Willa Seibert Cather(1873 -1947)

◦American Frontier◦West◦FemaleArt

1) What did “Antonia” symbolize? And how is it reflected at the very end?

2) What artful way did Cather structure Jim’s narration? 3) How does the transformation of the land mirrors the

transformation of Jim?

Optima dies …

prima fugit

(Vergil)

Artful Life

Life Writing

1873 Born in Virginia 1883 Move Nebraska 1891-95 University of Nebraska 1896 Meet McClung and move in with her family 1906 Move to New York 1908 Meet Sarah Orne Jewett 1912 Visited Nebraska. Move in with Edith Lewis 1914 Meets Olive Fremstad 1918 Visited Nebraska, learn about soldier

cousin 1925 Deserts of New Mexico 1928 Father Dies 1931 Mother dies 1938 Brother and McClung dies 1945 Other brother dies 1947 Dies in New Hampshire

1893 -95 Nebraska State Journal 1892 Publish “Peter” 1896 Home Monthly 1903 April Twilight (poems) 1905 Troll Garden (short stories) 1906 McClure’s magazine 1912 Publish Alexander’s Bridge 1913 O Pioneers! 1914 The Song of the Lark 1918 My Antonia 1921 One of Ours 1923 Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours. A Lost Lady 1925 The Professor’s House 1927 Death Comes for the Archbishop 1931 Shadows on the Rock 1935 Lucy Gayheart 1940 Sapphira and the Slave Girl

The intensity of her dedication, the force of her personal determination to put her writing first, last, and always, became legendary… She was engaged in her search for perfection; nothing less would satisfy her. And to her this endeavor seemed worth whatever sacrifice might be demanded – ‘If you had two tickets for heaven, I wouldn’t go!’

(Gerber58)

Thesis AThrough artful application of literary devices and unique

insights on the condition of the American female individuals

whose internal strength allowed them to lead the pioneering

efforts in the West, and desire to use her art to criticize the

social trends of the new millennium -- including capitalism

and commercialism, the corruption of the beauty of nature,

the West – Cather is able to exercise distinctive literary

voice.

Essay MapIn what has come to be known as her Prairie Trilogy, which

includes O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915),

and My Antonia (1918), Cather’s distinctive literary voice

was forged through experiences in a rapidly changing

America to communicate her personal quest of breaking

new grounds in her storytelling.

Thesis B

A vehement representative of an old way of life in America against the backdrop of social, technological and economical advances, Cather’s classic and masterfully crafted works occupy a secure place in the American literary canon.

“To say that the end of art is the creation of life… is to state an ideal;

but the closer the duplications of nature, the higher the art. At its peak,

surmounting human limitation, art would become life itself” (Gerber

138).

Cather

“I want my new

heroine to be like

this, like a rare

object in the middle

of a table, which one

may examine from

all sides. I want her

to stand out – like

this – because she is

the story”

Artist of Life

Cather Antonia

“One of the people who

interested me most as a child

was the Bohemian hired girl

of one of our neighbors… She

was one of the truest artists I

ever knew in the keenness

and sensitiveness of her

enjoyment, in her love of

people and in her willingness

to take pain” (Gerber 91 –

92).

“A Bohemian girl whom we

had know long ago.... More

than any other person we

remembered, this girl

seemed to mean to us the

country, the conditions, the

whole adventure of our

childhood” (Cather 494).

“She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we

recognize by instinct as universal and true… She [had] that

something which fires the imagination, [and] could still stop one’s

breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed

the meaning in common things… She was a rich mine of life, like

the founders of early races“ (Cather 680).

“I was entirely happy… that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great” (Cather 506).

Cather’s characters “chose an ideal, a vision of

perfection. and regardless of what happen to them,

how many illusions they had to destroy, they lived the

artistic life” (White 22).

“To live merely for the rich experience of living itself is the ‘career’ she labors at with… much diligence” (Gerber 87).

“Antonia Shimerda required not analysis but

worship. She was to be marveled at, something

like a Sequoia that stands forever in

contradiction of all one’s experience” (Gerber 88)

She has experienced life, created that experience into

literature, and published that literature because she

has wanted propagate her world of reason, truth, and

beauty (White 19)

In Conclusion