The Unreal Beneath the Real, Research Paper Example

Introduction

If Willa Cather is famous for anything, it is for her artistic commitment to representing a  part of the early American experience.  She is the voice of the Great Plains and the Midwest, and she captures the pioneer reality of the era and region through deeply personal reminiscences.  Cather’s My Antonia is no exception to this and the novel centers on a certain memory of Cather’s own past.  In this memory, the author also deals with issues of race and conflict, as the title character’s Bohemian background is a gulf between herself and the largely white world of the pioneers.  Beyond this, however, the novel offers an extreme challenge. Cather seems to deliberately avoid the sexualized or romanticized view of Antonia the reader would expect from Jim Burden, her lifelong male friend.  Homosexuality is suggested but it is not taken beyond suggestion.  The result is a novel lacking in explanation.  Cather does write about sex, but only in terms of violence, as a possibility, and as a thing removed from the core relationship of the story.  Consequently, this is a novel built around an unexplained reality.  As the following explores, Jim Burden’s sexless and ongoing fascination with the title character of Cather’s My Antonia is an unreal element in an otherwise genuine tribute.

Discussion

The unrealistic core of the novel is in place from the beginning, from when Jim Burden is introduced.  He is a successful New York lawyer, and he is still passionate about the prairies and lands of his youth.  He and the initial narrator are crossing Iowa on a train and  their thoughts go to the Bohemian girl they knew, who was such an object of fascination for them both. Jim in fact has not been content to let Antonia remain a memory, and he has seen her recently.  Clearly, Antonia is extremely important to Jim.  As the friends talk on the train: “His mind was full of her that day.  He made me see her again, feel her presence” (Cather 8).  At the same time, Cather is careful to state that, for both friends, Antonia’s power lies in how she represents the world of their youth and the prairie landscapes they so love. The reader already then has a sense of something not in place.  In plain terms, it is strange that there should be no expression of any kind of romantic longing or past between Antonia and Jim, and the reader must accept that his deep affection for her is purely that of friendship.  This is unusual at best.

Moreover, the brief section on Jim’s marriage indicates a sexless union, or one between a repressed homosexual man and a heterosexual woman.  His wife lives her own life, and: “For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden” (Cather 8).  There is then the implication of homosexuality, but its going no farther than this does not satisfy the reader’s need to understand just why Jim is so consistently interested in Antonia.  Many critics have argued that Jim Burden’s nature is homosexual, based upon his relationship with Antonia, which reflects the kind of sexless fascination a gay man may have for an unusual and attractive woman  (Anders 67).  Throughout the novel, Jim is both fascinated with Antonia to an extreme degree and conflicted about sex in genral.  His relationship with Lena, for example, is odd and strained, even as he admires her and expresses attraction.  When Ordinsky accuses Jim of seeking to “compromise” Lena, Jim is offended at the idea.  He is a college boy but he conveys an attitude toward women that is literally from the age of chivalry: “I have known Miss Lingard a long time, and I think I appreciate her kindness” (Cather 156).  Reinforcing the sexlessness or homosexuality of Jim is his behavior at the play; he cries and throws himself into Camille with a degree of emotion unusual for any heterosexual man.  The point, however, remains that Cather does no more than hint at this possibility, so the closeness between Jim and Antonia is a source of frustration for the reader.  It maintains an unreal, or unrealistic, note.  The reader can easily understand anyon’s deep interest in Antonia, who is unique and courageous. Less easy to understand is how and why this young man would maintain a close tie to her only as a friend.  The idea that Antonia represents the Midwest and the land is too weak to support this. Consequently, the novel suffers from an unreal foundation beneath the story of a very real and genuinely interesting Bohemian girl.

In a sense, it is not right to question an author’s choices.  After all, it may be argued that Cather’s aim is to present the world of the prairies she knew and loved, and that Jim’s relationship with Antonia is nothing more than a device allowing her to do this.  For the author, Antonia is the soul of the Midwest, so whatever means present her in this way are valid.  At the same time, however, Cather writes in a realistic way.  This demands a basic commitment to human realities, as in a man’s romantic desire for a woman with whom he has been fascinated his entire life.  If Antonia is symbolic, she is also a dimensional character, so this level of realism is necessary.  If it is not in place, then another explanation, as in Jim’s being homosexual, should be more clearly indicated.  Interestingly, Cather herself addresses this deliberate choice to have Jim and Antonia’s relationship as non-sexual.  She recalled a Bohemian girl she had known, and who was fascinating to Cather and all the young men of the area.  The author, however, felt that creating a romance between one fictional man and the girl would be trite or ordinary.  She did not want to engage in what she referred to as, “Saturday Evening Post stuff,” because she felt that romance between the two would not do justice to the reality of an Antonia (Goldberg 33).  This is understandable but, again, it does not excuse the author from offering some form of explanation.

The lack of explanation for the central relationship in My Antonia then leads to examining the motives of the author herself. It is generally believed that My Antonia, coming late in Cather’s career, is a conscious choice in turning to a past she loved, and one of a very personal nature.  As she aged, Cather felt more drawn to returning to her own past and celebrating the unique world she knew.  Also, the author loved her early relationships with her brothers, when they were children and non-sexual.  This translates to the character of Jim.  In no uncertain terms, he is at best sexually ambiguous, and critics find this to be a major flaw in all of Cather’s work.  Cather was homosexual, but she always avoided any expression of this in her work, as well as in her life.  She chose to be celibate and she made no efforts to present relationships as realistically involving sexuality, either hetero or homosexual (Woodress 299). This may then be said to be the tragedy of My Antonia, which is otherwise a haunting memory piece of a strong female character.  The reader can only wonder at how much more honest and elevated the story would have been, had Cather taken the most obvious course in telling her tale.  As noted, Antonia is based on someone Cather knew, and clearly had strong feelings for.  The use of Jim as the basic narrator then lessens the honesty.  If it is understandable that Cather wanted no suggestion of her personal life and sexuality in her work, the loss is still important: “Obviously autobiographical, the obvious narrator for My Antonia would be Cather herself” (Spector  52).  Instead, the reader is left with a beautiful memory tale resting on a flawed foundation, in terms of an unrealistic and unexplained relationship.

Conclusion

Without question, Willa Cather succeeds at a high level in recreating the prairie world of her youth.  Few American writers are so able to evoke the Plains in a way that both celebrates and reflects a kind of fear.  As Jim recalls coming to his grandparents’ farm, for example, the land staggers his senses: “As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea” (Cather 17).  There is as well a rich reality to the character of Antonia: Bohemian, misplaced, ordinary, and unique.  My Antonia, however, relies on the credibility of Jim as narrator, and his feeling of nothing beyond friendship for Antonia is suspect.  Cather hints at a repressed homosexuality, but suggestion is not explanation, so the reader has difficulty in accepting this core relationship.  Ultimately, Jim Burden’s sexless and consistent fascination with the title character of Willa Cather’s My Antonia is an unreal, or unrealistic, element in an otherwise genuine and heartfelt tribute.

Works Cited

Anders, John P.  Willa Cather’s Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual Literary Tradition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Print.

Cather, Willa. My Antonia.  New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Print.

Goldberg, Jonathan.  Willa Cather and Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.  Print.

Spector, Judith.  Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism.  Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press, 1986.  Print.

Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Print.