The Quest for Stability in Willa Cathar’s Novle My Antonia

Abstract

    Willa Cather (1873-1947) sought to capture the gradation of human emotion through carefully selected descriptive and narrative touches and firmly controlled management of dramatic scenes, situations, dialogue, and point of view. Cather’s novels and stories drew increasingly upon her personal experiences and memories.

    The old settlement of Virginia and the new lands of Nebraska formed the bedding ground for Willa Cather’s talents; so did the layers of memory she found across the North American continent, from New Mexico to Canada. She saw the full-blooded European immigrants, Czechs and Swedes, plowing the unbroken land, on the way up from peasants to proprietors.

    The paper shows Willa Cather’s theme of the quest for stability and deals with one of her essential novels, My Antonia written in 1918. This novel shows how Cather re-created her own feelings as a child coming to live on the prairies and describing the experiences through the eyes of her character Jim Burden. My Antonia concentrates mainly on how Antonia sought stability. She obtains it through great strength and courage, an almost superhuman talent for heroic struggle and fortitude. She is a tough, patient creature who undergoes a symbolic courtship with the land. The land first coerces her, but eventually she is able to dominate it and like it like her own children. She thus acquires the stability that is needed to keep her going in life.