My Ántonia: Willa Cather

 

This is the first book I have read by Willa Cather and I now understand why other readers are so effusive in their praise for the book. The book was published in 1918 and begins in the 1890s, at a period when immigrant families were settling on homesteads on the prairies.

The story focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. The Shimerda family doesn't have much money and suffer from inadequate shelter and food the first year they are at the farm. The nearest family is the Burdens. Jim Burden arrived in Nebraska on the same train as Ántonia and her family. His parents had both died in the previous year, and his cousins sent him to live with his grandparents. The house the Burdens live in is a wooden frame house, with a basement, and a floor and a half built above the basement. The Shimerda's home is basically a cave in the earth, but they hope to eventually build a house to take its place. The Burdens are the Shimerda's closest neighbors and they try to help the Bohemian family as much as possible.

There are so many interesting aspects to this book that I could never cover them all. The descriptions of backbreaking work on a farm; the difficulties of the immigrants, most of which cannot speak much English; life on the prairies and in the small towns. Ántonia is a girl full of life; she and Jim have adventures while still on the farm, and develop a lifelong friendship. He would like their relationship to be more than that.

The story is narrated by Jim Burden starting when he is about ten and meets Ántonia and her family. He likes Ántonia immediately and volunteers to teach her to read. Both Ántonia and Jim have to do work on their farms, but Ántonia must contribute much more just to help her family survive. As she grows older she takes on more and more of the heavy farm work, trying to compete with her older brother Ambrosch. 

A few years later the Burdens move to Black Hawk, buying a house and renting their farm. Jim's grandparents want him to go to school. Mrs. Burden worries about Ántonia laboring on the farm, and finds her a place to work as a housekeeper with one of their neighbors. This brings positive changes into Antonia's life. 

The book is divided into five sections. Book I is "The Shimerdas"; Book II is "The Hired Girls"; Book III is "Lena Lingard"; Book IV is "The Pioneer Woman's Story"; and Book V is "Cuzak's Boys". After the first longer section dealing with the years that the Shimerdas and the Burdens are neighbors out on the prairie, the following sections are vignettes that follow portions of Jim's and Ántonia's lives after adulthood.

In "The Hired Girls", various of the immigrant farm girls are hired by families in Black Hawk, the nearby town, and learn new skills and make their own way in the world. 

Book III follows the career of Lena Lingard, a Norwegian immigrant who has learned dressmaking skills and has set up a shop in Black Hawk. She is a liberated woman who is not interested in marriage or a family, and plays a big part in Jim's development. This was one of my favorite parts of the book and Lena is a wonderful character. 

"The Pioneer Woman's Story" is very brief and brings Jim and the reader up to date on Antonia's life at that point. I was not prepared for how emotionally I would react to the last section, "Cuzak's Boys", when Jim sees Ántonia for the first time in many years.

As I noted above, there are many things I loved about this book. This was set in an area and a time that I have little experience or knowledge about. But the best parts were how well all of the characters are described and developed throughout the book; and the beauty of the writing and the descriptions of nature.