As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming across the harvest field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of an actual experience.
Oh, don't get me started on "learning outcomes" ~ ! The bureaucrats have taken all the fun out of teaching and learning.
In chapter 1, I read Jim and Gaston nearly as peers, from the first sentence characterizing Gaston as a "young scholar." I didn't have quite so personal a relationship with any of my professors, though I did become friendly enough with one power couple that I housesat for them at their very cool self-designed-and-built house, feeding their cat and gleaning whatever I wanted from their extensive vegetable garden. And, of course, sitting in cool designer chairs when I wasn't browsing their magnificent library. Reflecting on whether my students have become friends, it's hard to say. There's a mutual respect and affection, and I always love hearing from them, or catching up when they visit the school. I don't know what prevents more easy friendship, but maybe our age difference?
The final paragraph in ch.1 made me recall my own inclination as a new college student to embrace all that I was learning and reject where I'd come from. To swap the cosmopolitan world of ideas for the boring sameness of the suburbs. "I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter took up in my memory.. . . [but] in some strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences." This captures the tension perfectly, and how, no matter the level of education attained, your early life stays with you.
“…your early life stays with you.” Heartily agree! And I think if anything my early life feels closer to me now than it did in my 20s and 30s. Perhaps that’s why Flannery O’Connor said that everyone had enough material for a lifetime of writing by age thirteen 😊
Just lovely, once again. I have the same experience as Andy Jewell with students appreciating Lena. I like to focus on her as a foil to Antonia, but of course, we only really understand what that means after Books IV and V, and her meaning as a foil changes a bit, I think, after each of those books. But here she is in the middle, almost as though she is the central character. Over on Notes, Sal Randolph just posted a quotation about poets, and the last line of it sounds so much like Lena: "What must be practiced—assiduously, infinitely, and without the slightest pause—is antiservitude, noncompliance, and independence." Lena shows how to do that in the most charming, nonconfrontational, disarming way. She can give the appearance of being "in service" without giving herself up to servitude. She has her own goals.
I agree with you that she represents a New Woman, but Cather keeps her busy with her profession rather than protests or politics. If we pressed this, students now might want Lena to be more of an activist, helping other women see their way to her kind of life, but Cather seems to think it's enough for every Lena to figure out her own way without a movement. Others may or may not agree with that, but it works for Lena.
I love how you turn this book into a lesson in reading. This may be one of my favorite things about this post. I completely agree. In the chapter about university, Cather shows *relationships* (with Lena and Gaston), not lessons. The memory and meaning of his own relationships enlivens Virgil for Jim. This is how we really read, and Cather won't let the university take experience and imagination from Jim. Instead, through his education outside the classroom, it's part of what he learns there. I'd like to frame this insight somehow and hang it beside my office door. :-)
Relationships not lessons. Hear hear! Relationships are things that assessment and accreditation cannot capture, which is unfortunate, since they are the original wellsprings for both teachers and students.
Love your point, too, about Lena offering services for pay without giving herself up to servitude. Exactly right. I wrote an unpublished essay once on Cather's ghostwritten biography of Mary Baker Eddy and Jewett's "A Country Doctor," in which Nan Prince describes medicine as the "great gain and purpose of her being." It's very grand the way Jewett frames it, and I don't wish to minimize the hostility that many trailblazing women had to face (the TV series "Bramwell" captures this). It's possible that because Lena's profession aligns with conventional domesticity that she faces fewer social headwinds? But the themes of independence, identity, and zero sum choices between career or family are prominent in many of Cather's works, including that neglected Eddy book.
Beautiful, Tara. A lesson in reading. This echoes my own impressions of Jim's integration of scholarly learning with his own more practical nature - something he may only recognize in hindsight.
Lena is indeed very appealing as a modern woman. Since this is Jim's story, I considered the question of why there's a whole section devoted to Lena through that lens. He enjoys a mature friendship with Lena, while managing to contain his sexual attraction and to respect her boundaries. He admires her skill with customers, her creative talent, and her enterprise, and also sees her as a beautiful woman. As he explains to Mr. Ordinsky, they grew up together. It must have taken a supreme amount of self-possession, but he's determined to be friends with Lena on her terms. On first reading, I took all that for granted—it's what I've expected of men my whole life (despite occasional disappointment). But this was written in an era where none of that was normal, as we've already seen in this very book, many times. It's breathtakingly radical, so thank you for adding to my admiration for Cather's artful way of challenging the objectifying and minimizing of women.
