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e Romanticism of My Ántonia: Every Reader's
Story
Susan J. Rosowski
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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The
Romanticism
of
My
Antonia:
Every
Reader's
Story
Susan].
Rosowski
Romanticism
is
fundamental to My Antonia, shaping
the
attitudes
that
con-
trol its
structure,
style,
and
narration, as well as its expectations
of
a
reader.
I
immediately
face a
dilemma
in teaching this romanticism,
however,
for
most
of
my
students
haven't
even
the
most
rudimentary
understanding
of
what
romanticism is.
They
have negative associations
of
something
emo-
tional, irrelevant,
and
backward-looking; asked for details,
they
describe
surface features
that
vaguely
concern
poets
brooding
about
nature.
Almost
none
understands
romanticism as a way
of
knowing,
by
which
individuals
use
their
imaginations to
create
value in an otherwise meaningless
world
(Rosowski, Voyage).
Happily,
Cather
provided
in
her
introduction a romantic poetics
of
fiction,
a
starting
place for
her
readers-and
our
students.
Mter
explaining
that
the
introduction
exists in two forms (the original, 1918 version
and
the
condensed
but
otherwise
unaltered
1926 version
that
students
have in
their
paperback
editions), I
distribute
copies
of
the
1918 version, in which
Cather
makes
an
agreement
with
Jim
Burden:
"I
would
set
down on
paper
all
that
I
remem-
bered
of
Antonia,
if
he
would do
the
same."
Cather
emphasizes again
the
distinction
between
her
story
and
Jim's in two
sentences
at
the
end
of
the
original introduction.
Mter
Jim
brought
to
Cather
his manuscript,
he
said
it
hadn't
any form
or
any title either:
he
wrote
"Antonia,"
then
"frowned
at
this a
moment,
then
prefixed
another
word, making it
'My
Antonia.'
That
seemed
to satisfY
him."
Thus
ends
the
1926 version,
but
in 1918
Cather
had
included
two additional sentences: "
'Read
it
as
soon as you
can,'
he
said
rising,
'But
don't
let
it
influence your own story.' My own story was
never
written,
but
the
follOwing narrative is Jim's manuscript, substantially as
he
brought
it
to
me."
After
we
have
read
the
original introduction,
we
may
note
that
it
includes
incidental features
of
romanticism: it announces its
subject
as childhood close
to
nature;
it
establishes its narrator's
"romantic
personality";
it
specifies
that
"romantic"
means Jim's imaginative capacity to love
the
country
and
to
lose
himself
in an idea.
We
quickly move, however, to
the
more
important
stress
Cather
places on
method.
Indeed,
the
introduction
resembles
a contract,
filled
with
stipulations
about
how
the
story was
written
and
how
it
should
be
read,
in
both
cases as
the
creation
of
an
imagination,
true
to
experience
that
is individual,
unique,
and
ongoing.
In
discussing
method,
we
note
that
before Jim
began
to
write
of
Antonia,
he
stated
his condition
that
he
would do so from his
unique
experience
of
her:
"Of
course I
should
have
to
do
it
in
a
direct
way,
and
say a
great
deal
about
myself. It's
through
myself
that
I
knew
and
felt
her."
I ask
what
he
65
Published in Approaches to Teaching Cather’s My Ántonia, edited by Susan J. Rosowski
(New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1989), pp. 65-70.
Copyright © 1989 by The Modern Language Association of America. Used by permission.
66
THE
ROMANTICISM
OF
MY
ANTONIA
is
doing
here,
and
we
talk
about
the
assumption
that
knowledge
is
individual
and
unique.
(I
may
compare
Jim's
statement
to Wordsworth's
terms
for The
Prelude,
"to
describe
what
I
had
felt
and
thought.
")
We
note
that
before
giving his
story
to
his
reader,
Jim
warned
her
that
it is accurate according
to
the
way his
memory
worked,
however
fragmentary
and
incomplete
by
conventional notions
of
plot:
he
didn't
"arrange
or
rearrange"
but
"simply
wrote
down
what
of
herself
and
myself
and
other
people
Antonia's
name
recalls
to
me."
