Yes, yes, and yes. I think you nailed it that this nostalgia is a form of forgetting; a whitewashing of sorts. Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I see a critique here of what is beginning to emerge as national dominant myths about the American West and rugged individualism. Thoroughly enjoy the questions and discussion. Now to read what others have to say.
Appreciate this provocative questions. Chapter 7 and the snake shows me Josh what you hinted at last week. The way in which the story becomes larger than life. Jim is sickened by the horrific act of chopping the snake's head off. She shows us how quickly his negative reaction turns to positive feelings because of how Antonia responds to his violent act. This heady mix for young Jim Burden figuring out who he is and what is means to be a man out west. I am particularly struck by this dynamic in terms of gender. Cather shows us how females participate in the cultivation of this form of masculinity from Jim's innocent perspective. Jim is attracted to Antonia's admiration of him.
Very astute: "Jim is attracted to Antonia's admiration of him." So much of the meaning of the story is about how we perceive certain moments and memories through our emotional associations with them. And it's Jim's abiding affection for Ántonia that ostensibly prompts the narrative to begin with.
I’m amazed that wolf attack really happened! As I read, it seemed implausible, especially as reported third-hand. (I wondered if something was lost in translation.) I want to tackle some of your juicy questions but have a paper due Monday and sadly need to focus on that. I will be back in force next week. Thanks for doing this!
This is true of so many anecdotes or characters in Cather's fiction! There is a cottage industry in tracking them down. I often tell this story to illustrate. Once while attending a Cather seminar in Chicago (an important site in many of her novels), I took a tour of a cemetery where one of Cather's friends was buried. A good portion of The Song of the Lark is set in Chicago, and Thea Kronborg (the protagonist) later attracts the support of a wealthy couple, the Nathanmeyers. At the graveside of Cather's friend, a colleague noticed that to the left of the grave was a tombstone for the Nathan family. To the right was a tombstone for the Meyer family. Likely not a coincidence? What it means, or what conclusions we draw from these convergences is another question...
And did anyone else laugh out loud in Chapter 14 on this sentence: “ I looked forward to any new crisis with delight” ? It is sort of ironic how down thru the ages we all seem to hunger for drama. Having been raised in a regimented house and family I enjoyed anyone who would stop in and add some interest to our fairly predictable family life ( which I obviously took for granted).
Cather seems to have felt this way about the country. We'll see this in "The Hired Girls." The people who live in town just aren't as interesting to Cather as the colorful characters who roamed the prairie.
Not sure if she ever saw Money’s Haystacks but maybe its just my trip to the fine art museum yesterday that made me feel an association with her description of the prairie grass near sunset 😬
The chapter 9 opening making reference to the circle where the Indians used to ride struck me as her signifying what had once been Indian territory had become homesteads. That the guys imagine torture of prisoners by Indians there reflects prevalent white fears. Cather seems to be showing us a great deal about whiteness. Clearly Jim's family is a white family one step above the Shimerada family and likely more than two steps above the Russians. And they are all above Indians in the racial hierarchy of the time and place, but it is the absence of Indians which Cather makes us aware of. Perhaps she is showing us the same thing with race she does with gender. When Jim kills the snake, his experience gets whitewashed and when Jim refers to the previous Indian residents it is another form of whitewashing.
This all makes sense. But the Myth of the Vanishing Indian has the potential for enduring harm, since it turns on a false premise of erasure. The elder Jim Burden, who has traveled the West extensively, would know that the First Nations had not disappeared. Cather's Indians are often conveniently absent, though some of her characters like to appropriate their stories (see Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark). Would you agree that this passage reads differently now from the way Cather might have expected it to land with her readers in 1918?
Absolutely lands differently today than in 1918. I agree there has been enduring harm from the Myth of the Vanishing Indian. And Cather is involved herself in that erasure. An erasure made by most immigrant and homesteading families who settled on lands taken from Indians. This unforgetting is part of becoming the "right kind of white" person (better than the Shimerdas or the Russians) ["right kind of white" is title of Garrett Buck's new memoir and he's here on Substack]
Chapter 8 is when we learn the story of what had happened back in Russian. But Cather sets this up as a deathbed confession of sorts. The horror remains to haunt the living. And the haunting is the hunger of the wolves; always someone chasing you from behind trying to get what little you have. Krajeck to the Shimerdas. Wick to Peter and Pavel.
Perceptive parallels to Krajeck and Cutter as wolf-like! Keep that in mind as we read more about Wick Cutter later on... (such an over-the-top character name, but somehow it works?).
