My Antonia Essay: Role of Women -- My Antonia Essays

Role of Women in My Antonia The role of the women in My Antonia as the showcased laborers and workers in the new community does not, certainly, eithereviate the questions of patriarchal influence offered in the discussions of gender. Certainly, the event that ntonia is deprived of the education she longs for and yet cannot perk up, because it is she who is responsible for her familys success--School is all right for weeny boys. I help make this land one good farm (94)--cannot be seen as entirely good, if we agree that the value of education is among the greatest of all human values (Woolf 45) and in spite of her protests to the contrary, the bitter recognition of ejection brings ntonia to tears. However, recognizing the womens relationship to the development of national culture does suggest some selection schoolings to the conclusions often reached, even as ntonias sacrifice of her own education does not exclude the contribution she makes to American culture, as we shall see. Recognition of nation-construction effects our reading of the play of gender in the text. One such instance is in the case of narrative authority, which has frequently been cited as Jims patriarchal subsuming of ntonia, as we have seen. While Jim appends the my to his transcription of ntonias history, however, it is worth reiterating that ntonia is neer, in fact, Jims rather, his possessive My reflects a failed try out at possession, as his amorous advances were firmly rebuffed and as the adult ntonia never seeks his assistance or support. At the same time, that the tale is proffered via an anonymous female narrator further undermines Jims narrative authority, for his masculine presumption to speak for ntonia undergoes... ...hts the unconstructedness of the American barrier and the central role of women in forging a community, and by extension in negotiating a fledgling national consciousness. Through the corruption of Jim Burdens narrative authority and a disrespect for gend er delineations, Cather emphasizes the constructedness of patriarchal norms, foreground their irrelevance to successful cultural consciousness. Finally, through ntonias final assumption of a nurturing role, she assumes not a passive feminine identification or a sudden retreat into traditional female roles. Rather, ntonia becomes emblematic of the women who forged the frontier community in their own image, infusing it with their own ethnicities and resisting the hegemonizing impulse of the tangle of norms we straightway know as the American nation. Works CitedCather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston Houghton, 1977.