On Willa Cather's O Pioneers!

In 1960s in America, the name of Willa Cather was brought back to the literary circles. Because of the vivid, true-to-life female characters portrayed in her novels, She became the hot topic of feminist literary critics in 1960s. With the economic reform and open-door policy being carried out in China, Chinese feminist literature became mature and a lot of feminist theories and works were introduced to China, part of which were Willa Cather's works. This thesis intends to focus on O Pioneers to reveal the features of Cather's artistic world through analyzing the protagonist—Alexandra. Among the many writers in the beginning of the 20th century, Willa Cather is famous for her Nebraska Novels. Look at her literary career, we find the best part of her works take the Westward Movement as the historical background with which she was quite familiar. Her Nebraska Novels include novels such as O Pioneers, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, and One of Ours. From different aspects, Cather describes the immigrants' indomitable pioneering spirit and unyielding resolve character in a lyric style with beauty, clarity and simplicity. She highly praises their noble sentiment and elevated soul. One outstanding features of her Nebraska Novels is the composition of her protagonist, who are foremost cares women. In this way, Cather breaks the pattern of traditional literature, which creates the image of Eve dependent on Adam. Instead she characterizes such contrasting female characters as Antonia Shimerda and Alexandra Bergerson. They both carry on them the female virtues as well as male qualities. In their fighting for survival against nature, their spiritual life has been elevated. O Pioneers！ can best represent Cather's artistic features, partly leading to her success in literature. Its success lies in the fact that it creates Alexandra who is at the same time sentiment and rational, romantic and practical, strong-minded like a male and fable as a woman. Putting Alexandra at the centre of her work, Cather transforms the western tradition of having a man as the hero of pioneering epic. Through Alexandra's hard work and incessant pursuit Cather shows to the reader a independent woman. With the creation of such a heroine as Alexandra, a theme of the harmony of man and land is revealed. The relation between land and Alexandra changes from conflicting to harmony. Neither of them can be separated from the other. Therefore, Cather provides us with an ideal pattern of the relationship between man and land. In portraying the female protagonist and building up the theme of the novel, Cather displays her incomparable artistic features. She is very good at characterization. Her language is beautiful, lyric and accurate. The psychology of the characters is dealt with in detail. Natural environment serves as a background to the development of character's psychology. From what we've discussed above, we can draw the conclusion that the purpose of portraying Alexandra—a female protagonist is to illustrate the theme—the ideal mode between man and nature, man and land. So we can say that Willa Cather is one of the most outstanding writer in American literature.