O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

The title comes with an exclamation point, like a musical. And it’s more than the punctuation that made me think of “OKLAHOMA!” Maybe you could call this story of European immigrant farmers at the turn of the last century “NEBRASKA!”, where it takes place. I thought also of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of Little House books, which begins, like this story, with houses made of sod and farmers determined to prove they can be more stubborn in their work than the prairie can be in resisting it.

The novel is in five titled sections, each several chapters in length, but the whole novel is less than two hundred pages in the Everyman’s Library edition I read with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. This is the first Cather I have read. I remember as a boy trying to read Death Comes for the Archbishop, my parents had a copy and the title intrigued me, but the book didn’t. I never finished it. That’s a later book of Cather’s. This is her second novel, published in 1913 following a successful first novel Alexander’s Bridge from 1912. A collection of short stories, The Troll Garden, had come out in 1905.

The story is based on memories of Cather’s own childhood. She was born in Virginia in 1873, then moved with her family at the age of ten to Nebraska. Later she attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

The central character in O Pioneers! is Alexandra (She likes that name, apparently. Coincidentally, I just read a memoir by Alexandra Billings). She is introduced as a young woman, about twenty, in town for the day on some errands, and bringing along her youngest brother, Emil, about age five. There are two other brothers at home, younger that Alexandra but near to her age. Her father is dying as the story begins. He had been a ship-builder in Sweden, before coming to Nebraska with his young family to try farming. The wife keeps the old ways and adapts as best she can. The farming is hard. Life is hard.

Two other characters are introduced in these opening pages. There’s a helpful boy, Carl Linstrum, a few years younger than Alexandra but a friend to her. He’s introduced rescuing Emil’s kitten who had climbed up a telegraph pole and wouldn’t come down. And there’s a girl, a few year’s older than Emil, named Marie, who gives Emil some candy. The two pairs: Alexandra and Carl, and Emil and Marie, create the backbone of the novel.

Alexandra is bold, practical, and intelligent. Following her father’s dying instructions, she is charged with running the farm rather than either of her brothers. They are described as dull, conservative, and bigoted. The land is against them at first, in the first part titled, “The Wild Land”. A few dry years bring ruin to many of the farmers. Carl Linstrum’s family gives up and Carl moves away to Chicago to take a job as an engraver. Alexandra, though, gambles that the weather will turn and the land will produce. She borrows to buy the neighboring farms at a discount as others are eager to sell.

In the second part, titled, “Neighboring Fields” it’s sixteen years later, making Alexandra in her middle thirties and Emil around twenty. There’s a reference to the year ’96, here (p. 74) so the novel must open around 1880. Alexandra’s daring has paid off. Cather has her describe the change in the land as having come suddenly. “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” (pp. 76-77).

The description of the farmland is beautiful, as is much of Cather’s writing. Listen to the romantic music of this long sentence: “There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness” (p. 53).

Carl has come back from Chicago, dis-satisfied and not a success. Alexandra’s brothers fear that he’ll marry Alexandra in order to take control of the family’s wealth. She cares for him, obviously, and claims the right to make her own decision. But Carl feels unworthy of her. He plans to go on to Alaska and try prospecting.

Meanwhile, Emil has come back from University in Lincoln. He’s attracted to Marie and she to him, but she’s married a man named Frank while he was away. Frank had been a stylish, playful figure when they were courting but turned jealous and sullen after they married. Marie bears up with good spirit but is no longer in love with her husband. Emil decides to move on, like Carl. He goes to Mexico City and writes letters addressed to Alexandra but meant for Marie.

The short, third part, “Winter Memories” tells of Alexandra’s and Marie’s growing friendship during the year Emil is in Mexico. The women delight in each other.

Tragedy comes in “The White Mulberry Tree” the fourth part. Emil returns from Mexico. His affection for Marie has only grown stronger, but there is no hope for them. Divorce is never mentioned; Marie’s Catholic faith often is. They realize they must part for good. But on the eve of the day he must leave, Emil comes to Marie’s farmhouse to say goodbye. He finds Marie in the orchard. Frank is in town drinking. When Frank comes home that night he finds Emil’s horse in the yard and the house dark. He picks up his gun and walks out to the orchard. In the darkness he sees two figures lying among the trees and shoots three times. Then hearing the moans of the wounded, and horrified at what he’s done, he runs away. Emil is killed instantly. Marie lives longer but dies with her head resting on Emil’s chest.

The final part is titled, “Alexandra.” It’s a few months after the murder. Frank has turned himself in and “pleaded guilty of killing without malice and without premeditation” (p. 173). He is sentenced to ten years. Alexandra goes up to visit him in the prison in Lincoln. She forgives him, which is kind, but she goes on to assign more blame to the lovers than to him, which is greater absolution than he deserves. Back at her hotel, there’s a telegram waiting for her. It’s from Carl Linstrum who had read a story about the murder in a western newspaper, felt he needed to be with Alexandra and that he could arrive as fast as a letter could. He’s waiting for her back at the farm.

In the final chapter, Carl and Alexandra reunite and plot their future. Carl will spend the winter in Nebraska. He’s making some success in prospecting and has a trusted partner taking care of business for him. In the spring, he will take Alexandra to see Alaska. She’s willing to go because seeing the sea again will remind her of her childhood in Sweden when her father was a shipbuilder. But she makes Carl promise not to ask her to stay away for good. He answers, “Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about this country as well as you do yourself.” She responds, elegiacally, “We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it–for a little while” (p. 187).

The immigrant mix is an interesting backdrop to the novel. Alexandra’s family and Carl are Swedish. Marie and Frank are Bohemian. There are also Norwegians, Germans, French families, and an Irishman. Indians are mentioned but never appear. Emil goes to Mexico, but there are no Mexicans in Nebraska. Marie’s Catholic faith and the Catholic church are prominent in the novel. She attends the French church. “The French and Bohemian boys were spirited and jolly, liked variety, and were as much predisposed to favor anything new as the Scandinavian boys were to reject it. The Norwegian and Swedish lads were much more self-centered, apt to be egotistical and jealous” (p.133). But the immigrants mix freely. Emil’s best friend is Amedee, a Frenchman, and Carl is attracted to Marie, while Marie’s Bohemian husband, Frank, has a reserved character that makes him more like the Scandinavians. It’s nice to be reminded of America’s European immigrant past, and refreshing that the different groups are portrayed as curious and respectful of each other, not clannish.

I read the book because my husband was looking for something he could assign his eighth grade American history students to read. It’s the right length and an interesting part of our national story, but I think young folks would be bored. I can see why I didn’t finish Death Comes for the Archbishop at that age. Until the dramatic murder in the orchard the novel is quiet. The dual romances are hinted at, but not passionate and neither Alexandra nor Marie spend any time pining over a partner they can’t have, so their situation creates little drama. Most of the incidents are small observations of small country lives: planting, sewing, baking, a church fair. I was surprised at the beauty of Cather’s writing, which was lovely. It’s a novel to be appreciated by adults who admire such things.