『나의 안토니아』에 나타난 다양성의 공간인 서부: ‘미국인들’과 그들의 ‘아메리칸 드림’

Abstract

This paper examines how the characters cope with the pioneering experience of im/migration to the West in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. Jim Burden, the narrator of the novel, has migrated from Virginia to Nebraska while Ántonia Shimerda has immigrated from Bohemia to America. In Cather’s view, whether they are American or European in origin, Jim and Ántonia are placed into a similar situation in which they have to face the state of being uprooted in the West as an im/migrant. Ántonia stays and settles down in Nebraska all through the story, while Jim moves around several places all over America. Even though he achieves the status of a successful lawyer, Jim feels disoriented and uprooted, always missing Nebraska as his home. On the other hand, Ántonia is projected as an ideal pioneer. Having struggled against all difficulties of prairie life, Ántonia finally succeeds in leading an enriched life as a farmer, wife and mother. She is depicted as a symbol of a positive possibility that the West of America was projected as the site of the American Dream fulfilled. In addition to Ántonia, Cather portrays other female characters, such as Francis Harling, Lena Lingard and Tiny Soderball, as self-sufficient, independent immigrant women who succeed in running a business of their own in the West. Unlike male writers, Cather reveals the neglected aspects of women’s history in the West by dramatizing the success story of these pioneering female characters who achieve the American Dream in the Western frontier.