Character Evolution Throughout O Pioneers!

Willa Cather’s novel O Pionners! is a novel which describes in detail what life was like for the original settlers of the American frontier. The land in that area was unable to hold crops and was barren almost all of the year round. The people who tirelessly worked the land, such as the novel’s main character Alexandra Bergson, were poor immigrants who struggled to stay alive during the harsh winters. Though O Pioneers! is more of a realist piece than a modernist one, Cather is able to illustrate throughout the novel the changes her main character, Alexandra, undergoes during her life on the frontier.

At the beginning of the novel, Alexandra is a small child who is very quiet and reserved. She helped her father work the fields and gave him hope when he began to believe the land would never produce crops. She was much more interested in working on her farmland than on flirting with boys or playing dress up, what would typically be considered the preoccupations of young girls. Near the beginning of the novel, a young boy compliments Alexandra on her lovely hair, and she quickly rejected his flattery: “She stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew in her lower lip...His feeble flirtatious instincts had been crushed before, but never so mercilessly” (Cather 6-7). Interestingly, Cather uses the word “Amazonian” to describe the young Alexandra, which clearly presents Alexandra to the readers as a parallel to the ancient Amazonian war woman, who were large, powerful women who went into battle without the help of men. Perhaps this reference to Amazonian women and battle is a foreshadow of the battles Alexandra will have to endure throughout her life--she must battle her brothers, the society she lives in, and of course she must battle the harsh and unforgiving land she lives on.

As a young girl, Alexandra is quiet, thoughtful, and hardworking. She seems to have no overwhelming emotions, being a level headed and pragmatic person. When he father is dying near the beginning of the novel, he asks his daughter to do her best for her brothers because once he dies the farm will be her responsibility. “I will do all I can, father” was her even reply to her father (Cather 20).

One of the first instances of Alexandra having strong feelings is when she is making a choice about purchasing property. She has to battle her brothers into agreeing to buy more land, and when she accomplishes her goal, she feels alive and inspired. “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” (Cather 54). The land, the one thing Alexandra full understands, is what eventually awakens her to her passions and feelings. Throughout the novel the land and work involving the land is what inspires her and moves her. She also evolves in her relationship to Carl Linstrum.

Carl lived on the land close to Alexandra’s family, and when the two were children they were good friends. They would take a wagon to Ivar’s house to get nets and learn about the wildlife. Alexandra clearly liked Carl, but was too shy and quiet to tell him. Eventually Carl moved from the country into the city with his family to try and make money, and when she hears the news, she shows very little emotion. “Alexandra’s hands dropped in her lap. Her eyes became dreamy and filled with tears” (Cather 38). She never cries, but she does tell Carl that she understands why he is leaving and tells him that she had always hoped he would “get away” from the countryside (Cather 39). 


Years later, when Alexandra and Carl have both grown up, and Alexandra is running a large and profitable farm, Carl returns to the countryside. “‘Can it be!’ she exclaimed with feeling; ‘can it be that it is Carl Linstrum? Why Carl, it is!’ She threw out both her hands and caught his across the gate” (Cather 79). As an older and wiser woman, Alexandra is more at ease being in touch with her feelings. She feels a lot of emotion when she sees Carl again, and has grown up enough to not be afraid to show it.

In addition to her emotions with Carl, Alexandra grew wiser about the land. Sixteen years from the beginning of the novel, Alexandra has developed a vast farming area, “where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length...The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there are scarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting (Cather 58). The land, as well as Alexandra, has grown and matured, yielding bountiful fruits.

Cather creates and expands the character of Alexandra in order to transcend the typical male and female gender roles utilized in most western, frontier literature. Alexandra’s development throughout both her life and the novel “shows that women could do something important besides giving themselves to men” (Quawas). She is a character that embodies all of the strong, positive attributes of male characters in more traditional novels. One of Cather’s main aims is to show the reader the trials of Alexandra’s life, how she reacts to them, and how these situations--situations that can only be faced and endured by a woman in this time period--shaped Alexandra into being the woman she is at the end of the novel. Cather successfully creates a strong female heroine that endures through time, a heroine who is not like the ancient male heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, but a heroine “who triumphs alone over intractable surroundings and adversity, shaping a world of order and coherence and achieving for herself identity, nobility, and even fame” (Quawas). These achievements are goals that any woman, or even man, can relate to desiring. The ability to relate to the very human struggles in O Pioneers! is what enables the novel to remain relevant across a wide range of cultures and contexts.

Works Cited:
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers!. New York: Signet Classic, 2004. Print.
Quawas, Rula. “Carving an Identity and Forging the Frontier: The Self-Reliant Female Hero in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: International Review of English Studies 41 (2005). Web. 15 April 2010.