O Pioneers!

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman"

O Pioneers! is a love letter to Willa Cather's memories of her native Nebraska homestead and the immigrant Swedes, Bohemians, and French who settled on that vast and blustery land of mystique and melancholy during the 1880s. True to Cather's nature, she christens the novel with an independent and iron-willed heroine by the name of Alexandra Bergson, who after her father's death takes over the family farm, this much to the chagrin and jealousy of her disagreeable older brothers. For approximately 30 years we follow Alexandra and other occupants of the Divide, all of whom are hoping not to 'blow away' on this wild and unpredictable land they call home.

What drives this tale is Cather's picturesque prose. She is by far one of America's greatest minimal wordsmiths. She doesn't need to bleed purple to capture a feeling. Even at its barest, her prose snaps crisp and clean, getting right to the root of emotion. As this is her second book, written in 1913, Cather is still maturing into her style. She doesn't quite handle character development well as she has moments where she tells more than shows, and the characters aren’t as vividly explored as one would want. Timelines are also often skipped because we hear of Alexandra making a success of her farm by sheer gumption and keen, almost scientific planning, but we don't get to experience the toil or the complications she ran into as we're just simply told of it all. It was rare for women in Alexandra's era to accomplish a task of this caliber, and it would've made for great reading and a deeper sense of Alexandra’s character if this wasn't so lightly glossed over.

Still the word magic Cather casts make up for the lightweight action. As stated, Cather's prose is just so damn exquisite and it touches all the senses in the simplest of ways. It leads you by the hand through the yellow fields, points skyward to admire the purple and reds of dusk, turns your attention to the elegance of a duck in motion --- an intimate guided tour it is.

"She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring." 

In such passages as this, I was reminded of one of my favorite epiphanies from Alice Walker's The Color Purple. It’s when Shug tells Celie: "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." Spiritually speaking, it's about embracing in God's gifts, admiring and loving the land, and replicating the love in the care and keeping of it. You don’t have to be a holy roller or a tree hugger to understand why Cather has chosen to be so conscious about the landscape in this sense. The way she rhapsodizes is enough to understand us humans have a kinship to the land we tread upon, it's not just there for background, it's there to be admired and nurtured. I admit to not being much of an outdoors person and I find myself artificially admiring nature by way of reblogging and pinning florals and landscape photos instead of engaging in the actual alchemy of nature. Admiring scenic beauty is something we as a modern culture do less and less in the digital world, and O Pioneers! represents a time where the land was thought of as the greatest cinematic feature to witness. This is why O Pioneers! has a weighted importance about it, Cather puts you in a 'place' and she doesn’t ask much of you to see it from her perspective, she just wants you to see it for the chameleonic main character that it is, and how it dictates how her characters' react and unite within it, how they flourish and fail because of it.

"The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still." 

Alexandra is probably the one character (aside from Ivar) who is so united to the land, that it makes it difficult for her to embrace humans. It's why Alexandra has such a back-and-forth courtship with Carl and why their union at the end on the surface seems little more out of convenience than what is truly wanted especially from Alexandra's end. Carl will often play second to the land in Alexandra's eyes. He knows this, but he figures that it’s better to have human contact than none at all. You could call him weak or a pushover, but I didn’t find him so. Man vs. nature is such an intense battle that Carl seeing it from Alexandra's eyes will make him embrace it with more understanding. As for Alexandra, her union with Carl is not so much expectant, but it's of her winning against conventionality, cause even though she gives into marriage she does it on her terms with individuality intact. Still it's obvious that Alexandra is the stronger character, but maybe Carl's tenderness might caress her clenched fist to where she can open herself up to those of flesh and blood.

As important as this book is to the classic literary cannon and to future travelogue writing, the ending was such a big disappointment for me that it (sadly) brought down my rating to three stars. Up to this point I considered this book a little masterpiece that even with its imperfections still evoked a warm, colorful portrait of frontier life. I was actually enjoying it a bit more than Cather's ultimate frontier tome, the classic, My Antonia --- which was a shocker --- but that's where this book had me…till it lost me.

The realism of Emil and Marie being murdered maliciously by Marie’s jealous hot-headed husband, Frank was an unsettling moment, a moment that Cather explains with such calming astute that it was almost...well, lovely? She makes you care for Emil and Marie in their small flirtations that it is gut-wrenching when their lives are cut short. Yet, Alexandra's assessment of the tragic incident bothered me. Almost immediately after meeting with Frank in prison she becomes a murder apologist, blaming the victims for their affair and pretty much eluding that their illicit love drove poor Frank to kill. Alexandra especially clutched her pearls as she dished strong opinions about Marie, blaming her free spirited nature for attracting men to her (oh, the wanton slut!) and going so far as to blame her beauty and vivaciousness for Frank's unhinged reaction. Cringe. Cringe. Cringe. It's known that Cather had conservative leanings throughout her lifetime, and of course O Pioneers! was published in the early 20th century before women even began bobbing their hair and hiking up their skirts to show off ~naked~ ankles, and yes, I come from a time where adultery gets a shoulder shrug and allows you to remain president these days,  but I thought this shift in dialogue was just plain obnoxious, and quite sexist. So a woman deserves to be murdered violently just because a man's ego is that fragile? C'mon, Willa.

Such an unsatisfying and self-righteous ending caved this beautiful, meditative story for me, but it won't stop me from seeking out more of Cather’s works. I've got The Song Of The Lark up next to complete 'The Prairie Trilogy' and hope I won’t find myself disappointed with that one as well when I decide to dig into it. Fingers are crossed.

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from the margins

• Rating: ***
• 176 Pages
• Published in 1913

This review was previously published on July 5, 2016. It was edited for format, spelling, and syntax errors --- because I'm a perfectionist like that.