Again, I ask
students
to consider
what
the
stipulation means
in
terms
of
the
novel,
and
we
talk
about
romantic concepts
of
form
as
true
to individual
experience
rather
than
to
theories
of
unity
or
expectations
of
genre.
We
talk also
about
the
relation
of
Jim
Burden
to Willa
Cather,
and
here
I resist
the
temptation
to
insist
on
critical distinctions
between
the
"real"
Cather
and
the
invented
one
(the authorial pose)
of
the
introduction. My
students
know
that
in
her
introduction
Cather
provided
details from
her
"real" life
sufficienffor
them
to
recognize
her
as
a writer,
and
that's
where
we
begin-with
the
flagrantly fictitious device
of
the
character's giving to
his
creator
a
manuscript
and
calling
it
his story,
then
of
Cather's
reinforcing
that
idea
with
her
last words
of
the
original introduction:
"My
own story
was
never
written,
but
the
following narrative is Jim's manuscript, substan-
tially as
he
brought
it
to
me."
It
is
as
if
Cather
is
playing a game
with
us,
my
students
say
with
considerable irritation,
and
as
we
discuss
the
effect
of
this
game
it
becomes
clear
that
Cather
has
done
something
most unsettling:
she
has
renounced
the
authority
of
text (by
reminding
us it is an artifact),
author
(by distancing
herself
from it),
and
narrator (by having a fictitious
character
tell
the
tale).
Ifwe
cannot
trust
the
text,
the
author,
or
the
narrator,
what
can
we
trust?
To
consider
what
is
authentic
here,
we
return
to Jim
Burden's
charge
to his
reader
(i.e.,
to
Willa
Cather,
and
by
extension
to
each
of
us)
when
he
gives
to
her
the
manuscript:
"read
it
as soon
as
you can
...
but
don't
let
it
influence
your
own
story."
As
we
consider
implications
of
the
introduction
and,
par-
ticularly,
of
the
title,
someone
will often say
something
such as,
"I
get
it!
My
Antonia
becomes
our Antonia, as
we
read
it
here
together,"
and
another
student
might
respond,
"but
your
reading
is
different from
mine,"
and
we
go
on
from
there,
until
we
are
talking
about
each
reader's
making
the
story
his
or
hers
with
each
reading. Again
without
resorting to secondary defi-
nitions,
what
students
are
discussing
is
Cather's
extension
to
the
reader
of
the
romantic
premise
that
meaning
in an epistemological
sense
is an indi-
vidual creation. By
renouncing
conventional authority in
the
narrator/writer,
she
has validated
it
in
each
reader.
To
discuss
how
Cather
engages
the
reader
in
creating
a story,
we
turn
to
the
body
of
My Antonia
and
read
one
episode closely. Because I wish
to
Susan
J.
Rosowski 67
discuss
what
is characteristic, I avoid
the
overtly dramatic
scenes-Jim's
first
morning
in his
grandmother's
garden,
ending
with
his feeling
"that
is
happiness, to
be
dissolved into
something
complete
and
great"; Jim's picnic
with
the
hired
girls,
ending
with
their
seeing
the
plow magnified against
the
sun;
and
Jim's
return
to Antonia, seeing
her
children
emerge
from
the
fruit cellar
and
recognizing
her
as
"a
rich
mine
of
life."
Instead,
I
select
a
less obvious
episode-Jim
Burden's
first visit
with
his
grandmother
to
the
Shimerdas'
dugout,
for example (19-27).
I ask
where
Cather
begins
with
us,
then
read
the
paragraph
that
starts,
"One
Sunday
morning
Otto
Fuchs
was to
drive
us
over
to make
the
acquain-
tance
of
our
new
Bohemian
neighbours,"
and
includes details
about
provi-
sions:
they
take
with
them
"a
sack
of
potatoes
and
a
piece
of
cured
pork
from
the
cellar,
...
some
loaves
of
Saturday's
bread,
a
jar
of
butter,
and
several
pumpkin
pies."
