My Antonia

by

Willa Cather

Themes and Colors
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
Friendship Theme Icon
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
Innocence and Maturity Theme Icon
Gender Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Antonia, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender Theme Icon

In late 19th century America, gender roles were strictly defined. Men were meant to act as providers, and women were meant to marry and care for the family. During his childhood, Jim believes strongly in these roles and looks up to working men like Otto and his grandfather, Jake. He tries desperately to earn Ántonia's respect by following their examples. Ántonia, however, does not want to conform to the typical female role. On the prairie, after her father dies, she insists on working in the fields with the men. After Ántonia moves to town, Jim is surprised when she forms female friendships and discovers dancing, fancy clothing, and etiquette. He is even more surprised when she laughs off his romantic advances.

Only when Jim moves to Lincoln for college does he really begin to question traditional gender roles. He dates independent women like Lena and comes to respect Lena for her ambition. He begins to look back on Ántonia's love for the fields and flirtatious behavior in town not as conflicting, but as different aspects of her personality. Eventually, Ántonia finds a compromise of gender roles when she becomes a mother but continues working in the fields alongside her husband. Jim, who grows into a liberal-minded New Yorker, sees this lifestyle as perfectly suited to Ántonia.

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Gender Quotes in My Antonia

Below you will find the important quotes in My Antonia related to the theme of Gender.
Book 1, Chapter 7 Quotes
This was enough for Ántonia. She liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I had killed a big snake – I was now a big fellow.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 8 Quotes
Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 1 Quotes
I was bitterly disappointed in her [Ántonia]. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while Lena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda, Lena Lingard
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 3 Quotes
"After the winter begun she [Ántonia] wore a man's long overcoat and boots, and a man's felt hat with a wide brim."
Related Characters: The Widow Steavens (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Page Number: 216
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes
She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Related Symbols: The Prairie
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis: