My Ántonia
My Ántonia (published over the years as Antonia , My Antonia and Meine Antonia in German-speaking countries ) is a novel by the American writer Willa Cather . The novel was first published in 1918 and is considered one of her masterpieces . It is the third and final volume of their prairie trilogy to which O Pioneers! and the song of the lark belong.
Like many of Willa Cather's works, the novel addresses the world of experience of settlers who settled the land west of the Mississippi towards the end of the 19th century. Here, too, she emphasizes the importance that women in particular played in the development of the American prairie. The focus of the story is Antonia, who immigrated to the USA with her family from Bohemia and grew up in Nebraska.
content
Jim Burden, the novel's narrator, is traveling on the same train as the Shimerdas family to Black Hawk, a small (and fictional) town in the US state of Nebraska. Willa Cather had made a conscious decision to have the plot of the novel reported by a first-person narrator because she was convinced that the emotional message of the novel could be conveyed better this way.
The Shimerdas are immigrants from Bohemia who have little experience of farming but who have acquired a small farm near Black Hawk. Jim Burden's parents have passed away. He will grow up in Black Hawk with his grandparents. Jim becomes friends with Antonia and the reader experiences Antonia's life through his perspective. The Bohemian women's name Antonia is stressed on the first syllable , similar to the English name Anthony , and the i is pronounced long. The name is pronounced an'-ton-ie-ah.
The novel is divided into five large books. They roughly correspond with Antonia's life stages from childhood to her marriage, even if the third book focuses on the young Swedish immigrant "Lena Lingard", who is friends with the narrator Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerdas. The five books deal in detail with:
- Introduction: In the first publication in 1918 this introduction was missing. It was not added until the 1926 edition. She introduces the actual first-person narrator of the novel, Jim Burden, through another narrator (possibly Cather himself). He is now a successful and well-to-do man, but he is married to a wealthy woman from the higher social class on the east American coast, without happiness or children.
- Book 1: The longest chapter of the book tells about Jim's early years with his grandparents, who at that time were still running a farm near Black Hawk. The Shimerdas, who have great difficulty in making a living on the farm they have bought, settle nearby. Ultimately, they survive their first year only with the help of Jim Burden's grandfather, who receives little gratitude from the Shimerdas for his help. Only Antonia, one of the daughters of the family, speaks a few words of English. She receives a little tutoring from Jim Burden. The Shimerdas family initially lived in a miserable sod house . Mr. Shimerdas, who emigrated only at the urging of his wife and longs to return to his cultivated life in Bohemia, kills himself in that first long and hard winter. The new head of the family is now Antonia's eldest brother Ambrosch. Antonia works with him to reclaim the prairie and, despite her youth, does physical work that is usually done by male farm workers.
- Book 2: Jim Burden's grandparents left their farm for reasons of age and settled in Black Hawk. He is still in contact with Antonia. The Sheridan's farm is now so well established that Antonie can look for work in Black Hawk. She is not the only daughter of an immigrant family who finds work there as a maid, laundress, chambermaid or seamstress. The attempt of a sexual assault by Antonia's employer Cutter on Antonia is prevented by the intervention of Jim Burden.
- Book 3: Jim is successful at college and will later even move to Harvard - He meets Lena Lingard again, a daughter of a Swedish immigrant family. She has established herself as a successful seamstress and moves to California and Alaska during the gold rush. She successfully runs pensions there and successfully digs for gold herself. She makes a fortune and refuses to marry.
- Book 4: Jim Burden visits the Harlings, who once employed Antonia as a maid and who work for their advancement. However, Antonia enters into a fateful relationship with the (supposed) train conductor Larry Donovan. He breaks his marriage vows and, after having used up the money she has saved, leaves Antonia pregnant.
- Book 5: After not seeing Antonia for decades, he decides to visit her again. She has now married and, unlike Jim, has a large number of children. It is not her husband who is responsible for the fact that Antonia now lives in modest prosperity on her farm, but Antonia.
reception
My Ántonia was enthusiastically discussed after it was first published in 1918. It was immediately considered a masterpiece and ensured that Cather was counted among the most important American writers. This assessment has not changed to this day. The British newspaper The Guardian included Cather's novel "My Antonia" in 2009, along with two other works ( The Song of the Lark , A Lost Lady ) in their literary canon 1000 Novels everyone must read .
Cather is praised to this day for having succeeded in dealing with the special living conditions of the pioneers in a literary way. The content of their actions, however, thematize general emotions.
Single receipts
- ↑ Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life . Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1987, p. 289
- ↑ O'Brien, Sharon. New Essays on My Antonia. Cambridge UP, 1998, p. 15
- ↑ Heller, Terry (2007) "Cather's My Ántonia Promotes Regional Literature" pp. 1403–1406 In Gorman, Robert F. (editor) (2007) Great Events from History: The 20th Century: 1901–1940 - Volume 3 1915–1923 Salem Press, Pasadena, California, pp. 1403-1405. ISBN 978-1-58765-327-8
- ^ Murphy, John J. (1994) "Introduction" to Cather, Wila (1994) My Ántonia Penguin Books, New