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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Willa Cather's Reluctant New Woman Pioneer, Reginald Dyck
Willa Cather's Reluctant New Woman Pioneer, Reginald Dyck
Great Plains Quarterly
In 1913 Willa Cather created a female protagonist who is single, independent, entrepreneurial, managerial, strong willed, wealthy and in love with the land of south-central Nebraska. This character offered a new vision for women at the turn of the twentieth century. Cather's fictional construction of gender, as well as her own experience, embody the contradictions present in the roles society offered women. One can read O Pioneers! as a cultural seismometer, one that picks up tremors along various social fault lines and then expresses them within a particular framework held by many people of her economic and social position. This …
"She Had Never Humbled Herself" Alexandra Bergson And Marie Shabata As The "Real" Pioneers Of O Pioneers!,/I>, Douglas W. Werden
"She Had Never Humbled Herself" Alexandra Bergson And Marie Shabata As The "Real" Pioneers Of O Pioneers!,/I>, Douglas W. Werden
Great Plains Quarterly
Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (1913) has traditionally been read within the twin contexts of Cather's pioneering childhood and her nostalgic reminiscences that glorify the lives of prairie settlers. These critics interpreted the novel in light of Walt Whitman's poem of the same name in Leaves of Grass, which celebrates the conquering American pioneer who "civilizes" the land for production.1 More recent critics have contextualized it within her family history, agricultural history, domestic plots, American migration, and women leaving the home.2 However, if we consider O Pioneers! in relation to the gender role redefinitions of Cather's adult life, …