In the light of these comments, which seem pretty spot-on, what is one to make of this odd sentence, when Jim first sees Antonia after twenty years, he sees “a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled.” It’s pretty incredible writing just as sound pattern, but there’s something harsh there, too. I’m not sure what to make of it.
In the light of these comments, which seem pretty spot-on, what is one to make of this odd sentence, when Jim first sees Antonia after twenty years, he sees “a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled.” It’s pretty incredible writing just as sound pattern, but there’s something harsh there, too. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I mentioned this in my comment to you above! Maybe I should read them all before I plunge in! I do think there is something a little complex going on below the surface here, of Jim navigating both exalted and kind of crudely sexual responses to the situation. If nothing else all these kids suggest, in pre-birth control times, a pretty robust sexual relationship between Cuzak and Àntonia.
Despite Cather’s resistance to urban Freudians I think she was very well aware of the power of the “scene” that Freud called primal, and yes, Jim is exposing himself to a risky situation. That’s why the violent details of book five might be read as manifestations of Jim’s unconscious if you’re ready to go there. I’d start with the “dead dog.” Cuzak’s Boys are mourning the death of a dog Jim knows nothing about and that is an ominous sign, perhaps. Also, the Cutters, in their final horror, might be incorporated into Jim’s psychic journey, as evidence that no return to a rural idyll is possible. The difficulty of communicating with the wonderful Leo (those close together eyes sensitive to the light, the fleecy neck) is further evidence of the difficulty he faces. But he’s a good sport against the odds…
This post prompts some related (I think) questions of my own. Yes, Book Five opens with a dead dog and its proper burial, and it ends--or some critics have felt confident in saying that it ends--at the burial site of Ántonia's father. How are the Cutters involved in this subterranean (or unconscious) current? I wondered before why Willa Cather named an evil character Wick Cutter, as though she wanted to suggest some connection between them. That dead rattlesnake (unburied!) in the form of a "W" adds another component to this rebus. Does Cather link herself, her dream life, say, to these violent aspects of the novel? Okay, count me crazy and put me back to bed. Or give me another espresso.
These are perhaps the sort of dreams that espresso drinkers are especially subject to! I'm on board, in any case, though I try to keep off caffeine after 3pm. Hadn't registered the resonance between W's and Cather and Cutter. There is the tradition of leaving one's own name in a literary work, as a sort of sphragis or seal. It's disturbing that Cather would have chosen Cutter as her seal, but it reminds one of her wild declaration as a teen that she wanted to learn amputate limbs. The Cutters are also involved in a domestic struggle that in some ways mirrors on a different, macabre level the intensity of Antonia's life-and-death engagement with her farm and family.
"She wrote in a friend's album that slicing toads was her hobby, doing fancy work a real misery, and amputating friends perfect happiness." (Woodress bio. 55)
There's a nightmare scene in Cather's "A Lost Lady" that I can hardly bear to think about. It involves a woodpecker, a taxidermy kit, and a sadistic guy called Ivy Peters, known as "Poison Ivy." Horrible. Cather's novels, it bears saying, do not gloss over life's horrors.
Dan, Chris, these are quite fascinating suggestions--I have to admit that nothing along these lines had occurred to me. But I wonder, is it too simplistic to suggest that the Cutters reappear primarily to supply us with some contrasts? Contrasting suicides, on the one hand, with Mr. Shimerda killing himself out of a kind of despair at being unable to provide adequately for his family and sustain the dignified life he remembered from the Old World, vs. Cutter committing suicide (and murder) out of spite. And also contrasting marriages: the Cutters' unhappy marriage vs. the very happy one between Antonia and Cuzak. (Though maybe that is too boring an explanation for round two of the Cutters, which is, I certainly agree, a surprising and unexpected insertion.)
This is all a very rich vein! The Cutters feel to me like something on a different register, something out of melodrama or burlesque, like "rude mechanicals" in Shakespeare. There is certainly a lot of ambivalence about marriage throughout and they perhaps offer an extreme of mutual annihilation. Jim and Àntonia are bonded by violence and there's a current, under the various renunciations of intimacy, that sex carries a deadly charge, and violence a sensual thrill. Mrs. Shimerda did kind of capture Mr. Shimerda with sex and put him on a path to his death. The heroes (Àntonia, Lena, grandmother, Mrs. Harling, the widow Seaver) seem to maintain a circle of health around themselves with their goodness and vitality: the "triple enclosure" of the orchard. "All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions." After Àntonia had children she did not want to kill anything. Does Jim think his attraction to Àntonia was dangerous to her, a snake in the garden?
