1. Research Bohemia and use your information to explain what Antonia’s family life might have been like if her family had stayed in the Old Country. 2. Research the immigrant experience in America. Was the Shimerda experience typical of what many families expected and experienced in coming to America? 3. […]
Read more Study Help Practice ProjectsStudy Help Essay Questions
1. Why does Willa Cather introduce Jim Burden and let him tell the story of Antonia? 2. Explain how Cather adds depth and color to her novel by bringing in Old World roots (such as Pavel’s wedding party story and Old Hata). 3. What incidents show that Antonia is a […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsStudy Help Full Glossary
arnica any of a number of plants of the composite family, bearing bright yellow flowers on long stalks with clusters of leaves at the base; here, a preparation made from certain of these plants, once used for treating sprains and bruises. ask lief of anybody ask permission of anyone. badger […]
Read more Study Help Full GlossaryCritical Essays Willa Cather’s Art
Decades before the term throwaway society came into vogue, Willa Cather was concerned that progress and technology were eroding society’s appreciation of art. In a speech at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, on May 13, 1925, she warned: The novel has resolved into a human convenience to be bought and […]
Read more Critical Essays Willa Cather’s ArtCritical Essays The Two Introductions
Willa Cather constructed My Antonia from memories about people and places that were very dear to her and wove them together to form a larger story. For this reason, the body of the novel came easily for her. The introduction, however, was difficult to write, and she was never satisfied […]
Read more Critical Essays The Two IntroductionsCritical Essays The Work as Autobiography
Of all of Willa Cather’s works, My Antonia seems to contain the most elements drawn from the author’s life — with the possible exception of “Old Mrs. Harris.” Cather is thinly disguised as Jim Burden; many of Jim’s thoughts and feelings in the novel were Cather’s own thoughts and feelings […]
Read more Critical Essays The Work as AutobiographyCritical Essays The Real Antonia
When the Cather family left their country farm and moved into the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1884, Mary Miner, the second Miner daughter, brought Willa a bottle of perfume, nestled in a red plush slipper. Thus began Cather’s lifetime friendship with the Miner family, who were to […]
Read more Critical Essays The Real AntoniaWilla Cather Biography
Early Childhood (1873-1884) Wilella Cather (rhymes with gather) was born on December 7, 1873, in the home of her short, stalwart, maternal grandmother, Rachel Boak, in Back Creek Valley (near Gore), on the northwest tip of Virginia. The oldest of seven children, Willa was named for an aunt who died […]
Read more Willa Cather BiographyCharacter Analysis Lena Lingard and Tiny Soderball
Both of them immigrants and hired girls, Lena and Tiny are examples of early immigrants who go out into the world and are successful. Lena learns to be a dressmaker and later moves to San Francisco and has a thriving dress shop. On the other hand, Tiny leaves Black Hawk […]
Read more Character Analysis Lena Lingard and Tiny SoderballCharacter Analysis Mrs. Shimerda
In many ways the opposite of her husband, Mrs. Shimerda is mean-spirited, small-minded, shrewish, and grasping. She is never satisfied, always expecting more. Jim mentions that she always looks accusingly at those who have more than she does. It was her greed and desire for better things that brought the […]
Read more Character Analysis Mrs. Shimerda