Alexis' Book Blog

O Pioneers!

By Willa Cather

Book Review by Sandra Miller-Louden

Okay, right from the start I’m going to admit Willa Cather is one of my guiding literary (and yes, feminist) beacons.  I’m prejudiced and I know it. 

However, having stated that up front, O Pioneers!, Cather’s second novel—and to many Cather fans, her greatest (yes, even overtaking the famous My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop)!—is one you simply have to read.  But before you read it, you also must understand that besides the human characters in this novel, there is another character—more powerful, more pervasive and more personal than any breathing human being could ever be—this character being, simply, Nebraska.

The prairie.  The land.  The dream.

Or, as Willa Cather so eloquently puts it in O Pioneers!: “We come and go, but the land is always here.  And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it for a little while.”

In O Pioneers!, Nebraska is the land where Scandinavian John Bergson settles, John Bergson who “had the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable.”  John and his wife had four children, three boys and a girl.  And, as in most Willa Cather novels, it is the girl, Alexandra, who shines.  In fact, second only in importance to Nebraska, this novel is about Alexandra.  She’s smarter and more innovative than her two brothers, Oscar and Lou—and dotes on her younger brother, Emil, in whom she sees the future.

When her father John and his wife pass away, Alexandra is the progressive one.  She goes against convention, planting alfalfa (when the male farmers say it folly to do so) and refusing to sell the land for expediency’s sake, believing in its ability to yield and make a livelihood for the family and its future generations.  Alexandra, however, is not without her personal, female side.  She has feelings for Carl Linstrum, a childhood friend, who doesn’t quite fit in the farmer-mold and who is scorned by her brothers Oscar and Lou as a gold digger, only out for Alexandra’s fortune.

O Pioneers! covers many years, scooting ahead rapidly as its characters—including the land—mature and take on new dimensions.  We see the tight Scandinavian and Bohemian community so prevalent on the prairie in the latter part of the 19^th century.  (Keep in mind that this book was written in 1913 and takes place starting in 1883).  We see people surrounded by harsh, killing winters and lovely, but short summers who take pride in their land, their animals and their sense of community.  All this, again, is set against an intolerably cruel, unforgiving climate that seems often to take more than it gives.

That isn’t all we see.  O Pioneers! is a story that slowly builds to a shocking, tragic conclusion; yet ultimately to a happy (even if that “happy” is relative and perhaps fleeting) ending. 

This is definitely not your 21^st century novel.  Emotions are implied rather than graphically described in detail.  In fact, if you’re not good at reading between the lines, don’t even attempt this novel.  Its greatness and charm often spring from what is left unsaid rather than that which is explicitly stated. 

In various review blogs, there are two main criticisms of this novel.  One, amazingly, is its title.  Apparently the exclamation point (yes, that’s a part of the title) is likened to a Broadway musical, akin to Oklahoma!  Okay, I’ll give you that.  A bit overstated, perhaps, but segues into the second criticism.

For some readers, presumably Willa Cather’s feminism isn’t quite strident enough to be acceptable.  I reject this judgment.  Keep in mind this novel was written in 1913—as women, we still couldn’t vote in the United States.  Those who slam Cather’s ideas, do so from a 2010 perspective—97 years after the fact.  Judging past works by today’s standards shows a decided lack of perspective.  Conjure up the most liberal position in today’s political arena you can imagine—this then is how 1913 readers envisioned Cather’s prose during the Woodrow Wilson administration (just to continue pushing the time frame in which this was written!)

As to Willa Cather herself, she’s an amazing lady.  Her 1922 book, One of Ours, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Her 1927 book, Death Comes for the Archbishop, has been designated by Time Magazine as one of its picks for the 100 Best Books published in the English Language between 1923 and 2005.   In her time, she met and rubbed elbows with such greats as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sarah Orne Jewett (to whose memory she dedicates O Pioneers!), H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald,  Robert Frost and even an 18-year-old Truman Capote.  She received honorary degrees from such institutions as Yale.  An extensive website in her honor can be found at: www.willacather.org .

Put aside your 21^st century sensibilities and allow yourself to be transported back to a world no longer here, by an author in whose hands you are well served.  Allow yourself to be carried back in time to the time of O Pioneers! 

I promise you, you won’t be sorry.

Alexis