In the light of these comments, which seem pretty spot-on, what is one to make of this odd sentence, when Jim first sees Antonia after twenty years, he sees “a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled.” It’s pretty incredible writing just as sound pattern, but there’s something harsh there, too. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I mentioned this in my comment to you above! Maybe I should read them all before I plunge in! I do think there is something a little complex going on below the surface here, of Jim navigating both exalted and kind of crudely sexual responses to the situation. If nothing else all these kids suggest, in pre-birth control times, a pretty robust sexual relationship between Cuzak and Àntonia.
Despite Cather’s resistance to urban Freudians I think she was very well aware of the power of the “scene” that Freud called primal, and yes, Jim is exposing himself to a risky situation. That’s why the violent details of book five might be read as manifestations of Jim’s unconscious if you’re ready to go there. I’d start with the “dead dog.” Cuzak’s Boys are mourning the death of a dog Jim knows nothing about and that is an ominous sign, perhaps. Also, the Cutters, in their final horror, might be incorporated into Jim’s psychic journey, as evidence that no return to a rural idyll is possible. The difficulty of communicating with the wonderful Leo (those close together eyes sensitive to the light, the fleecy neck) is further evidence of the difficulty he faces. But he’s a good sport against the odds…
This post prompts some related (I think) questions of my own. Yes, Book Five opens with a dead dog and its proper burial, and it ends--or some critics have felt confident in saying that it ends--at the burial site of Ántonia's father. How are the Cutters involved in this subterranean (or unconscious) current? I wondered before why Willa Cather named an evil character Wick Cutter, as though she wanted to suggest some connection between them. That dead rattlesnake (unburied!) in the form of a "W" adds another component to this rebus. Does Cather link herself, her dream life, say, to these violent aspects of the novel? Okay, count me crazy and put me back to bed. Or give me another espresso.
These are perhaps the sort of dreams that espresso drinkers are especially subject to! I'm on board, in any case, though I try to keep off caffeine after 3pm. Hadn't registered the resonance between W's and Cather and Cutter. There is the tradition of leaving one's own name in a literary work, as a sort of sphragis or seal. It's disturbing that Cather would have chosen Cutter as her seal, but it reminds one of her wild declaration as a teen that she wanted to learn amputate limbs. The Cutters are also involved in a domestic struggle that in some ways mirrors on a different, macabre level the intensity of Antonia's life-and-death engagement with her farm and family.
"She wrote in a friend's album that slicing toads was her hobby, doing fancy work a real misery, and amputating friends perfect happiness." (Woodress bio. 55)
sorry <limbs> not friends
There's a nightmare scene in Cather's "A Lost Lady" that I can hardly bear to think about. It involves a woodpecker, a taxidermy kit, and a sadistic guy called Ivy Peters, known as "Poison Ivy." Horrible. Cather's novels, it bears saying, do not gloss over life's horrors.
Sphragis! What a word!
Dan, Chris, these are quite fascinating suggestions--I have to admit that nothing along these lines had occurred to me. But I wonder, is it too simplistic to suggest that the Cutters reappear primarily to supply us with some contrasts? Contrasting suicides, on the one hand, with Mr. Shimerda killing himself out of a kind of despair at being unable to provide adequately for his family and sustain the dignified life he remembered from the Old World, vs. Cutter committing suicide (and murder) out of spite. And also contrasting marriages: the Cutters' unhappy marriage vs. the very happy one between Antonia and Cuzak. (Though maybe that is too boring an explanation for round two of the Cutters, which is, I certainly agree, a surprising and unexpected insertion.)
This is all a very rich vein! The Cutters feel to me like something on a different register, something out of melodrama or burlesque, like "rude mechanicals" in Shakespeare. There is certainly a lot of ambivalence about marriage throughout and they perhaps offer an extreme of mutual annihilation. Jim and Àntonia are bonded by violence and there's a current, under the various renunciations of intimacy, that sex carries a deadly charge, and violence a sensual thrill. Mrs. Shimerda did kind of capture Mr. Shimerda with sex and put him on a path to his death. The heroes (Àntonia, Lena, grandmother, Mrs. Harling, the widow Seaver) seem to maintain a circle of health around themselves with their goodness and vitality: the "triple enclosure" of the orchard. "All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions." After Àntonia had children she did not want to kill anything. Does Jim think his attraction to Àntonia was dangerous to her, a snake in the garden?