Gender Roles In Willa Cather's O Pioneers !
In O’Pioneers!, Willa Cather uses her writing in order to express her naturalistic, romantic, and realist views on life itself through the characters, setting, and the plot. In the book, it is suggested that neither she nor the main character who depicts her does not go by society’s rules. Along with this, she also seems to value the hard work both the youth and the elders put out. Cather perhaps believes that the youth of the world will create better futures for everyone around them, and give others new beginnings.
Expanding on this first view, the gender roles in the book become challenged by the main character, Alexandra Bergson, who manages her own land and money, and ended up making a fortune after her family struggled for the first few
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"How do you propose to pay off your mortgages?"” But when John Bergson finally passed away, he gave Alexandra, the oldest, charge. Alexandra promised that she would give her youngest brother, Emil, a chance to go to university so he would not “to be stuck to the dirt of the land.” And with the help of Old Ivar, the old man who gave her very helpful advice and later on in the novel even lived with her, she was able to work hard enough in order to gain more land and grow more cattle and crops. She succeeded in getting Emil to university, took her family out of poverty, and made her parents proud through the help of herself and her family’s hard work.
Including all of this, Willa Cather’s philosophy of the youth bringing new beginnings and better futures demonstrated in the book through the hard work and the rebellion against society along with the poem of which inspired her famous novel, O’Pioneers! In this poem, the lines, “...For we cannot tarry here, we must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend
Pioneers! O’Pioneers!
O you youthfuls, Western youths
So impatient, full of manly pride and friendship, plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the
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