A Feminist Interpretation Of Willa Cather's Lesbian Stance In My Antonia

Willa Cather, though for some time neglected, has few rivals among the American novelists of the last century. In many ways as the most elusive of early-twentieth-century American female writer, she has frequently invited critics and readers to examine and scrutinize. My Antonia has been long considered as a representatively American pioneer novel,and also is one of the author's favorites. My Antonia has ignited heated debates among critics for its irrelevant chapters, its unreliable narrator and the uncertain meanings within the text. Many episodes' presence and focal characters' act are hard to explain or even untenable. Relating the writer' s sexual orientation to her work can offer an innovative means to straighten out the confusions and puzzles that the unfathomable writer stirs in our mind. As a lesbian writer,Willa Cather has inevitably projected her own life on her characters. As a private woman writer, she can not openly declare her homosexuality in her fiction, but can't help concealing her authentic feelings in subtexts or allusions.This thesis takes the perceptive of feminism to decipher Cather' s lesbianism reflected in My Antonia, It attempts to analyze three different groups of people: asexual, bisexual and homosexual,and portrays how they deal with sex and marriage respectively: nihilism,ambivalence and rejection, aiming to present Cather's lesbian stance on marriage and life.