My Antonia by Willa Cather: Great love story of American countryside

It was F. Sionil Jose, one of my country’s foremost novelists, who recommended to me My Antonia by Willa Cather. He said it was one of his ‘early influences’, along with Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Naturally my curiosity was aroused, but I couldn’t find a copy of the book. Not until one day when my sister told me she bought one from a BookSale outlet. She read it before I did, and she – who has read more classics that I have – told me that it’s one of the best books she has read. Wow! My expectations already high, I took to reading the novel. In a few days I was done, and now I can only repeat what they told me: it’s a beautiful, very beautiful masterpiece. Of a landscape so majestic and of a love so deep. I can almost see the endless ocean of countryside.

As for the love, its profundity lies in the fact that between Jim and Antonia it was never a love that is romantic. It was rooted on their nostalgic childhood spent in that small town in Nebraska. And that same love was powerful enough for Jim to add his possessive adjective to Antonia, hence the title ‘My Antonia’.

Any reader of the book shouldn’t miss the way Cather inserted her feminist ideas into the book. Antonia, who worked like a man for some time, can do what a man can do; it’s only that it won’t be proper for her to- in the eyes of society. Women are women; the difference between and women doesn’t necessarily lie in the latter’s abilities, but it’s more of an individual and collective choice.

Up to date Willa Cather’s book hasn’t been equaled, and I believe the critics when they say it’s one of the greatest love stories of all time. I think My Antonia is a far cry from the newer novels about rural US. However, she should not be seen as competing with the contemporary authors, for her books have already attained the level of ‘classic’.