Lovely note, Julie — thanks for circling back and catching up! I think Jim’s friendship with Lena is a good model for men, too. He does rather try to push her back into a conventional mode, arguing with her about her view of family. But I hope he hears her in the end? My friend and scholar Melissa Homestead has quite a low opinion of Jim, drawing largely on his embarrassment about Ántonia in Book IV. I do wonder whether he supports those he claims to love only when it’s convenient for him? (Maybe this is a defensive posture after the Cutter attack — but he also seemed quite insensitive to anyone’s hurt but his own after that episode).
I am also struck by how distracted Jim becomes from his studies by Lena. Near the end of this section he admits he can't continue in college and needs a clean start of things. This may be the closest to a confession of dropping out we get. He had seemed so earnest in his studies but lonely. Lena brought back the bunch of girls, Bohemian and Danish and Norwegian, in his heart and his head wasn't much interested in his studies anymore. While his mentor introduces the idea of patria to Jim, ironically at the end of this section he is about to leave his patria behind.
And isn't this precisely the choice that many of us from rural places must make if we choose a college education? I know I've struggled for most of my life with what feels like a contradiction between my professional life and my home. I'm planning to share an essay on this theme on Tuesday.
Yes, absolutely. Leaving home for the first time to enter a wider world through the gates of academia. I look forward to reading your new essay on this theme.
The question of why an entire section on Lena in a book about Antonia is a good one. And is a major subplot Cather planted with the dream earlier. Jim wished it were Antonia because she had always been the good sweet (idealized, virginal) feminine archetype for him but it is the assertive Lena in his dream who becomes an assertive business woman in his college studies that unfolded so naturally here. And there is sexual triangulation here with Antonia in their encounters. Lena becomes the woman of his dreams. In real life it means he does not have to submit to her domestication because she isn't interested in marriage or kids. Isn't this more attractive to men? To not be able to get the woman of your dreams? He wants to be possessed by her (which is a specific kind of sexual attraction for a man). She becomes unobtainable at the moment when he fears how much he desires her so he plans to flee to Harvard with his mentor. And she isn't interested in being any man's possession. And the mentor who drops by in the evenings seems an inverse to the Sunday mornings he spends at Lena's. Jim's two friends who visit his room (intimate space) are neither interested in marriage but companionship. The scenes with the mentor seem terribly intimate and familiar, though not explicitly sexual. Though for Jim, the intellectual life IS his erogenous zone. Lena's character shows Cather's hand in demonstrating the ways men respond to a beautiful woman. Their jealousy of each other is most endearing and yet pricks the patriarchy. Lena, Jim recognizes, has assimilated in ways Antonia has not. Lena has given up the wildness of the childhood spirit of the prairie and come to town a lady of independent means. The best days are gone for Lena, in Jim's estimation. She will grow old and be lonely. He handles her rejection differently than Ole and the Colonel. He leaves her behind. And he leaves his own rustic past for Harvard.
Lots here, Jill (you caught me at home with a sick kid who is now napping, hence my prompt replies). I'm hesitant to generalize about what men want (Jim is hardly a conventional man?). But there does seem to be something alluring and yet elusive about both Ántonia and Lena. Lena will allow him to be a friend with privileges, but won't allow him to marry her (she initiates their Lincoln fling, interestingly). Ántonia is available to other men romantically, but seems to keep Jim in the friend zone. What this all means is another matter, but it's really fantastic storytelling.
I once saw an improv dance group explain how they tried to sustain and escalate tension to keep a dance moving. Pursuit and retreat were both essential tools. Cather does something like that here, and I wonder if one reason for devoting a section to Lena is to withhold Ántonia from us? We know that she's back there in Red Cloud, that there will have to be some kind of circling back for the novel to feel whole. But we just get Lena's rumors, and then the somewhat satisfying, but temporary, interval with Lena and Jim.
How interesting that you see Jim thinking that Lena's best days are over! I rather heard that as his own nostalgia, that his best days were back on the farm. Everything seems a letdown after they move to town -- even Harvard is kind of an afterthought here. But I suppose you're right that the narrative suggests that "forward" for Jim means "away" from his roots. Which makes me think about how the move to town in Book II reflects that uprooting for so many Americans across generations and for rural kids who become first-generation college students.
Thanks, as always, for adding so much depth to the discussion!