BTW, my eldest daughter hates the bad rap that wolves get in folklore. She may never forgive me for convincing her to watch "Never Cry Wolf," which I'd remembered only for the premise of a scientist living with the wolves he studies, but which ends with the adult wolves being killed and their pups presumably left to die...
Chapter 6 opens with their "lessons" as though the prairie were the classroom and the subject under study is badgers. Badgers is one of those story elements that pays off in several ways as the story moves forward (badger-like sleeping conditions discovered later when they visit Shimerda; badger as potential meat to stave off hunger). And Old Hata seen in an insect who sings is another example of almost a primal connection to the place. Almost a spiritual transcendence in nature with childlike innocence. It is as if this self-reliance and individualism is revealed to be our essential human nature, like the badgers and bugs have theirs.
Love that reading, Jill! Yes, those sensory memories that we form with a place in our innocent years are some of the most enduring. You can see why soldiers from the Midwest carried pocket versions of the novel with them as reminders of home!
I take pleasure in learning how much of Peter and Pavel's story may have been drawn from real life . I am also struck by the similarities in story elements to Chekhov's "In the Cart." This story within the story then echoed when Jim takes Antonia and Yulka on a sleigh ride in the blizzard.
How interesting -- I don't know that Chekhov story. You're saying it also has a story within a story? Or are you suggesting that it has uncanny parallels to the wolf tale?
uncanny parallels to the wolf tale; multiple sleighs in a party; wolves. George Saunders used In the Cart a year or two ago for his Story Club here on Substack.
"In the Cart" was published in 1897, so it may well be an undiscovered source for this episode in My Ántonia. (!!) I'd have to dig a little deeper to see if anyone else has suggested the link.
Now I see the influence of the Russian writers on her. Helpful article! Her version of Peter and Pavel's wolf story stood alone on its own as such a powerful tale that it felt like a Russian short story.
Yes, yes, and yes. I think you nailed it that this nostalgia is a form of forgetting; a whitewashing of sorts. Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I see a critique here of what is beginning to emerge as national dominant myths about the American West and rugged individualism. Thoroughly enjoy the questions and discussion. Now to read what others have to say.
Appreciate this provocative questions. Chapter 7 and the snake shows me Josh what you hinted at last week. The way in which the story becomes larger than life. Jim is sickened by the horrific act of chopping the snake's head off. She shows us how quickly his negative reaction turns to positive feelings because of how Antonia responds to his violent act. This heady mix for young Jim Burden figuring out who he is and what is means to be a man out west. I am particularly struck by this dynamic in terms of gender. Cather shows us how females participate in the cultivation of this form of masculinity from Jim's innocent perspective. Jim is attracted to Antonia's admiration of him.
Very astute: "Jim is attracted to Antonia's admiration of him." So much of the meaning of the story is about how we perceive certain moments and memories through our emotional associations with them. And it's Jim's abiding affection for Ántonia that ostensibly prompts the narrative to begin with.
I’m amazed that wolf attack really happened! As I read, it seemed implausible, especially as reported third-hand. (I wondered if something was lost in translation.) I want to tackle some of your juicy questions but have a paper due Monday and sadly need to focus on that. I will be back in force next week. Thanks for doing this!
This is true of so many anecdotes or characters in Cather's fiction! There is a cottage industry in tracking them down. I often tell this story to illustrate. Once while attending a Cather seminar in Chicago (an important site in many of her novels), I took a tour of a cemetery where one of Cather's friends was buried. A good portion of The Song of the Lark is set in Chicago, and Thea Kronborg (the protagonist) later attracts the support of a wealthy couple, the Nathanmeyers. At the graveside of Cather's friend, a colleague noticed that to the left of the grave was a tombstone for the Nathan family. To the right was a tombstone for the Meyer family. Likely not a coincidence? What it means, or what conclusions we draw from these convergences is another question...
Love the idea of this massive treasure hunt! There’s a book in that, surely. Or sure fire material for winning trivia night.
Oh, wow -- MANY books have already been written on this. Cottage industry, I say!
Also, I loved the craft lesson about the dynamics of sound in a chapter, ranging from crying out to silence. That’s so cool.
Thanks! I'm more attuned to Cather's sentence-level craft than I was as a graduate student, when I paid more attention to theme :)
And did anyone else laugh out loud in Chapter 14 on this sentence: “ I looked forward to any new crisis with delight” ? It is sort of ironic how down thru the ages we all seem to hunger for drama. Having been raised in a regimented house and family I enjoyed anyone who would stop in and add some interest to our fairly predictable family life ( which I obviously took for granted).
