested she behaves. Although sexist attitudes do not always receive outright rebuke from narrator Jim, Cather does clearly illustrate examples of stereotyping, as in Jim’s expectations for Antonia, that the modern reader can easily pick out with a feminist lens. Cather displays the range of worries women experience, from Jim’s dissatisfaction with Antonia’s “superior tone” to Wick Cutter’s failed attempt to sexually assault her. Modern women can still relate to these issues, especially in places like the workplace, where assertive and high-achieving women are sometimes critiqued as “bossy,” and women of all demeanors risk workplace harassment. My Antonia reveals that whether women work on the farm or in the office, and regardless of the awareness of the men around them to these injustices, they face gender discrimination. In other words, Cather’s work successfully deromanticizes the West by uncovering the struggles of the women who made cultivation of the prairie possible (Bani-Khair 179). Cather’s novel proves the importance of women from all time periods to stand in solidarity with one another through community. Furthermore, the novel also answers the age-old question: what motivates humanity?
Humanity clings to the past and struggles to live in the present, longing to recreate what is permanently a product of the past instead of embracing change. We are motivated to stay comfortable by pursuing what we know. Although the moments of the past may be irreversible, they manifest in the present by our stories, relics, and loved ones. Ultimately, humans reject loneliness and find solace in our memories when loved ones and familiar places feel far.
Unfortunately, sometimes we chase our memories and leave our futures consequently unfulfilling or even cut short, as in the case of Mr. Shimerda. In our modern day, nostalgic feelings for loved ones have resulted in certain controversial AI programs that can mimic passed loved ones. [18] Peaking in high school, staying in one’s hometown their whole life, maintaining toxic relationships with people solely because they are familiar to us: these are all ways we use our memories to betray ourselves. When we do this, we prevent ourselves from forming better memories by cultivating a positive present in which to create them. The characters in the novel, for the most part, instead allow their memories to motivate them to produce a better future instead of staking them in the ground of their pasts. My Antonia provides readers with a story of hope and emphasizes that embracing the present does not mean forsaking the past entirely; our memories live on through our homes and loved ones.
Notes
[1] Thank you to Professor New for introducing me to My Antonia in his class, “Studies in 20th Century American Literature.” Before taking his class, I had never heard of this novel. I treasure the thoughtful conversations he facilitated about Jim, Antonia, and everything surrounding their tragically beautiful lives. Thank you to Professor Malieckal, who matched my love for this novel, supported and fed my ideas, and held my hand as I penned through the myriad steps and drafts of the thesis-writing process. Thank you to Professor Holbrook, who, although retired from Saint Anselm, remains in my mind as I explore feminism and symbolism in My Antonia and whose academic advising and classes led me to this point. Finally, thank you to my parents, Michael and Catharine, on whose sacrifices and support I stand as a Saint Anselm College Senior. My victories as a first-generation college student are just as much theirs as they are mine.
[2] The bildungsroman is a “German term[s] signifying ‘novel of formation’ or ‘novel of education.’ The subject of these novels is the development of the protagonist’s mind and character, in the passage from childhood throughvaried experiences—and often through a spiritual crisis— into maturity; this process usually involves recognition of one’s identity and role in the world” (Abrams and Harpham 255).
[3] According to Oxford Reference, Bohemia is a “region forming the western part of the Czech Republic, originally a Slavic kingdom, later subject to Austrian rule” (“Bohemia”).
[4] According to Oxford Reference, “preoedipal” is a psychosexual term describing the period in boys and girls before the arrival of the Oedipus Complex, sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and jealousy toward the same-sex parent, when children are attached to their mother (“Preoedipal” and “Oedipus Complex”).
[5] In 1922, Cather converted from the Baptist faith to the Episcopalian faith, following health issues, World War I, and her close friend’s disappointing marriage (Murphy 58).
[6] Cather writes extensively about Catholicism in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Because of her “obvious fascination with Catholicism,” evident in her fictional writing and personal reflections of Quebec nuns, she accumulated myriad Catholic readers who were not convinced she was not Catholic (Murphy 54, 58).
[7] Research consistently ranks the United States as one of the most individualist nations in the world (Gorodnichenko and Roland 21316). Individualist cultures are those “in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family.” On the other hand, collectivist cultures are those “in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) that continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty, and oppose other ingroups” (Hofstede 11).