We
discuss
how
Cather
opens
the
episode as a factual
account, placing it in historical
time
and
geographical space,
then
recounting
specifics.
Next
we
read
the
second paragraph, which begins
with
Jim's anticipation
of
"what
lay
beyond
that
cornfield," includes his
disappointment
on
seeing
"there
was only
red
grass like ours,
and
nothing
else,"
and
builds to his
description:
The
road ran
about
like a wild thing, avoiding
the
deep
draws, crossing
them
where
they
were
wide
and
shallow.
And
all along it,
wherever
it looped
or
ran,
the
sunflowers grew; some
of
them
were
as
big
as
little
trees,
with
great
rough leaves
and
many
branches
which
bore
dozens
of
blossoms.
They
made
a gold
ribbon
across
the
prairie. Oc-
casionally
one
of
the
horses would
tear
off
with
his
teeth
a
plant
full
of
blossoms,
and
walk along
munching
it,
the
flowers
nodding
in
time
to his bites as
he
ate
down toward
them.
I ask
where
we
are
by
the
end
of
this second paragraph,
and
students
respond
with
Eden,
a fairy tale, a magical world, paradise.
Whatever
their
term,
they
recognize
that
the
narrative has
extended
the
world
of
ordinary
life to
romance.
We
may
note
the
change in
sentence
structure,
from simple sen-
tences
to cumulative ones,
and
the
repetition
of
Jim's straining
to
see,
of
the
refrain
"I
could
see
nothing"
and
"I
could still
see
nothing,"
followed
by
sequences
of
"I
saw"
and
"I
felt"
as
his imagination takes over.
As
we
move to
the
core
of
this episode
and
read
the
paragraph
describing
Jim's approach to
the
Shimerdas' dugout,
we
note
again
the
recurring
pat-
tern: first
the
reason
presents
particulars as facts,
then
the
imagination works
on
those facts, transforming
them
by
feeling. Initially Jim describes things
as
they
are.
He
sees
"nothing
but
rough
red
hillocks,
and
draws
with
shelving
68
THE
ROMANTICISM
OF
MY
ANTONIA
banks
and
long roots
hanging
out,"
then
sees an
object
(a
shattered
windmill
frame),
which
he
calls a "skeleton" (no longer simply an object,
but
an
object
infused
by
feeling
into
a symbol
of
death). Finally,
he
describes a
door
and
sunken
window.
What
is Jim writing about? I ask. A
dugout,
yes,
but
also
about
a feeling
of
death
and
desolation. Some
students
note
that
the
image
of
the
windmill
as a
"skeleton"
is
strong
enough
to color
the
entire
setting,
and
others
say
the
dugout
with
its
door
and
sunken
window
seems
like a
skull.
Next
we
read
the
description
of
the
Shimerdas, as each
emerges
from
the
earth.
First
there
appears
a
woman
of
indeterminate
age wearing a shawl,
"her
face
...
alert
and
lively,
with
a
sharp
chin
and
shrewd
little
eyes."
I
ask
who
she
is,
and
in
every
class I have
taught
students
immediately identify
her
as a witch. Next,
the
oldest
son, foxlike with little,
shrewd
hazel eyes
that
were
"sly
and
suspicious"
and
"fairly
snapped
at
the
food";
then
as
if
princesses, Antonia,
with
eyes
"big
and
warm
and
full
of
light, like
the
sun
shining
on
brown
pools in
the
wood,"
and
brown
skin,
her
cheeks
glowing
with
"rich,
dark
colour"
and
curly, wild-looking
brown
hair, followed
by
her
younger
sister,
who
was "fair
...
mild
and
obedient."
Just
as
we
begin
to
predict
other
recognizable transformations
of
a fairy
tale,
the
scene exceeds formulation when Marek appears, showing his
webbed
fingers, like a duck's foot,
and
crowing like a rooster. Finally,
most
unex-
pectedly
of
all,
the
father
emerges,
wearing a grey vest
and
"a
silk scarf
of
a
dark
bronze-green,
carefully crossed
and
held
together
by
a
red
coral
pin,"
and
bending
over
Mrs.
