O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

Willa Cather is one of those authors that never quite landed on my radar. I never had to read any of her work growing up, and I didn't know anything about her writing. I basically just knew her name and a few of her titles, and that was it. I happened to pick up O Pioneers! back when I was in high school, when I was buying up any classics I could get cheaply, but I never ended up actually reading it. That means that it's been sitting on my shelf for at least ten years (shameful, I know). I put it on my Classics Club list a few years ago, but that's all the interaction I've had with the book since I bought it. Lately, I've seen Cather's work recommended on a few of the classics blogs I follow, so I put O Pioneers! on my Back to the Classics List as my "Classic by a Female Author" selection. I decided to finally sit down and read it this month.

The story follows a young woman named Alexandra Bergson who lives on the Nebraska prairie with her parents and three brothers in the early 1900s. Trying to run a farm on the prairie is difficult, and everyone who has settled in the area is struggling to make ends meet. Many of the family's neighbors have given up on the land and moved elsewhere, but Alexandra's father is determined to try and hang on. At the beginning of the story, however, his health fails him and he passes away. He leaves the management of the farm to Alexandra, as she is better suited for the business end of things than her brothers.

In the next sections of the novel, time moves forward. The farm ends up flourishing under Alexandra's management, and she has become well-respected in the community. Her relationships with her brothers, friends, and neighbors form the rest of the story, with different characters taking turns as the focus of the narration. One of these characters is her youngest brother, Emil, whom Alexandra dearly loves and is supporting through school. He is grateful for her attention, but finds himself unhappy in life. He is in love with Marie, a neighbor, but she is already married to a pessimistic man with a violent temper named Frank Shabata. Marie feels the same way towards Emil, and they do a bit of sneaking around together, but Emil knows it is wrong and feels quite guilty about it.

Another character we follow is Carl Linstrum, a young man that grew up on a neighboring farm. His family moved away during the bad farming years, but he has always had feelings for Alexandra. He visits occasionally, but refuses to try and start a relationship with her until he has become more successful in life. Alexandra's other brothers, Lou and Oscar, catch onto his plans and aren't pleased with the idea of their sister marrying. They feel that would complicate how much of the farm they stand to inherit. Their feelings are deeply hurtful to Alexandra, and cause a rift in the family.

The interactions between all of these characters connect to form a miniature saga chronicling the successes and failures of the little Nebraska community. There's lots of drama involved in the tale, with several ups and downs along the way. It's a difficult one to summarize, as it follows many different story threads, but what ties everything together is the beautiful prairie and everyone's relationship to it. Some love the land and some hate it. It's effect on everyone is tremendous.

The novel is quite short at only 169 pages, and it's a relatively quick one to finish. Cather's writing is undeniably beautiful, and her loving descriptions of the land are a pleasure to read. I found myself wanting to run a farm in Nebraska once I was finished. I was reminded a little bit of John Steinbeck, and how his writing about California feels almost spiritual; it was very similar here. It is clear that Cather feels a strong connection to the prairie. It is essentially another character in the novel.

As I read, I found myself really enjoying Alexandra. She was a strong, tough woman, who was unafraid to take control of the farm. She succeeds through her own persistence and good sense and takes care of her brothers in the process. For the most part, the fact that she is taking on a traditionally male role isn't the main focus of the story. The community accepts her and recognizes her abilities, which was refreshing to read. A lot of times, if a classic novel features a character acting outside their traditional gender role, that's all any of the other characters talk about. Here, however, outside of a few rude comments thrown at her from her brother, Alexandra is allowed to just do her thing without it being a big conflict in the story. I appreciated seeing a competent woman who was allowed to be competent.

Things took a turn for me, however, at the end of the novel. The last section of the story, a mere fifteen pages, took a turn that I didn't understand. Alexandra, who up until this point had been a steady, logical type of character, interprets an event from the text in a way that completely baffled me. Her reaction didn't align with the image I had of the character and was disappointing, to say the least. It relied heavily on negative female stereotypes, which perhaps make sense for the time period, but did not make sense for a character who defied so many negative female stereotypes herself throughout the text. To give details about the specifics of this event would be too much of a spoiler, but it did drop down this book from a five star read to a three star for me. I truly enjoyed the vast majority of what I read, but the ending didn't not make sense to me and I was unable to connect with it.

That being said, I did like Cather's writing style and I'm still interested in giving some of her other novels a chance. It was just such a shame that I disliked the ending of this one as much as I did. O Pioneers! was on track to be a favorite until those last few pages. Regardless, I am happy that I got a chance to read something by a new-to-me author and I'm even happier to be able to cross some more books off my challenge lists.


Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics 2020 (Classic by a Female Author): 5/12
Classics Club (#75 on my list): 68/100 

Total Books Read in 2020: 18