Thanks for replying with a sick wee one at hand. It's been a long week and this is my Saturday afternoon splurge. About to head out for a hike with the dog shortly. Your point about this tension Cather plays with in romantic partners is great: most definitely a dance. It keeps escalating the tension, with a release and separation at the end. I guess I didn't mean to imply all men feel one way. But I think there are some men for whom the tension is about wanting to be wanted. There are other men for whom the tension is wanting to possess or sexually overcome a woman. Cather intentionally draws the dream in which Jim is possessed by Lena and not the other way around. He is not overcome by sexual urges towards Lena, but cultivates any affection she will show him. Okay. Time for some outdoor time! Thanks for doing this.
Before I read your questions this week, I have to blurt out an initial response to this reading. I hadn't remembered the ways in which Cather's writing was in conversation with the literary canon (even Virgil!) in this section of the book.
Chapter 2 - the opening is gorgeous. I agree, the sensory detail reminds us that, however transporting reading Virgil in Latin is, Jim is in a body in a place, one that he loves. Feeling and reason work together. I loved Cleric's idea of "patria," especially in light of the "think globally, act locally" mantra that many environmentalists still use. They're not wrong in arguing that many problems are best solved on the small scale, while many more are caused by large-scale attempts to control, extract, and exploit "resources." Not to mention warring over borders and territory.
What an interesting connection between patria and environmental ethics. You’re reminding me of Bill McKibben’s and Barbara Kingsolver’s arguments for leaning into local economies, our true sources of durability. I have no illusions about where/what my patria is, but there are some secrets of mindful inhabitation that apply anywhere.
For instance, I moved 4 times over the 16 years I lived in Iowa (owned two homes, rented two places) and have now moved twice in the last two years. But I know that gardening is both a way to feel grounded and to connect with neighbors. Even though I did not inherit a maple tree with my new place, I see several on my block, and so next year I might propose a communal syruping operation. These connections are how we care about each other and about stewardship.
Exactly. And let's not forget the ultimate advocate for local economies - Wendell Berry. I moved every 2 years as a kid, until we settled from army bases to suburbia. From nowhere to nowhere. Digging in the dirt is an excellent way to cultivate community.
I had a similar response to Cleric's idea of "patria" as at the heart of regenerative agriculture and so much more; this sense of the place where you belong.
Oh, don't get me started on "learning outcomes" ~ ! The bureaucrats have taken all the fun out of teaching and learning.
In chapter 1, I read Jim and Gaston nearly as peers, from the first sentence characterizing Gaston as a "young scholar." I didn't have quite so personal a relationship with any of my professors, though I did become friendly enough with one power couple that I housesat for them at their very cool self-designed-and-built house, feeding their cat and gleaning whatever I wanted from their extensive vegetable garden. And, of course, sitting in cool designer chairs when I wasn't browsing their magnificent library. Reflecting on whether my students have become friends, it's hard to say. There's a mutual respect and affection, and I always love hearing from them, or catching up when they visit the school. I don't know what prevents more easy friendship, but maybe our age difference?
The final paragraph in ch.1 made me recall my own inclination as a new college student to embrace all that I was learning and reject where I'd come from. To swap the cosmopolitan world of ideas for the boring sameness of the suburbs. "I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter took up in my memory.. . . [but] in some strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences." This captures the tension perfectly, and how, no matter the level of education attained, your early life stays with you.
“…your early life stays with you.” Heartily agree! And I think if anything my early life feels closer to me now than it did in my 20s and 30s. Perhaps that’s why Flannery O’Connor said that everyone had enough material for a lifetime of writing by age thirteen 😊
Well said!
Just lovely, once again. I have the same experience as Andy Jewell with students appreciating Lena. I like to focus on her as a foil to Antonia, but of course, we only really understand what that means after Books IV and V, and her meaning as a foil changes a bit, I think, after each of those books. But here she is in the middle, almost as though she is the central character. Over on Notes, Sal Randolph just posted a quotation about poets, and the last line of it sounds so much like Lena: "What must be practiced—assiduously, infinitely, and without the slightest pause—is antiservitude, noncompliance, and independence." Lena shows how to do that in the most charming, nonconfrontational, disarming way. She can give the appearance of being "in service" without giving herself up to servitude. She has her own goals.
I agree with you that she represents a New Woman, but Cather keeps her busy with her profession rather than protests or politics. If we pressed this, students now might want Lena to be more of an activist, helping other women see their way to her kind of life, but Cather seems to think it's enough for every Lena to figure out her own way without a movement. Others may or may not agree with that, but it works for Lena.