Burden's
hand,
as
if
he
were
in
the
most
formal
of
drawing
rooms
rather
than
on
an
unbroken
Nebraska prairie.
Once
we
have
read
the
episode closely,
we
need
only
the
briefest
comment
about
how
it
works.
Cather
never
leaves
the
prairie;
throughout,
we
believe
in
the
particular
reality
of
a specific
time
and
place. Yet
the
imagination
transforms this
most
ordinary
of
scenes into
something
extraordinary. Any-
thing
at
all
might
emerge
next
from
the
Shimerdas' dugout, for a desolate
Nebraska
country
has
become
a place
of
miracles,
created
by
the
informing
power
of
Jim's
and
our
imaginations (see also Rosowski, "Fatality").
We
turn
next
to ways in
which
Cather
invokes
the
reader's
imagination
to
join
scenes
that
are
apparently
disparate.
For
example, Jim's
battle
with
the
snake is
complete
in
itself, a childhood episode
that
the
middle-aged
narrator
recalls as a mock
adventure
(43-50).
In
it
Jim follows
the
familiar
pattern:
First,
he
describes
the
object
as it is, a snake "lying
with
long loose
waves, like a
letter
'W.'
"
He
then
tells
of
feeling revulsion, implicitly as-
sociating
the
snake
with
threatening
sexuality
when
he
describes "his abom-
inable
muscularity, his loathsome, fluid
movement,
[that] somehow
made
me
sick,"
compares
it
to
"the
ancient,
eldest
Evil,"
and
extends
the
reference
to "his
kind
[that]
have
left
horrible
unconscious memories in all warm-
Susan]. Rosowski 69
blooded life."
As
the
incident unfolds
we
focus on
the
action
ofJim's
killing
the
snake
and
returning
triumphantly
home
with it,
and
we
consider
the
episode closed
when
Jim reflects,
"I
had
killed a big
snake-I
was now a
big fellow."
One
chapter
ends
and
another
begins with a
quite
different subject,
that
of
Peter
and
Pavel. Yet
as
an aside in
the
third
sentence
of
this
new
episode,
Jim mentions
"Wick
Cutter,
the
merciless Black Hawk money-lender, a
man
of
evil
name
throughout
the
country,
of
whom I shall have
more
to say
later"
(50).
With
the
repetition
of
the
letter
W (now
as
"Wick") associated
with
the
idea
of
Evil ("a man
of
evil name"), it
is
as
if
the
snake
had
reappeared,
reincarnated
in
human
form.
The
aside points ahead also, for Jim's
promise
to say
more
of
him anticipates
Cutter's
attempted
rape
of
Antonia,
when
dark sexuality
threatens
to disrupt Black Hawk
Eden.
Individual scenes
are
structured
by
movement
of
the
mind
as it transforms
the
ordinary into
the
extraordinary,
and
apparently disparate scenes
are
joined
by
movement
of
the
mind
as it recognizes echoes;
the
overall novel
is
structured
by
the
way
the
mind
formulates meaning.
We
recognize
the
circular
movement
of
a romantic lyric
when
a middle-aged Jim
returns
to
Antonia, recognizing
her
as
a rich mine
of
life.
The
physical
return
of
Jim
mirrors
the
circular imaginative process: in
the
end
the
speaker
returns
to
the
object
he
described
at
the
beginning, an object now informed with
memories.
While
we
talk
about
how each section relates to
the
whole, I may sketch
their
circularity
on
the
chalkboard.
In
"The
Shimerdas,"
the
child Jim
de-
scribes
direct
experience
of
the
physical world, his sensory descriptions
reminiscent
of
Wordsworth's "fair seedtime
of
the
soul."
In
"The
Hired
Girls" Jim's youthful
energy
has
become
intensified
by
adolescent sexuality,
presenting
possibilities
that
culminate in
one
experience
of
ennobling cre-
ativity (awe
at
the
plow magnified against
the
sun) and
another
of
disillu-
sioning excess (revulsion
at
Cutter's
attempted
rape
of
Antonia).
