My Ántonia

This article is about the novel by Willa Cather. For the 1995 film adaptation, see My Antonia (film).
My Ántonia

First edition with rare dustjacket
Author Willa Cather
Country United States
Language English
Genre Historical fiction
Publisher Houghton Mifflin (Boston)
Publication date
 1918
Pages 175
OCLC 30894639
813/.52 20
LC Class PS3505.A87 M8

My Ántonia (/ˈæntəniə/ AN-tə-nee-ə)[1] is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. It is the final book of her "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.

Characters

Overview of characters in novel as social network

Jim Burden: The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Jim grows up in Black Hawk, Nebraska and becomes a successful lawyer.

Josiah and Emmaline Burden: Jim's grandparents, who live on a farm in Nebraska.

Jake Marpole: Farm hand from Virginia at the Burden place.

Otto Fuchs: Farm hand from Austria at the Burden place.

Ántonia "Tony" Shimerda: The bold and free-hearted young Bohemian girl who moves with her family to Black Hawk, Nebraska.

Mr. and Mrs. Shimerda: Ántonia's immigrant parents from Bohemia.

Ambrosch, Marek and Yulka: Ántonia's brothers and sister.

Anton Cuzak: Ántonia's later husband.

Lena Lingard: Hired girl come from the countryside to work in Black Hawk.

Tiny Soderball: Hired girl who came from the countryside to work at the Gardener Hotel in Black Hawk.

Gaston Cleric: Jim's teacher in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska.

Minor characters include: Peter and Pavel, Ole Benson, The Cutters, Widow Steavens, Anton Jelinek.

Narration

Cather chose a first-person narrator because she felt that novels depicting deep emotion, such as My Ántonia, were most effectively narrated by a character in the story.[2]

Impact and interpretations

One-and-a-half story wood house with peeling paint; in foreground, door leading to storm cave
Pavelka house in rural Webster County, Nebraska, setting of "Cuzak's Boys"[3]

My Ántonia was enthusiastically received in 1918 when it was first published. It was considered a masterpiece and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. Today, it is considered as her first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. It brought place forward almost as if it were one of the characters, while at the same time playing upon the universality of the emotions, which in turn promoted regional American literature as a valid part of mainstream literature.[4][5]

While interpretations vary, My Ántonia is clearly an elegy to those families who built new lives west of the Mississippi River and highlights the role of women pioneers in particular.

Cather also makes a number of comments concerning her views on women's rights and there are many disguised sexual metaphors in the text.[6]

My Ántonia remains in print in a number of editions ranging from free Internet editions to inexpensive, mass-market paperbacks to expensive "scholarly editions" aimed at more serious students of Cather's work.

My Ántonia is a selection of The Big Read, The National Endowment for the Arts' community-wide reading program.[7]

Revised 1926 edition

The original 1918 version of My Antonia begins with an Introduction in which an author-narrator, supposed to be Cather herself, converses with her adult friend, Jim Burden, during a train journey. Jim is now a successful New York lawyer but trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage to a wealthy, activist woman.[8] Cather agreed with her publisher at Houghton Mifflin to cut that introduction when a revised edition of the novel was published in 1926.[9]

Cultural references

My Antonia (film), a 1995 made-for-television movie, was adapted from the novel.

Emmylou Harris' 2000 album Red Dirt Girl features the wistful song "My Antonia," as a duet with Dave Matthews. Harris wrote the song from Jim's perspective as he reflects on his long lost love.

The French songwriter and singer, Dominique A, wrote a song inspired by the novel, called "Antonia" (from the LP "Auguri" −2001-).

In Richard Powers' 2006 novel The Echo Maker the character Mark Schluter reads "My Ántonia" on the recommendation of his nurse, who notes that it is "[A] very sexy story....About a young Nebraska country boy who has the hots for an older woman" (page 240).

In Anton Shammas' 1986 novel Arabesques, the autobiographical character of Anton reads "My Ántonia" on the plane to a writers' workshop in Iowa. It is the first novel he ever read, and he expects Iowa to have the same grass "the color of wine stains" that Cather describes of Nebraska.[10]

Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware brews a continually-hopped imperial pilsner named My Ántonia.[11]

The Celebration Company at The Station Theatre in Urbana, Illinois, performed a stage adaptation of My Ántonia in December 2011. The adaptation was written by Celebration Company member Jarrett Dapier.[12]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Cather, Willa (11 December 2008). Janet Sharistanian, ed. My Ántonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-19-953814-X. The Bohemian name Ántonia is strongly accented on the first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the i is given the sound of long e. The name is pronounced An'-ton-ee-ah.
  2. ↑ Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1987, p. 289
  3. ↑ Billesbach, Ann E. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form: Pavelka Farmstead". Nebraska State Historical Society. Retrieved 2012-11-13.
  4. ↑ 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
  5. ↑ Murphy, John J. (1994) "Introduction" to Cather, Wila (1994) My Ántonia Penguin Books, New York, page vii, ISBN 0-14-018764-2
  6. ↑ Murphy, p xv.
  7. ↑ http://neabigread.org/books/myantonia/
  8. ↑ O'Brien, Sharon. New Essays on My Antonia. Cambridge UP, 1998, p. 15
  9. ↑ O'Brien, p. 14
  10. ↑ Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988. p. 138.
  11. ↑ http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/collaborations/my-antonia.htm
  12. ↑ http://stationtheatre.com/myantonia.html

Further reading

Books

Articles

External links