Willa Cather’s O’ Pioneers contains many of the elements that make it a good example of pastoral literature. In the novel Cather depicts a historically accurate account of life in the rural country of the American frontier around the turn of the twentieth century. Terry Gifford, an author of many pieces of pastoral literature himself, says their needs too be three major themes to any pastoral writing. I believe that all of these are present, at least in part, within O’ Pioneers. The first is the writing should emphasize the historical perspective of the pastoral, meaning the author must recognize and discuss life in the country and more specifically the life of a shepherd. This is very similar to Greg Garrard’s classic pastoral in which he also speaks about the life of a shepherd. This is one of the bigger discontinuities between O’ Pioneers and pastoral literature. Alexandra and her brothers are farmers rather than shepherds and are much more concerned with the land and growing on the land. This first criteria is best put simply by author Leo Marx with his quote “No shepherd, no pastoral.”
The second consideration that goes into pastoral writing is that the descriptions of the rural country and of nature should be shown in contrast to cities and urban environments. In the early descriptions of the town Cather shows that rather than being a durable urban center, like a city, Hanover was just a small town trying to hang on within the nature that surrounds it. Its shown in quotes like “the little town __ was trying not to be blown away” and “none of them had any appearance of permanence.” The third consideration is in pastoral righting’s there is often a negative or looking down upon the country. I feel like this is similar to Garrard’s Romantic pastoral in which the differences between country and city are highlighted, and how they affect the creative human mind when in each. The first portion of this book exemplifies this third consideration well as it describes all of the hardships of the country and may suggest city life would be easier if anything else.
Works Cited
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. Print.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.
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