A Tentative Study On Female Images In O Pioneers! And My Antonia

After Willa Cather (1873-1947) won the world reputation for her success of My Antonia, more and more literary critics started to project insight into Cather's world and to present various criticisms on the novelist's work. Insightful as their discussions are, they have not paid serious attention to a systematic analysis of the archetypes lurking in her novelistic world.The present thesis is an attempt to offer a tentative study on female images in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia from the perspective of myth and archetypal criticism. In Chapter 1, the writer makes a literature review on the study of Willa Cather's literary work and introduces her literary life and the social background at that time. Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to myth and archetypal criticism for the convenience of analysis in this study. Chapter 3 and 4 attempt to offer a tentative study on systems of female images in O Pioneers! and My Antonia based upon the theories of myth and archetypal criticism. Chapter 5 concludes with the fruitful result after the analytical study on the two novels. The images of Alexandra and Antonia can be considered to be Great Mother and Earth Mother in ancient mythology. In these two novels, Willa Cather focuses her writing muscles on the mythical goddesses who reflect her unconscious of myth and archetypes in human beings' memories.