Cather seems to have felt this way about the country. We'll see this in "The Hired Girls." The people who live in town just aren't as interesting to Cather as the colorful characters who roamed the prairie.
Monet, of course!
Not sure if she ever saw Money’s Haystacks but maybe its just my trip to the fine art museum yesterday that made me feel an association with her description of the prairie grass near sunset 😬
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystacks_(Monet_series)#/media/File%3AClaude_Monet_-_Graystaks_I.JPG
An interesting theory! Cather was fond of the French Impressionists -- you're right that many of her scenes strike a similar note.
The chapter 9 opening making reference to the circle where the Indians used to ride struck me as her signifying what had once been Indian territory had become homesteads. That the guys imagine torture of prisoners by Indians there reflects prevalent white fears. Cather seems to be showing us a great deal about whiteness. Clearly Jim's family is a white family one step above the Shimerada family and likely more than two steps above the Russians. And they are all above Indians in the racial hierarchy of the time and place, but it is the absence of Indians which Cather makes us aware of. Perhaps she is showing us the same thing with race she does with gender. When Jim kills the snake, his experience gets whitewashed and when Jim refers to the previous Indian residents it is another form of whitewashing.
This all makes sense. But the Myth of the Vanishing Indian has the potential for enduring harm, since it turns on a false premise of erasure. The elder Jim Burden, who has traveled the West extensively, would know that the First Nations had not disappeared. Cather's Indians are often conveniently absent, though some of her characters like to appropriate their stories (see Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark). Would you agree that this passage reads differently now from the way Cather might have expected it to land with her readers in 1918?
Absolutely lands differently today than in 1918. I agree there has been enduring harm from the Myth of the Vanishing Indian. And Cather is involved herself in that erasure. An erasure made by most immigrant and homesteading families who settled on lands taken from Indians. This unforgetting is part of becoming the "right kind of white" person (better than the Shimerdas or the Russians) ["right kind of white" is title of Garrett Buck's new memoir and he's here on Substack]
Chapter 8 is when we learn the story of what had happened back in Russian. But Cather sets this up as a deathbed confession of sorts. The horror remains to haunt the living. And the haunting is the hunger of the wolves; always someone chasing you from behind trying to get what little you have. Krajeck to the Shimerdas. Wick to Peter and Pavel.
Perceptive parallels to Krajeck and Cutter as wolf-like! Keep that in mind as we read more about Wick Cutter later on... (such an over-the-top character name, but somehow it works?).
BTW, my eldest daughter hates the bad rap that wolves get in folklore. She may never forgive me for convincing her to watch "Never Cry Wolf," which I'd remembered only for the premise of a scientist living with the wolves he studies, but which ends with the adult wolves being killed and their pups presumably left to die...
Chapter 6 opens with their "lessons" as though the prairie were the classroom and the subject under study is badgers. Badgers is one of those story elements that pays off in several ways as the story moves forward (badger-like sleeping conditions discovered later when they visit Shimerda; badger as potential meat to stave off hunger). And Old Hata seen in an insect who sings is another example of almost a primal connection to the place. Almost a spiritual transcendence in nature with childlike innocence. It is as if this self-reliance and individualism is revealed to be our essential human nature, like the badgers and bugs have theirs.
Love that reading, Jill! Yes, those sensory memories that we form with a place in our innocent years are some of the most enduring. You can see why soldiers from the Midwest carried pocket versions of the novel with them as reminders of home!
I take pleasure in learning how much of Peter and Pavel's story may have been drawn from real life . I am also struck by the similarities in story elements to Chekhov's "In the Cart." This story within the story then echoed when Jim takes Antonia and Yulka on a sleigh ride in the blizzard.
How interesting -- I don't know that Chekhov story. You're saying it also has a story within a story? Or are you suggesting that it has uncanny parallels to the wolf tale?
uncanny parallels to the wolf tale; multiple sleighs in a party; wolves. George Saunders used In the Cart a year or two ago for his Story Club here on Substack.
Sounds like you should write that up, Jill! 😊
Here's an essay about Cather and Russian writers:
https://cather.unl.edu/scholarship/catherstudies/1/cs001.russians
She references Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" in this 1912 letter:
https://cather.unl.edu/writings/letters/let0249
"In the Cart" was published in 1897, so it may well be an undiscovered source for this episode in My Ántonia. (!!) I'd have to dig a little deeper to see if anyone else has suggested the link.
Now I see the influence of the Russian writers on her. Helpful article! Her version of Peter and Pavel's wolf story stood alone on its own as such a powerful tale that it felt like a Russian short story.