The Great American West
An Analysis of Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” The feminist movement in America was a time of great struggle, change, and most importantly retaliation. Considering the low status of women at that time, being subordinate to their husbands, it was difficult for them to give their. This led many women to the outlet of writing; writing was often a way for them to display their knowledge and independence and begin this new revolution which would disturb the order of things which had been memorized since the dawn of time. In the late 1800’s, a flood of settlers from the south had immigrated to the west. This was a result of the end of the Civil War, which left the south in pieces, metaphorically and physically speaking, which …show more content…
A letter written from a man named Oscar Wilde in the West states, “My dear Miss Nellie, Since I wrote to you I have been to wonderful places, to Colorado which is like the Tyrol a little, and has great canons of red sandstone, and pine trees, and the tops of the mountains all snow-covered, and up a narrow-gauge railway did I rush to the top of a mountain 15,000 feet high, to the great mining city of the west called Leadville, and lectured the miners on the old workers in metal—Cellini and others.” This letter was written in 1882, and Oscar was staying in the Nebraska area. This situation is very similar to that of “My Antonia,” where the main character Jim became very fond of admiring the landscape and new visuals the West had to offer. Jim states, “I used to love to drift along the pale-yellow cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper colour and the narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem.” Jim was one of many characters who took time to observe the nature of the West. As a result, the American West offered a great deal of new landscape for the settlers of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to
An Analysis of Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” The feminist movement in America was a time of great struggle, change, and most importantly retaliation. Considering the low status of women at that time, being subordinate to their husbands, it was difficult for them to give their. This led many women to the outlet of writing; writing was often a way for them to display their knowledge and independence and begin this new revolution which would disturb the order of things which had been memorized since the dawn of time. In the late 1800’s, a flood of settlers from the south had immigrated to the west. This was a result of the end of the Civil War, which left the south in pieces, metaphorically and physically speaking, which …show more content…
A letter written from a man named Oscar Wilde in the West states, “My dear Miss Nellie, Since I wrote to you I have been to wonderful places, to Colorado which is like the Tyrol a little, and has great canons of red sandstone, and pine trees, and the tops of the mountains all snow-covered, and up a narrow-gauge railway did I rush to the top of a mountain 15,000 feet high, to the great mining city of the west called Leadville, and lectured the miners on the old workers in metal—Cellini and others.” This letter was written in 1882, and Oscar was staying in the Nebraska area. This situation is very similar to that of “My Antonia,” where the main character Jim became very fond of admiring the landscape and new visuals the West had to offer. Jim states, “I used to love to drift along the pale-yellow cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper colour and the narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem.” Jim was one of many characters who took time to observe the nature of the West. As a result, the American West offered a great deal of new landscape for the settlers of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to