[8] Cather, born in 1873, lived in Virginia until her parents moved the family to the Nebraska prairie in 1883, where her grandparents had also relocated. A year and a half later, the family moved again into the town of Red Cloud. Each of these moves, as well as the strong presence of grandparents, mimic Jim’s movement/timeline in the novel (Downs 32-33; Urgo 10-11).
[9] Being the sole translator for her immigrant family means that Antonia represents many daughters of modern-day immigrant families who rely on their children, especially daughters, to carry stressful responsibilities for the sake of the family unit (Foner and Derby 548; Steinburg 99).
[10] Even today, some children of immigrant families struggle to keep their earnings for themselves and feel pressure to provide for their struggling households (Todd and Martin, “Children of Immigrants”). This occurrence may be explained by the psychological phenomenon “familism,” which determines that the family unit is more important than the individual (Steinberg 99).
[11] Mukattash asserts that the common struggle between Antonia and the hired girls unites them and that they connect each other back to the femininity and maternal bonds they were forced to lose when they became providers for their families (47-48).
[12] Mukattash claims Mr. Shimerda’s death forces Antonia into the father figure role, which masculinizes her (45-46).
[13] Lucenti mentions how the Harling children partially satisfy Jim’s absence of siblings (196).
[14] Definitions of the American Dream have differed over the years (Hanson and Zogby 571). However, generally, the idea claims that the United States can provide Americans and immigrants “spiritual happiness” and “material goods” through their own hard work (Hanson and Zogby 570-571). Furthermore, the United States offers immigrants “freedom” and “opportunity” worth leaving their motherlands (Parrillo 131).
[15] The novel largely ignores female suffering, perpetuating in some ways the Victorian angel-of-the-house concept that women’s task of unburdening the household from the worries of the world prevents them from or invalidates the existence of their own mental health struggles (Hoffman 265).
[16] While Jim’s orphanhood presents itself literally at the novel’s beginning, marking the start of his coming-of-age, Antonia’s orphanhood lies under the surface. Mukattash asserts that in addition to the physical loss of her father, Antonia experiences an emotional severing from her mother (42). She cites the neglectful sleeping arrangement that Mrs. Shimerda provides her daughters, who sleep in a hole, while she sleeps in a comfortable bed (Mukattash 43). Fisher-Wirth, from whom Mukattash draws inspiration in her criticism, likens Antonia’s sleeping hole to a womb, as well as her and Jim’s parallel arrival to the Nebraskan prairie as a birth (50, 61). Using this imagery, Fisher-Wirth compares the two to twin babies searching for their mother figure (50, 61). Although a very critical view of Mrs. Shimerda, Mukattash and Fisher-Wirth offer a reasonable context for the maternal community Antonia and Jim seek throughout the rest of the novel. For example, Antonia finds mother figures in Mrs. Burden and Mrs. Harling, foils of her own mother, who triumph over loss and do not allow it to harden them (Mukattash 44). Additionally, Mukattash explores nature as a mother, or Mother Nature, asserting that it protects and inspires Antonia while she lives on the prairie (Mukattash 44-45). Had she not left the safety of the prairie to live in the less rural town of Black Hawk, she would not have encountered the predatory Mr. Cutter or the manipulative and irresponsible Larry Donovan (Mukattash 44). Her enthusiasm and enjoyment for labor in the fields and the farming lifestyle prove that Antonia belongs in nature and that she herself is a sort of mother to the nature she tends (Mukattash 45). In other words, Antonia creates solace for herself in the country she gains, the United States, by the maternal care to which she receives and gives. Ironically, to arrive at this maternity, Antonia has to leave another type of mother, her motherland of Bohemia, and face the rejection of her biological mother (Mukattash 44).
[17] Antonia utilizes the English language, taught to her by Jim, to disseminate her stories of her homeland to him (Mukattash 50). Lucenti’s commentary about examples of gothic elements in the novel’s storytelling manifest particularly in Peter and Pavel’s dark personal story of the wolves, where they throw a newly wedded couple off their sledge in a selfish attempt to escape a pack of wolves. Not only do the wolves act as gothic monsters, but also Peter and Pavel experience isolation from the rest of humanity in their constant wandering from place to place after the tragedy (Lucenti 199). In other words, public recollection of Peter and Pavel’s cruelty to the bride and groom creates ostracism and ensures that the doomed bride and groom never leave the public’s and, especially, Peter and Pavel’s minds (Lucenti 199).
[18] In 2019, HereAfter AI began offering interactive videos of passed loved ones, where, using previously provided information about the deceased, the loved one appears to answer questions in real time (Carballo, ”Using A.I to Talk to the Dead”).
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