Resumo de My Antonia (1918) - The Ultimate Weakness

Willa Cather moved early in her childhood from Virginia to Nebraska. The opening of My Antonia has Cather using her main characters, Jim Burden and Antonia, to describe that same move, from the known to the unknown. During that first long train ride to Nebraska over the interminable prairie lands, which are close to Cather?s heart, she covers with thick, vivid description the characters on the train. Her characters?, and no doubt Cather?s, world at the age of ten seems saturated with colors and smells in the extreme. This novel covers not only a physical move away from the familiar, but also a ?coming of age? for Antonia and Jim, a psychological move from the familiarity of their youth to the uncertainty of relationships and adulthood. From their early teen years, we follow Jim and Antonia through their early innocent friendship and burgeoning romance. When a disaster befalls Antonia?s family and she must begin to work the farm like her brothers, her personality and her relationship with Jim begins to change. She becomes stronger as a woman, but the extremes to which she takes this new found strength and bold ?maleness? could be the end of her and Jim?s romantic relationship. As another misfortune puts her out into the working world as a ?hired girl,? we see again the seductive, sensual, compassionate Antonia. This Antonia, when she no longer has to act like a man and plow the fields, exploiting her ?maleness,? again catches Jim?s eye. We watch Antonia become a vibrant young woman who enjoys her femaleness, and we follow the steps she takes to full womanhood. This strength that has carried her through her life?s misfortunes will not in the end win Jim?s heart. She has become such a part of his life, she is more a romanticized figure than a romantic one. She is his sensual, earthy ideal of a woman who is ?alive? at all times, in her sadness and her joy. In the end, she becomes his symbolic woman, wrapped in tears, smiles, excitement, serenity, and true to herself in all things; for lack of a finer explanation, she is?life. Though they are still friends when Jim goes to college, he can not handle Antonia?s inner strength and demonstrates his ultimate weakness as a man by marrying Lena, Antonia?s antithesis.

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