They have come from Sweden to Nebraska and the land they cultivate has never been worked before. In O Pioneers! the Bergsons do not have money. Willa Cather’s own family had travelled from Virginia to Nebraska to build their lives there as farmers. O Pioneers! is set in Nebraska and celebrates the moment when the westward settlement of the North American interior reached the prairies. It was my choice in the Decades Project featuring fiction by women, this one for the decade 1910-1919. O Pioneers! is the second novel by Willa Cather and it draws on her experience of settling in the prairies of Nebraska. What sets this depiction of the American Dream apart from others is that the creator of this wealth is a woman – Alexandra Bergson. The novel promoted the idea that hard work and maintaining good order can produce abundant food from the ground and money in your pocket. Maybe the most surprising element to the novel is Alexandra’s reaction to Emil and Maria’s fate, and what it might tell us about the times in which Cather was writing.In 1913, a young woman from Nebraska published a novel that endorsed the American Dream. Alexandra’s youngest brother Emil, is her hope for the future – but tragically things don’t turn out as she expects when Emil finds himself drawn to Maria Shabata, a young married neighbour he knew briefly as a child. Along with the story of Alexandra’s management of her family’s lands, is woven two love stories, with very different outcomes. In this difficult country the Bergson’s battle to raise a family and farm the land. The wild untamed landscape of the American west is brought to life, in Cather’s vivid descriptions. This was a lovely novel to reacquaint myself with her work. It is many years since I read any Willa Cather, and all I can remember of the two novels I did read is that I enjoyed them. O Pioneers! is a powerful testimony to love, the land and the pioneering spirit. Overshadowed somewhat by the more popular My Antonia this early work of Cather’s is a much admired example of early 20th-century American fiction. Due to the death of her father she becomes the head of the household and spends her time between protecting her younger brother and out in the countryside that has become hers. On another level O Pioneers! is the story of Alexandra Bergson. The farmer taming the wild Northern States of America, battling with the elements and an unforgiving land to create a home, family and livelihood. In one respect Cather bears witness to the early 20th-century Pioneers. Willa Cather’s second novel is abundant with interwoven themes.
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