Willa Cather - My Antonia

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W illa Cather was born on December , 1873 , in rural Virginia. At the age of nine, she moved with her family to Red Cloud, Nebraska, where she spent the remainder of her childhood. After graduating from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1895 , she moved to Pittsburgh to begin a career in journalism. In all, Cather spent five years in the Pittsburgh newspaper and magazine trade, working at Home Monthly and the Pittsburgh Leader. Between 1901 and 1906 she taught high school English and Latin in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh area. During this period, she began to publish her first short stories. These early successes led to a position in New York City with McClures, a magazine that often featured investigative journalism, where Cather served as an editor for six years.

In 1912 Cather published her first novel, Alexanders Bridge, which received a lukewarm reception. The next year, Cather caught the attention of the literary world with the appearance of O Pioneers!, exploring and celebrating frontier life in the American West. In 1918 she made her most lasting contribution to her status as one of the most celebrated postCivil War American authors with the publication of My ntonia. Like many of Cathers novels, My ntonia fictionalizes recollections of her youth in rural Nebraska.

Though the narrative of My ntonia is fictional, there are many similarities between Cathers life and that of the novels protagonist. As Cather did, Jim Burden moves from Virginia to Nebraska as a child to live with grandparents; the town of Black Hawk, to which Jim and his grandparents move, is a fictionalized version of the Red Cloud of Cathers youth. Also as Cather did, Jim attends the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and eventually moves from Nebraska to New York.

If certain of the situations in the novel derive from Cathers recollections of her youth, however, the novels high stature in American literature results from Cathers ability as a writer. Her sensitivity to the prairie landscape and her elegantly uncomplicated prose style have earned her a spot among Americas finest novelists, and My ntonia continues to stand as the most lasting hallmark of her skill. My ntonia is generally considered a modernist novel. In the early twentieth century, many authors were concerned with the alienation from society that resulted from ongoing processes of mechanization and industrialization. These writers responded to what they perceived as an increased fragmentation of the world by creating narratives and stories that were themselves fragmented. Cather participates in this tradition both by creating a novel whose plot does not have a highly structured form and by idealizing a preindustrial life far from the noise and speed of the city.

Cather was most prolific during the 1920s , when she published many of her finest works. After being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1922 , she also enjoyed popular successes with The Professors House in 1925 , My Mortal Enemy in 1926 , and Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1927 . In her final two decades, Cather continued to write short stories and novels, albeit with less frequency and refinement. Nevertheless, she enjoyed an extraordinary amount of attention and critical esteem in her lifetime. In 1930 she won the Howells Medal for Fiction, and in 1944 she was awarded the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Willa Cather died on April , 1947 , in New York City, where she lived for thirty-nine years with her companion, Edith Lewis. Her reputation equalled that of any published American female novelist of her day, and critical and popular attention to her work continues to expand. Many -critics place her firmly among such lauded -American authors as -William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and there are those who would argue that hers is the single finest craft of her generation.

J im Burden, a successful New York City lawyer, gives an acquaintance a memoir of his Nebraska childhood in the form of a recollection of their mutual friend, ntonia Shimerda. This memoir makes up the bulk of the novel.

Jim first arrives in Nebraska at the age of ten, when he makes the trip west to live with his grandparents after finding himself an orphan in Virginia. On the train out west, Jim gets his first glimpse of the Shimerdas, a Bohemian immigrant family traveling in the same direction.

As fate would have it, the Shimerdas have taken up residence in farm neighboring the Burdens. Jim makes fast friends with the Shimerda children, especially ntonia, who is nearest to him in age and eager to learn English. Jim tutors ntonia, and the two of them spend much of the autumn exploring their new landscape together.

In late January, tragedy strikes with the suicide of Mr. Shimerda. After an emotional funeral, the Shimerdas retreat into despair, and the Burdens struggle to be as accommodating as possible. As a result of the hardships that the Shimerdas suffer, ntonia and Jim find that a wedge has been driven between them.

A couple of years later, the Burdens decide to move into town, and shortly thereafter ntonia takes a job as a housekeeper with a neighboring family, the Harlings. Jim begins to see more of ntonia once again, especially when a dancing pavilion comes to town and enlivens the social scene.

Jims high school years quickly come to a close, and he is offered a spot at the university in Lincoln. He makes a great success of his high school commencement speech and spends the summer hard at work in preparation for his course of study. Before leaving, he takes one last trip out to the countryside with ntonia and her friends, where they gather to reminisce about old times together.

In Lincoln, Jim throws himself into his studies, which take up the majority of his time in the first year and a half of his course. In the spring of his second year, he begins to see a good deal of Lena Lingard, a mutual friend of his and ntonias who has always intrigued Jim. After a few months of theatergoing and dalliances about town, Jim decides that he needs to make a fresh start of things and prepares to transfer to Harvard University for his final two years of college.

While Jim is away, ntonia gets engaged to a local boy and moves to Denver in order to be with him. Days before the wedding, the boy -abandons ntonia, and she returns to Nebraska heartbroken. She covers up an unexpected pregnancy throughout its term, but in giving birth to a daughter incurs the disapproval of her family. However, she resolves to take care of her baby and continues to work on the farm with her brother.

After graduating from college, during the summer before entering law school, Jim returns to Nebraska to be with his grandparents. Upon hearing of ntonias situation, he decides to drive out to the countryside and visit her. They spend a happy day together reliving old times, and Jim parts with a promise to visit her again very soon.