I love how you turn this book into a lesson in reading. This may be one of my favorite things about this post. I completely agree. In the chapter about university, Cather shows *relationships* (with Lena and Gaston), not lessons. The memory and meaning of his own relationships enlivens Virgil for Jim. This is how we really read, and Cather won't let the university take experience and imagination from Jim. Instead, through his education outside the classroom, it's part of what he learns there. I'd like to frame this insight somehow and hang it beside my office door. :-)
Relationships not lessons. Hear hear! Relationships are things that assessment and accreditation cannot capture, which is unfortunate, since they are the original wellsprings for both teachers and students.
Love your point, too, about Lena offering services for pay without giving herself up to servitude. Exactly right. I wrote an unpublished essay once on Cather's ghostwritten biography of Mary Baker Eddy and Jewett's "A Country Doctor," in which Nan Prince describes medicine as the "great gain and purpose of her being." It's very grand the way Jewett frames it, and I don't wish to minimize the hostility that many trailblazing women had to face (the TV series "Bramwell" captures this). It's possible that because Lena's profession aligns with conventional domesticity that she faces fewer social headwinds? But the themes of independence, identity, and zero sum choices between career or family are prominent in many of Cather's works, including that neglected Eddy book.
Beautiful, Tara. A lesson in reading. This echoes my own impressions of Jim's integration of scholarly learning with his own more practical nature - something he may only recognize in hindsight.
Lena is indeed very appealing as a modern woman. Since this is Jim's story, I considered the question of why there's a whole section devoted to Lena through that lens. He enjoys a mature friendship with Lena, while managing to contain his sexual attraction and to respect her boundaries. He admires her skill with customers, her creative talent, and her enterprise, and also sees her as a beautiful woman. As he explains to Mr. Ordinsky, they grew up together. It must have taken a supreme amount of self-possession, but he's determined to be friends with Lena on her terms. On first reading, I took all that for granted—it's what I've expected of men my whole life (despite occasional disappointment). But this was written in an era where none of that was normal, as we've already seen in this very book, many times. It's breathtakingly radical, so thank you for adding to my admiration for Cather's artful way of challenging the objectifying and minimizing of women.
Lovely note, Julie — thanks for circling back and catching up! I think Jim’s friendship with Lena is a good model for men, too. He does rather try to push her back into a conventional mode, arguing with her about her view of family. But I hope he hears her in the end? My friend and scholar Melissa Homestead has quite a low opinion of Jim, drawing largely on his embarrassment about Ántonia in Book IV. I do wonder whether he supports those he claims to love only when it’s convenient for him? (Maybe this is a defensive posture after the Cutter attack — but he also seemed quite insensitive to anyone’s hurt but his own after that episode).
Classic narcissist?
Oh I hope not!
I am also struck by how distracted Jim becomes from his studies by Lena. Near the end of this section he admits he can't continue in college and needs a clean start of things. This may be the closest to a confession of dropping out we get. He had seemed so earnest in his studies but lonely. Lena brought back the bunch of girls, Bohemian and Danish and Norwegian, in his heart and his head wasn't much interested in his studies anymore. While his mentor introduces the idea of patria to Jim, ironically at the end of this section he is about to leave his patria behind.
And isn't this precisely the choice that many of us from rural places must make if we choose a college education? I know I've struggled for most of my life with what feels like a contradiction between my professional life and my home. I'm planning to share an essay on this theme on Tuesday.
Yes, absolutely. Leaving home for the first time to enter a wider world through the gates of academia. I look forward to reading your new essay on this theme.
And then I read this related to your forthcoming essay. https://williamfleitch.substack.com/p/volume-5-issue-20-the-weight
with reference to Michael Gerson's essay here https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/michael-gerson-column-goodbye-child/
The question of why an entire section on Lena in a book about Antonia is a good one. And is a major subplot Cather planted with the dream earlier. Jim wished it were Antonia because she had always been the good sweet (idealized, virginal) feminine archetype for him but it is the assertive Lena in his dream who becomes an assertive business woman in his college studies that unfolded so naturally here. And there is sexual triangulation here with Antonia in their encounters. Lena becomes the woman of his dreams. In real life it means he does not have to submit to her domestication because she isn't interested in marriage or kids. Isn't this more attractive to men? To not be able to get the woman of your dreams? He wants to be possessed by her (which is a specific kind of sexual attraction for a man). She becomes unobtainable at the moment when he fears how much he desires her so he plans to flee to Harvard with his mentor. And she isn't interested in being any man's possession. And the mentor who drops by in the evenings seems an inverse to the Sunday mornings he spends at Lena's. Jim's two friends who visit his room (intimate space) are neither interested in marriage but companionship. The scenes with the mentor seem terribly intimate and familiar, though not explicitly sexual. Though for Jim, the intellectual life IS his erogenous zone. Lena's character shows Cather's hand in demonstrating the ways men respond to a beautiful woman. Their jealousy of each other is most endearing and yet pricks the patriarchy. Lena, Jim recognizes, has assimilated in ways Antonia has not. Lena has given up the wildness of the childhood spirit of the prairie and come to town a lady of independent means. The best days are gone for Lena, in Jim's estimation. She will grow old and be lonely. He handles her rejection differently than Ole and the Colonel. He leaves her behind. And he leaves his own rustic past for Harvard.
