Willa Cather’s contribution to the popular immigration debate of the nineteenth century is told through a contrast of progressive domestic ideals and ‘old world’ traditional values in My Ántonia. Cather’s literary works were often in support of open immigration, so by adorning her Bohemian characters with endearing qualities such as ‘inner glow’ (p.177) and ‘portraying their efforts to resist assimilation in a positive light’, she was able to influence twentieth century discourse by providing an openminded, authentic vision of Eastern European immigration in America and its ability to ‘revitalize the nation’ (Prchal, p.21). This essay will further examine Cather’s focus on the preservation of national culture and tradition by exploring American Progressivism, the Bohemian experience, and the challenges presented by ‘forced exile’ and cultural integration.

         On one side of the immigration debate was the eugenicist notion that Southern and Eastern Europeans were ‘a particular threat to evolutionary progress’ (Helstern, p.255). It was believed that policies centred around ‘restricting immigration’ (p.255) and ‘outlawing interracial marriage’ (p.255) were necessary to ‘save the great race from extinction’ (p.259). According to Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race, ‘the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type’. From here was born the split between ‘superior’ old immigrants (usually of Nordic descent) and ‘inferior’ new (dominantly Slavic) immigrants that shaped the viewpoints of twentieth-century Modernist intellectuals and ‘redoubled animosity’ (Prchal, p.9) towards specific racial groups.  While Cather held ‘personal ties to Progressive reformers as well as older immigrants’ (Helstern, p.257), her carefully placed position generally took on a ‘pro-immigrant stance’ (Helstern, p.256). Cather disproved the ‘logical fallacy of linking negative inherited traits exclusively with the “lower races”’ (Helstern p.262) by embellishing My Ántonia with a rich beauty embodied by the Slavic characters while also adhering to their cultural values: ‘I remembered what the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood’ (p.19). By outsourcing this perspective to a white American tertiary character before validating it with Jim Burden’s concurrence, Cather provides a more holistic view of how Ántonia is perceived by local communities upon her arrival and thereby reshapes the image presented in Grant’s theory of racial inferiority. We also see this in the consistently optimistic portrayal of international art and music’s place within American culture, a topic further explored later in the essay.

         It is obvious that Cather’s personal experience of American immigration impacted the warm and familiar representation of her Eastern European characters in My Ántonia, especially knowing that the characterisation of Ántonia was based on her Czech childhood friend, Anna Pavelka. Evidently, Cather’s memories of the Bohemian women who had migrated to Nebraska inspired her to portray their qualities and strengths with experiential accuracy and a clear fondness for the ‘old world’ they brought with them: ‘they had all, like Ántonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new’ (p.109). Cather’s portrayal of Bohemian individuality and ‘family solidarity’ (p.110) are key examples of how she pushed for the reshaping of ‘popular image’ (Prchal, p.3) that had befallen American society during the immigration waves. The description of the country girls who ‘shone out too boldly against a conventional background’ (p.111) gives us an idea of how local narrowmindedness would have held immigrants back from true integration, thus inhibiting progress and diminishing native identity into a topic for judgement and criticism, or as with the ‘young men who belonged to the Progressive Euchre Club’ (p.108) who ‘used to drop in late and risk a tiff with their sweethearts and general condemnation for a waltz with ‘the hired girls’ (p.108), escape-driven desire. Despite this, the ‘strong, independent nature’ and ‘hearty joviality’ (p.100) of the European women are particularly endearing qualities to Virginian Jim Burden, and through consistently highlighting the contrast in character between the immigrants and the locals, Cather authenticates her statement that ‘Americanizing everything and everybody is a deadly disease’ and instead, paves the way for the celebration of cultural pluralism by describing My Ántonia as a ‘story of the Czechs’ that ‘had as its purpose the desire to express the quality of these people’ (Feld, p.72). This intention frequently reveals itself in the display of national cultures and Jim’s unprejudiced acceptance of them as he experiences life as an ‘exile who is forced to cross over from his native place to a strange new world’.