In
"Lena
Lingard" Jim leaves physicality
behind
him to revel in a newly discovered
world
of
ideas.
With
"The
Pioneer Woman's Story"
he
begins his
return
to
that
physical, natural world, though
by
imposing his ideas on it
rather
than
recognizing ideals residing within it. Finally, in "Cuzak's Boys" Jim closes
the
circle, fusing
the
idea with
the
particular. Jim's revelation in
the
fruit-
cellar scene is quintessentially romantic:
he
sees Antonia in all
her
partic-
ularity, an aging woman with missing
teeth
and
grizzled hair,
and
he
recognizes
the
universal idea
of
an
earth
mother
residing within
that
par-
ticularity.
Just
as
we
earlier looked closely
at
the
opening
of
My Antonia,
we
now
look closely
at
its ending. I
read
the
last paragraph aloud,
and
students
often
reply
by
saying
it
is
"perfect,"
with everything resolved: Jim has
returned
70
THE
ROMANTICISM
OF
MY
ANTONIA
home
to
Antonia
and
to
himself. (My
students
here
sometimes charge
Cather
with
escapism, saying
that
such
resolution is too perfect.)
Then
we
look again
at
the
last
sentence.
"Incommunicable,"
a
word
students
initially overlooked,
stops
them
short
on
rereading,
for
they
suddenly
realize
that
with
it
Jim has
excluded
us from his resolution.
If
the
past
Jim possesses
is
"incommuni-
cable,"
what
are
we
left
with?
Apparently
we
don't
get
at
Antonia's
truth,
or
Jim
Burden's,
or
Willa
Cather's.
We
explore this
idea
further
in discussing
other
questions
students
have
about
the
novel.
Why
didn't
Jim
"get
together"
with
Antonia?
The
discussion
ranges,
but
what
is
relevant
for this essay is
that
it includes
our
role as
readers.
"What
does
'get
together'
mean?"
someone asks;
someone
else says,
"But
they
do
'get
together,'
just
not
in
the
sense I
meant,"
and
we
begin
to talk
about
our
stories, fictions
that
we
are
creating
about
these
characters.
Students
mean
that
Jim
should
marry
Antonia, an action
that
can only
be
described
as wildly
improbable
when
we
consider characterization,
theme,
and
plot
as
Cather·
gives
them
to us.
Why
do
we
expect
him
to
do
so?
What
are
our
conventions
for characters (I
cannot
remember
a
student's
asking
why
Antonia
didn't
marry
Jim; it's always
the
reverse),
and
what
are
our
expectations
of
a novel?
Such
questions
return
us
to
the
introduction, in which
Cather
laid
down
her
poetics. I
remind
students
that
they
had
said
the
novel would have
been
better
without
it,
and
we
talk
about
how
that
might
be
so.
We
could have
rested
easy
in
the
illusion
of
receiving
truth,
in having
entered
into Jim's
skin,
retraced
his past,
and
discovered his self, as
if
it
were
our
own.
Instead,
Cather
framed
her
novel
with
reminders
that
Jim cannot give to us "his
Antonia."
In
forcing us
to
create
our
own Antonia
and
thus
extending
re-
sponsibility for
her
story
to
her
reader,
Cather
reveals
the
forward-reaching
tendencies
of
her
romanticism.
She
has
made
her
narrator
an
instrument
of
perception
and
a
maker
of
meaning,
but
she
has
withheld
from him
the
power
of
making
the
novel's validity. Instead,
she
extends to
the
reader
the
romanticist's
premise
that
meaning
is
in
an epistemological
sense
an indi-
vidual,
personal
creation.
Cather
created
a
narrator
through
whom
she
imag-
ined
one
story,
which
she
in
her
introduction
distinguishes from her story.
In
the
novel's conclusion,
she
reminds
us
that
one
person's
meaning
is
"incommunicable"
to
another,
thereby
charging each
reader
to
create
his
or
her
own
story.
