Linguistic Expressionism & The Nostalgic Relationship Of Jim & Ántonia In Willa Cather’s Novel "My Ántonia"
The pair of characters, Jim and Ántonia, in Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Ántonia, help to suggest the overarching theme in Cather’s literature: nostalgia. As the reader navigates Cather’s other novels like The Professor’s House, The Song of the Lark, or O! Pioneers, one would recognize that Cather clearly uses nostalgic undertones for one’s past, one’s country, or for the land (in the pastoral setting). For the relationship of Jim and Ántonia, the bond between them is playful—playful in a sense that translates the frontier values of living in Nebraska as melodious and content.
Looking through the lens of Jim’s life as he grows up, shows the past as a source of value. Jim colors his life with the Nebraskan prairie as he encounters most of his new life away from his parents in Black Hawk with Ántonia. The way Cather embraces the Shimerda family in Ántonia’s independent, anti-prejudice attitude makes her relationship with Jim suggest a strength that may accrue from a complexity of language development within the novel. There is a large emphasis on farm life in the novel; however, the reader should focus on the linguistic undertones enforced by Cather to show the source of strength that Ántonia provides for Jim throughout most of Book I, Book II, and III, and most importantly, through most of their young lives.
To introduce this scene, the reader encounters this complexity in the first few chapters of the book. In Book I, Chapter 3, the reader encounters the beginning of Jim and Ántonia’s flourishing relationship. Jim expresses his wisdom to Ántonia as he tutors her in learning English. The setting in this scene is telling for the reader of the nostalgic elements Cather tries to portray: When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointed toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me how glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Sqauq Creek and did not stop until the ground itself stopped—fell away before us so abruptly that the next step would have been out into the tree-tops (Cather).
Through Jim’s narration here, his memories are so vivid of his scene that it is hard not to pay attention to such an incredible scene in the novel. Cather gives a backdrop of the Nebraskan pastoral for readers to understand this relationship more in-depth. As Jim begins to try to teach Ántonia different English words, the setting is described more exhaustively: “We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass […] Ántonia pointed up to the sky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it sound like “ice” (Cather). Ántonia’s emotionalism within the Nebraskan setting as she discovers the linguistics of English provides Jim with a sense of strength and accomplishment.
Tim Prchal, author of the journal article, “The Bohemian Paradox: My Ántonia” and Popular Image of Czech Immigrant” writes that “Czech immigrants especially from Nebraska, about whom Cather knew and wrote—are portrayed as achieving something vital by retaining their language”. And Prchal is right about this, but the way Cather integrates Czech immigrants, like Ántonia, into her writing by assimilating into American culture is significant. Ántonia not only retains her own self as a Bohemian but begins to assimilate to American culture.
She has been torn from her homeland to come to a difficult life of poverty and hardship, but overcomes this challenge of being in a new land by learning the land, farming the land, and befriending the people. In an interview with Willa Cather by Henry Blackman Sell in 1919, he says that Cather “learned to know and understand the people of My Ántonia. There she learned how hard life can be. There she learned what heroism is [through Ántonia]” (Sell). The relationship that Jim creates with Ántonia as a child, especially throughout Book I, installs in the reader an expectation for a love story.
Among both major characters in this scene, the emphasis on the Nebraskan setting, and the beauty in language, Cather vivifies the emotions that are felt between Ántonia and Jim: [Ántonia] pointed up to the sky, then to my eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently. “Oh,” I exclaimed, “blue; blue sky.” She clapped her hands and murmured, “Blue sky, blue eyes,” as if it amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind she learned a score of words. She was quick, and very eager.
This entire scene is included within the quotation because it holds vital importance on the emphasis of the way Ántonia learns language. The Bohemian girl shows enthusiasm and passion in a small and subtle word like “sky” as she creates a remarkable comparison to Jim’s “blue eyes,” which makes Jim arrive at the most intense feeling of being important to someone within his childhood. Author of the book, Music in Willa Cather’s Fiction, Richard Giannone writes that “[Ántonia] offer[s] the boy an immensity into which he can be assimilated […] The ambivalent rapport he feels with the frontier comes to Jim more comprehensively a short time later through the land’s music, its voice, the wind”.
As previously noted through frontier details, the setting offers Jim a passion he is able to transfer to Ántonia. Does this mean their associational relationship of companionship? Or young love? Or does this mean Ántonia becomes more of a mother figure for Jim? Nature’s mood and “music” as Giannone calls it, set the tone for this scene. When Cather writes, “we snuggled down there out of the wind she learned a score of words,” this line seems more friendly than romantic. T
he wind is also repeatedly mentioned in this scene, perhaps Cather is using a play on words as Ántonia speaks in a new tongue, the wind “sings” to gradually express their emotions (Giannone 109). The childhood innocence in this scene becomes imaginative for Ántonia, and for Jim, between the pastoral setting and expressing new words to Ántonia, he feels accomplished. Jim beams appreciatively and says that they “were so deep in the grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant” (Cather 41).
Jim feels like a man now, and with Ántonia on his side, they begin to share more of an American identity. But the offset of the Shimerda’s struggle to adjust to American farm life and their home life at the beginning of a harsh winter makes for a striking memory in Jim. It is through this harsh winter, the way the Nebraskan prairie is vividly described, the fascination with the Shimerda’s cultural differences, and the exciting adventures that Jim has as a boy that makes the scene a vivid reality as an adult. This scene is loosely constructed, but it is done so to show the reader the overarching moods of nostalgia and the emphasis on language.