         To further understand Jim’s voyage, we might look at the role his domestic environment plays in his arrival to Nebraska and how this supports his integration. Jim’s initial impressions of the land nod towards a Transcendentalist nature, or perhaps, the lasting effects of displacement and his method of adjusting to such. The representation of vastness and empty space are also important factors when excavating the internal process he undergoes when leaving the past behind, consequently losing his sense of personal identity to ‘something complete and great’ (p.17). Catherine D. Holmes describes this journey as an ‘annihilation of self’ (Holmes, p.2), and his own account of feeling ‘erased, blotted out’ and that ‘what would be would be’ hint at a deeply spiritual sense of surrender and a quick maturity that is born from the process of uprooting oneself and adopting a new identity. In terms of assimilation, Jim was very fortunate to land into the Burden’s secure, orderly environment imbued with warmth, comfort and ‘familial care and attention’.  Their high social standing and already solidified routine, environment and support network enabled him to successfully ‘realize his connection with his new world’ (Quantic, p.110) fairly quickly.  In stark contrast, the Shimerdas arrived with little to no knowledge of the land, a financial deficit and a distinct lack of support. The poverty the Shimerdas faced is a prominent feature of Cather’s representation of the immigrant experience, as if she intended to highlight the intense struggle of survival and heart wrenching grief the family had to overcome in order to open a reader’s eyes to the harsh reality they might not otherwise comprehend.

         The Shimerdas are immediately forced into damp, dark conditions which mimic that of a hibernating animal and as a result, slowly succumb to the depression inflicted upon them by social isolation, financial struggle and the grieving of the ‘old world’: ‘You not mind my mamenka, Mrs Burden. She is so sad’ (p.45). In order to survive, the Shimerdas had to remain faithful in the face of severe austerity, much of which would likely have gone unnoticed by the privileged families of their community. Perhaps this is a symptom of becoming the ‘exiled’ and arriving into an Americanised image: a life and destiny moulded by societal expectations. We witness this too in Mr Shimerda’s gradual retreat into himself and eventual suicide. His character is mild and temperate, his emotional struggles discreetly put aside (though not by Ántonia), but unlike Jim, his loss of identity is not one replaced with a hopeful vision of the future; it rather declines into an inability to see past the unbearable strain of the present moment. Whereas Jim Burden’s ‘annihilation of the self’ leads to his eventual acceptance and even affection for his new world, Mr Shimerda can never quite overcome the separation from that which he loved dearly and in which he found his fulfilment: ‘My papa, he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him’ (p.53).

           Musical imagery is a strong theme in My Ántonia. The varying arts and languages included in the diversified narration all play a dominant part in Cather’s preservation of immigrant culture. The negro pianist, Blind d’Arnault, is a prime example of this. By implementing characters with unique talents and focusing on the enlivening effect their performative arts have on both immigrants and Americans alike, Cather enlightens us with new perspectives based on age-old tradition. Cather’s attitude towards Blind d’Arnault is one of admiration. Despite Cather’s telling of his misfortune, Jim Burden likens him to ‘some glistening African god of pleasure’ (p.105) and describes his performance as the ‘only one break in the dreary monotony of [March]’ (p.100). Cather’s portrayal of the creative arts as relief from the mundane in My Ántonia recognises the colourful influence immigrant culture had on American society, a concept repeated in the later chapters when Jim studies Virgil’s poetry and enjoys a French musical theatre production with Lena Lingard. The emotionally fulfilling experience which ‘left Lena in tearful contemplation of the ceiling’ (p.148) and the hints at how Jim’s memories of his ‘infinitesimal past… stood out strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun’ (p.141) when discussing Virgil, draw attention to the modern businessperson’s lean towards art and music as a fulfilment of purpose outside of restrictive, progressive ideals.

         Moving onto My Ántonia’s closing chapter ‘Cuzak’s Boys’, we find a necessary representation of how hardship and defeat can, with time and perseverance, be transmuted into financial security and contentment. Ántonia’s attitude hardly changed between the passing of Mr Shimerda and her subsequent taking over much of the farm’s work while speaking often of ‘how much she could lift and endure’ (p.72) and the conversation with Jim when years later, she tells him how ‘the first ten years were a hard struggle’ (p.181) in finding stability. Jim also notices that she ‘had not lost the fire of life’ (p.177) and with the presence of Bohemian language, kolaches and the Cuzak’s hospitable welcome, Cather further signifies that Ántonia’s sense of identity had not been lost to Americanisation, rather, she had blended worlds old and new to find her own true realisation of the American Dream through balance and order. This sense of relief is presented by Jim’s feeling of ‘the deepest peace in that orchard’ (p.180), a light-hearted theme that is scattered throughout Cather’s novel and presented to us through her style: ‘matchless in its clarity, beauty and simplicity’. The concept of ‘calm, pure art’ (Middleton, p.22) which exists in the touching descriptive passages of the natural world allows us a moment of respite from the sometimes-heavy rhetoric presented by the social, political and racial discourse embedded in the novella.

         With an openminded, authorial voice and easy-going conversation, Willa Cather is able to offer My Ántonia as a celebration of racial diversity in America, clarifying both sides of the immigrant experience while encouraging the realisation that the preservation of ethical distinctiveness has been a remarkable and brilliant addition to the symphony of race and culture in modern America.

 

 

 

 

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