“Jim tried and kissed me tonight. He offered to walk me home so I didn’t think much of it, but when he did it it ain’t what I was expecting at all. I always knew he was fond of me, and I’m awful fond of him too, but not that way. Then he accused me of always treating him like a kid and that struck me — I mean, I guess I do still see him as that little kid out in the farm fields. He’s one of the few kids I can really talk to — talk to about missing my papa. In fact, I see an awful lot of my papa in Jim sometimes. And maybe that’s why I got so angry when he told me what he’d been doing with Lena Lingard. My papa was acting out like this and got my mama pregnant and look how that turned out. It’s like I told him — I don’t wanna see him mixed up with someone that’s only got trouble for him. He’s awful smart and I really am proud of him.. I think he just needs to get out of this town.”
One aspect of the novel that has interested me is Cather’s reversed gender roles, primarily in the case of Jim and Ántonia. Throughout the novel, Ántonia is described as strong both physically and in spirit, while the narrator Jim is characterized as more weak, indecisive, and passive. We see his passivity reflected in most aspects of his life, specifically in the way he spends his days during this part of the novel, and especially in sharing his feelings for Ántonia, which are ambiguous at best. Because Jim is so passive and doesn’t really seem to know what he wants with Ántonia or life itself, most of their interactions are undercut by the one-sided narration, and we know very little about how Ántonia feels for him at all. Picking up on some of Ántonia’s actions towards Jim, from her reaction to he and Lena’s relationship all they back to trying to give him her ring the first time they meet, I wanted to try and tell the story from what I imagine her perspective to be like. Because she is so much more decisive and assertive than Jim, I feel like she has made more sense of her feelings for him, or at least as much sense as you can at their age. Further, I am curious about the way in which Jim talks about Ántonia as a nostalgic force of his past, and something he once possessed (“MY Ántonia”) rather than a person whom he loves and respects. Oppositely, Ántonia’s fondness for Jim seems to be strictly based in respect, as she looks out for him and rejects him romantically. My goal with this post was to convey Ántonia’s decided affections for Jim, juxtaposed against his own feelings towards her that he laments over after they first kiss.
Interesting creative re-casting of this scene! I like how you work to address what you call the one-sided narration that sometimes undercuts, or is blind to, the thoughts and feelings of others. This same one-sidedness relates to what you call, later in the post, the reductive way in which “Jim treats Antonia as a nostalgic force of his past, and something he once possessed (“MY Ántonia”) rather than a person whom he loves and respects.” I’m curious whether we would all agree that Antonia suffers when reduced to a merely nostalgic force of Jim’s past. What happens, for example, when she breaks that script in which she sort of merges with the land and sky, becoming a representation of prairie / frontier experience. Her actions when she moves to town, and Jim’s reaction to them, are telling in this regard. What happens to “his” Antonia in town? And what does that say about the authenticity and depth of his affections?
As for your own re-casting of this scene, is Antonia, as well, reducing Jim to a nostalgic force of her own past? The lovely thing about both narrative approaches is that we can sort of discover the holes in them. Cather, that is, seems to create through Jim Burden a narrative fabric that is shot through with both insight and oversight.