As he does, Jim wishes for Ántonia to also conform to a strict set of values. While he sees himself as a protector, he sees women as an object to be protected and seems to enjoy the typical vulnerability associated with women. Jim holds the idea that he can somehow mould Ántonia into his ideal woman – he seeks to make her “anything that a woman can be to a man”. However his plans are clearly based on his own ideas that contradict reality. Yet Ántonia refuses to oblige and infuriates Jim with her masculine ways when she works the farm. He also later feels bitterness towards Ántonia when she becomes pregnant and decides to raise her daughter alone.
With these two contrasting concepts of gender, Cather creates conflict which is only truly resolved at the end of the novel itself. The entire story concentrates on Jim’s rendering of the character of Ántonia, yet as it progresses, Ántonia exerts her own independence and breaks free of the myths imposed up on her by Jim. As a result, she emerges powerfully as herself. Yet by following the conventional male pattern of development, Jim somehow loses some of his own identity. There is no real mention of his life aside from his infatuation with Ántonia, not even when he marries and begins his own family.
Early on in the novel, Jim’s encounter with the monstrously sized snake serves as a moment of triumph to him, in which in an almost mythical way he returns to the pedestal as the hero, protecting Ántonia and ensuring that she returns to her proper place as a girl - to be both rescued and protected. Her pride at being able to work in the fields is something that both threatens and terrifies Jim, and so the episode with the snake helps to restrain Ántonia’s pride and restore the order.
Yet shortly reinstating Jim’s masculinity through the incident with the snake, Cather takes an about turn on her supposedly conventional stance regarding gender identity. Later on in the chapter, we find out that the snake, in spite of its size and grotesqueness, was in fact old and “without much fight in him” (34). Jim concedes that perhaps he was slightly lucky in his victory over the snake (34) and as such, his apparent heroism is undermined and he is once again on a par with Ántonia.
Later on in the novel, Cather again seeks to blur the lines between genders. When Jim spends the night at Wick Cutter’s house in place of Ántonia as a means of protecting her, the result is something akin to a bed-trick. It is made clear in the novel the type of actions that Wick is known to take on his hired girls, yet Jim is startled when he finds Cutter’s hands on him. However, after enduring a beating from Cutter, it is Jim’s reaction to the whole situation that is somewhat surprising. Instead of feeling anger and resentment towards Wick, for some reason he feels the need to express his resentment mainly at Ántonia:
I hated her almost as much as I hated Cutter. She had let me in for all this disgustingness. Grandmother kept saying how thankful we ought to be that I had been there instead of Ántonia. But I lay with my disfigured face to the wall and I felt no particular gratitude. (159)
While it is not made explicitly clear whether or not Jim was in fact raped by Cutter, the fact that he stands in for Ántonia, switching identities in order to play the role of the woman in this bed-trick, clearly makes Jim appear vulnerable. By initially hoping to protect Ántonia from forthcoming danger, Jim’s intended heroism is short lived and undercut by the defencelessness he feels as a result of the incident with Cutter. Much like the episode with the snake, Cather elevates the man (Jim) to a heroic-like status, only to send him crashing back down to reality - a reality where men are equally as vulnerable to the threats of danger as women are. The resultant effect of this is the blurring of lines between genders, a recurring theme throughout the novel.
Even the narrative role of Jim begins to change as the idea of male gallantry becomes more subdued. While for most of the novel Ántonia is presented from the point of view of Jim, in Book IV, “The Pioneer Woman’s Story”, Jim is shifted aside to the position of tale recorder, while the Widow Steavens provides a female perspective of Ántonia’s life experience. As such, the tone of the novel shifts, with the Widow providing a more understanding and perhaps sympathetic point of view towards the character of Ántonia – this contrasts with Jim’s account of Ántonia as well as his perseverance in trying to influence Ántonia to play her correct role.
To conclude, it is clear not only from Cather’s essays, but from her novel “My Ántonia”, that she had a great understanding of how culture assigns particular identities to genders within society. By creating a strong female character that refuses to conform to society’s rules regarding identity, Cather seeks to break down longstanding ideals.
From the start of the novel, Jim constantly seeks to impress his masculinity upon Ántonia, namely the instance with the snake and later the episode with Cutter. He sees himself as a mythical type hero, whose mission is to protect and envelop Ántonia, so that he might mould her into his ideal woman. While Jim plays the role of “subject”, Ántonia is seen to him as the “object”. But almost comically, Cather stops him in his stride and brings Jim and his masculine attitudes back to earth.
After killing the snake, he realises it was old and that he might have been fortunate in his triumph. In trying to protect Ántonia from Cutter, he ends up being ruthlessly beaten. His identity fades over the course of the novel as he follows the conventional male pattern of development. Contrastingly, Ántonia flourishes as she ignores the male influences on her and creates her own life and family, of which she forms the centre. Even the narrative structure changes to reflect the idea that Jim is fading from Ántonia’s life – he is unable to force his ideals upon her.
Bibliography
Blanche H. Gelfant, “The forgotten Reaping Hook: Sex in My Ántonia” (1971): 60-82
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia: Virago Modern Classics, 1988
Lucenti M. Lisa, “Willa Cather's My Antonia: Haunting the Houses of Memory”, Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 193-213
Rosowski J. Susan “The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism”, 1986