My Antonia

My Antonia is a story of empowerment and perseverence. The first time I read it, I dismissed it as a simple story of prarie life. And it is about prarie life. But compared to other stories that were written during/about this period, My Antonia takes on the immigrant angle. What immigrants had to do to survive when they'd come here in search of a better life. It was a hell of a struggle, but they figured it was worth it.

After Antonia's father kills himself, Antonia is left to follow her brother Ambrosch's lead/instructions. She does her level best to do what's expected of her in terms of chores, and becomes very determined to go one more further than that. Femininity isn't a concern of hers, but the narrator's grandmother worried that Antonia would lose her femininity altogether and feels that Antonia should be doing womanly things.

Now, before you go thinking this is a feminist she-woman man-hater book, I must stop you there. Because therein lies the beauty of the book: Antonia does what she does because she enjoys it. She doesn't do all the chores in the field because she wants to be able to say she can do anything any dumb old man can do. The point of her actions isn't so she can thumb her nose at those chauvenist pigs. It's because it's what she wants to do. She worked in the fields because she knew it would be helpful and had to be done. When she moves to town, she wanders out dancing because she took delight in dancing. At the end of the book, when Jim meets her "litter", we see that she didn't have the children because it's the thing for a woman to do, but because she loved kids. Gender had nothing to do with any of it.

Although it doesn't quite qualify as an all-time fave, it's still a good read. I suppose depending on how you approach the book you could interpret it as a female empowerment piece. But I try to abstain from those sorts of thoughts. I'd rather not think in terms of gender or race, but rather in terms of human beings. I'm not eager to label or get my nose bent out of shape over something that 'might' be sexist if you stare at it long enough.

But this is just my opinion. --I could be wrong.