WILLA CATHER, O PIONEERS! AND A CELEBRATION OF THE WOMEN WHO TAMED THE LAND

When Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! first caught my attention years ago I imagined a saga of the frontiersmen and the great journey west, with wagons dotting the Great Plains. But then I knew little if anything of Willa Cather. After reading her next novel, Song of the Lark, I arrived at O Pioneers! knowing I was in for a celebration of the often-overlooked heroes of the American frontier, the women tilled the land. But O Pioneers! is more than a tale of the Pioneer Mother, it celebrates the independent woman, her free-spirit, courage and determination and her connection with the earth. In the novel’s hero, Alexandra Bergson (the daughter of Swedish immigrants who takes over the family farm after the death of her father), one can trace the spiritual ancestor of later champions of the land like Rachel Carson and Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores. Her own father, on his deathbed, recognizes her above her three brothers, as the one to save the family farm. The old man was to be proven right. When the crop goes bad, foreclosure seems eminent. Alexandra’s two older brothers, Oscar and Lou, want to sell the place and move on, but Alexandra and her mother refuse to let go of the family dream and, despite resistance stand firm. They mortgage the farm to buy more of Nebraska’s rich pasture lands and within twenty years Alexandra Bergson is one of the richest landowners in Nebraska. The novel abounds with other struggles faced by women at the turn of the century, her brothers never giving her credit for her labors and later disown her for her relationship with Carl Linstrum, a man younger than her who has been at her side since they were both children. Readers, however, can see beyond this obtuseness. As much as Alexandra welcomes Carland admires his own free-spirit (his bohemian lifestyle has taken him up the Pacific coast for many years) she is approaching forty (one suspects her being single at her age is largely what is angering her brothers) and throughout her life her true love has been her family and the land. When she does finally agree to marry Carl it is without concern for her brothers disowning her. If she has had true companions it is her younger brother Emil and Marie Tovesky, who has followed the path Alexandra’s brothers wanted and married a man of ill-temper and disaffection. Marie stays with him out of obligation and neglects her true feelings, culminating in a tragedy. O Pioneers! is an ode to the women who braved the wilderness and built the homestead but continue to be unseen in the story of the American frontier. Willa Cather, herself a pioneer in many ways, gave them the memorial they deserved.