Lucy (and also responding in part to the somewhat similar comments from Amanda below), I did not read either Chris's reflections or Cather's novel as implying that being childless represents being doomed to live in the past. I think you and Amanda are absolutely right that in Lena and Tiny we get two different examples of women leading l…
Lucy (and also responding in part to the somewhat similar comments from Amanda below), I did not read either Chris's reflections or Cather's novel as implying that being childless represents being doomed to live in the past. I think you and Amanda are absolutely right that in Lena and Tiny we get two different examples of women leading lives that are very different from Antonia's but that Cather also portrays as impressive in their own ways. I don't think anything about the ending negates that, nor did I take Chris to be suggesting otherwise. (Though of course Antonia, not the others, is the titular heroine--perhaps for other reasons.) What I did take him to be suggesting, and what I would agree with, is that Antonia's impressive (!) fertility--which she herself does not at all appear to regard as a sad outcome in life--is symbolic of one her most important and engaging qualities, what I would describe as her fundamentally affirming attitude toward life. Despite the considerable challenges it has thrown at her, she remains cheerful, optimistic, even enthusiastic, taking each day as it comes and making modest but meaningful plans for the future. Surely this is one of the things about her that other people, and we readers, most respond to. I think one can recognize the symbolism of her many children for this--to my mind, the passages Chris points to are really pretty decisive on that point--without concluding that Cather does not also see other choices one could make, other ways of expressing that fundamentally affirmative attitude toward life. The point is not to rank the different lives against one another, but simply to recognize the "fit" between Antonia's character and this feature of her life; in other words, it isn't simply accidental that Cather has emphasized this about her.
Lucy (and also responding in part to the somewhat similar comments from Amanda below), I did not read either Chris's reflections or Cather's novel as implying that being childless represents being doomed to live in the past. I think you and Amanda are absolutely right that in Lena and Tiny we get two different examples of women leading lives that are very different from Antonia's but that Cather also portrays as impressive in their own ways. I don't think anything about the ending negates that, nor did I take Chris to be suggesting otherwise. (Though of course Antonia, not the others, is the titular heroine--perhaps for other reasons.) What I did take him to be suggesting, and what I would agree with, is that Antonia's impressive (!) fertility--which she herself does not at all appear to regard as a sad outcome in life--is symbolic of one her most important and engaging qualities, what I would describe as her fundamentally affirming attitude toward life. Despite the considerable challenges it has thrown at her, she remains cheerful, optimistic, even enthusiastic, taking each day as it comes and making modest but meaningful plans for the future. Surely this is one of the things about her that other people, and we readers, most respond to. I think one can recognize the symbolism of her many children for this--to my mind, the passages Chris points to are really pretty decisive on that point--without concluding that Cather does not also see other choices one could make, other ways of expressing that fundamentally affirmative attitude toward life. The point is not to rank the different lives against one another, but simply to recognize the "fit" between Antonia's character and this feature of her life; in other words, it isn't simply accidental that Cather has emphasized this about her.