The climax of this scene occurs when Ántonia begins to finally understand and comprehend Jim’s lesson, and she offers him a token of appreciation: After Ántonia had said the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased silver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I did n’t want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before (Cather 42).
Jim and Ántonia are both, in fact, completely different characters. The function of both Jim and Ántonia provide contrasts to what the reader expects of them, which is provided in this climax. Jim, a city boy, comes to live with his grandparents on a farm, and Ántonia, a young Bohemian girl, migrates to the prairie in her family’s hope for a new life. Jim realizes that Ántonia begins to take on more masculine roles than Jim does, and this small glimpse of lying in the prairie as Jim establishes a sort of dominance over Ántonia’s ignorance as he teaches her English makes him feel more masculine. However, when she offers him this ring, the conditioned version of Jim to feel more masculine begins to come forth. In the introduction of the novel when Jim first writes “Ántonia,” he then positions the word “My” in front of it and “that seemed to satisfy him” (Cather 12).
Because this is a novel written in the early 1900s, perhaps this is telling of Jim’s installed expectations to feel masculine, and the placement of “My” and the refusal of the chased silver ring ultimately helps Jim enclose this emasculation. It is not until the reader gets into Book II that Jim begins to see how Ántonia takes on a more masculine role after her father’s passing—she begins farming and tilling the land. The small glimpse of this scene allows Jim to let any feelings of emasculation leave his mind, and his empowerment as he teaches Ántonia the word “sky” makes him gain strength over her ignorance of the English language. However, the embarrassment and emasculation continue through the end of the scene for Jim. Jim softens in his character at the initial offering of the silver ring.
He remembers vividly and describes the end of the scene: While we were disputing about the ring, I heard a mournful voice calling, “Án-tonia, Án-tonia!” She sprang up like a hare. “Tatinek, Tatinek!” she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by my elders. (Cather 42) Ántonia purely sees the silver ring as a peace offering, but for Jim, it has more meaning and within his repressed memories, it frustrates him.
This can explain Jim’s behavior in Chapter 13 when Mrs. Shimerda and Ántonia visit the Burden’s home: It was the first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said: “You got many, Shimerdas no got.” I thought it weak-minded of grandmother to give the pot to her. (Cather 121) Jim’s anger overcomes him in this scene most likely driven from the dispossession he felt in the initial linguistic scene with Ántonia in Chapter 3. David Stouck, author of the book, Willa Cather’s Imagination remarks that most of Cather’s scenes are marked with vivid pastoral art. This helps draw in the reader to better understand what is occurring in the particular scene while also understanding the emotions of the characters: “pastoral art turns on the paradox that what is being celebrated can never be experienced again, that its reality is only a memory.
Tension between the desire to return to the past and the sober recognition that such a desire to return to the past can never be fulfilled […] happens frequently” (Stouck 46-47). He describes the relationship between Ántonia and Jim as an “imaginative tension” that Jim, as the narrator, “tells his life story revolving around the Bohemian immigrant girl […] he attempts to share a happy and secure world out of the past by romanticizing disturbing and unpleasant memories” (Stouck 46). Jim really recounts his memories with Ántonia as “disturbing and unpleasant” because of the vast and vivid setting details as well as the enthusiastic nature of Ántonia (Stouck 46). Without the presence of Ántonia in Jim’s young life, he would not be able to battle growing into a young man. With the large emphasis on prairie life in the novel, this shows the source of strength that Ántonia provides for Jim throughout most of his growing young life.
This scene marks significant importance within the novel because of Cather’s appreciation for immigrants in the early 1900s through the protagonist, Jim, and through his internal conflict of his self as the reader watches him rattle his own strengths and weaknesses with masculinity. As the reader gets through the rest of Book II and Book III, the nostalgic undertones through Book I become prominent especially through the relationship of Jim and Ántonia. Jim allows Ántonia to capture her youth while retaining her Bohemian roots while at the same time allowing her to grow into a strong, first generation American farm girl.
For Jim, the reader learns in the Introduction that he is still able to lose himself in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now, he meets new people and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by which his boyhood friends remember him. He never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those of a young man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is Western and American. (Cather 8)From the scene in Book I, Chapter 3, Jim grows up to be a true man and learns from his close relationship with Ántonia as a child that the value of growing up on the Nebraskan frontier was a privilege for them.
Works Cited:
- Cather, Willa Sibert. My Ántonia. Public Domain, 1918. iBooks. Accessed 2 October 2018.
- Cather, Willa. “Willa Sibert Cather: To Our Notion the Foremost American Woman Novelist.” 12 March 1919.
- The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska-Lincoln. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. Interview.
- Giannone, Richard. Music in Willa Cather’s Fiction. University of Nebraska Press, 1968. pp. 109.
- Prchal, Tim. “The Bohemian Paradox: ‘My Ántonia’ and Popular Images of Czech Immigrants.” MELUS, vol. 29, no. 2, 2004, pp. 3–25.
- JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4141817. pp. 23.
- Stouck, David. Willa Cather’s Imagination. University of Nebraska Press, 1975. pp. 46-47.