Lots here, Jill (you caught me at home with a sick kid who is now napping, hence my prompt replies). I'm hesitant to generalize about what men want (Jim is hardly a conventional man?). But there does seem to be something alluring and yet elusive about both Ántonia and Lena. Lena will allow him to be a friend with privileges, but won't allow him to marry her (she initiates their Lincoln fling, interestingly). Ántonia is available to other men romantically, but seems to keep Jim in the friend zone. What this all means is another matter, but it's really fantastic storytelling.
I once saw an improv dance group explain how they tried to sustain and escalate tension to keep a dance moving. Pursuit and retreat were both essential tools. Cather does something like that here, and I wonder if one reason for devoting a section to Lena is to withhold Ántonia from us? We know that she's back there in Red Cloud, that there will have to be some kind of circling back for the novel to feel whole. But we just get Lena's rumors, and then the somewhat satisfying, but temporary, interval with Lena and Jim.
How interesting that you see Jim thinking that Lena's best days are over! I rather heard that as his own nostalgia, that his best days were back on the farm. Everything seems a letdown after they move to town -- even Harvard is kind of an afterthought here. But I suppose you're right that the narrative suggests that "forward" for Jim means "away" from his roots. Which makes me think about how the move to town in Book II reflects that uprooting for so many Americans across generations and for rural kids who become first-generation college students.
Thanks, as always, for adding so much depth to the discussion!
Thanks for replying with a sick wee one at hand. It's been a long week and this is my Saturday afternoon splurge. About to head out for a hike with the dog shortly. Your point about this tension Cather plays with in romantic partners is great: most definitely a dance. It keeps escalating the tension, with a release and separation at the end. I guess I didn't mean to imply all men feel one way. But I think there are some men for whom the tension is about wanting to be wanted. There are other men for whom the tension is wanting to possess or sexually overcome a woman. Cather intentionally draws the dream in which Jim is possessed by Lena and not the other way around. He is not overcome by sexual urges towards Lena, but cultivates any affection she will show him. Okay. Time for some outdoor time! Thanks for doing this.
Before I read your questions this week, I have to blurt out an initial response to this reading. I hadn't remembered the ways in which Cather's writing was in conversation with the literary canon (even Virgil!) in this section of the book.
From the epigraph!
yes, but all the theater, opera, and his readings popped out at me. We've left the prairie now.
Chapter 2 - the opening is gorgeous. I agree, the sensory detail reminds us that, however transporting reading Virgil in Latin is, Jim is in a body in a place, one that he loves. Feeling and reason work together. I loved Cleric's idea of "patria," especially in light of the "think globally, act locally" mantra that many environmentalists still use. They're not wrong in arguing that many problems are best solved on the small scale, while many more are caused by large-scale attempts to control, extract, and exploit "resources." Not to mention warring over borders and territory.
What an interesting connection between patria and environmental ethics. You’re reminding me of Bill McKibben’s and Barbara Kingsolver’s arguments for leaning into local economies, our true sources of durability. I have no illusions about where/what my patria is, but there are some secrets of mindful inhabitation that apply anywhere.
For instance, I moved 4 times over the 16 years I lived in Iowa (owned two homes, rented two places) and have now moved twice in the last two years. But I know that gardening is both a way to feel grounded and to connect with neighbors. Even though I did not inherit a maple tree with my new place, I see several on my block, and so next year I might propose a communal syruping operation. These connections are how we care about each other and about stewardship.
Exactly. And let's not forget the ultimate advocate for local economies - Wendell Berry. I moved every 2 years as a kid, until we settled from army bases to suburbia. From nowhere to nowhere. Digging in the dirt is an excellent way to cultivate community.
I had a similar response to Cleric's idea of "patria" as at the heart of regenerative agriculture and so much more; this sense of the place where you belong.