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No Place Like Home: Fiction Of Scandinavian Women And The American Prairie, Rebecca Frances Crockett

Masters Theses

This thesis examines various fictional depictions of Scandinavian pioneer women and their struggle to adapt to the American prairie. It looks specifically at three novels: Johan Bojer’s The Emigrants, O.E. Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, and Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!. All three novels depict Scandinavian immigrant groups who settle in the Great Plains area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The thesis looks in detail at the numerous ways in which each author’s female characters adapt or fail to adapt to the landscape, exploring the possible reasons for these successes and failures. It argues that …