Land, Labor, and Capital in O Pioneers!,My Ántonia, and A Lost Lady: Willa Cather’s Ambivalence toward Nature and Economy

Although O Pioneers!, My Antonia, and A Lost Lady, the three Nebraskan novels of Willa Cather, have been widely celebrated as exemplary realizations of ecological ideals, their ecological dramas actually begin with individual human beings’ decision to invest their money and time to the landscape of nature for the purpose of earning not only use value but also surplus value. Building on this critical proposition, this essay explores the limitations and contradictions of Cather’s early Nebraskan novels as works of ecological idealism. It then proposes the intrinsic labor of Ántonia and its product, her homestead, as an alternative vision through which genuine interaction between humanity and the natural environment could be achieved. In contrast to such a vision, the contradictory coexistence of nature and capital, rather than the harmony between humanity and nature grounded in intrinsic labor, may be seen as sowing the seeds of emptiness and loss in the works of O Pioneers! and A Lost Lady. Against the neglect of labor and laborers in Cather’s early prairie novels, Ántonia stands out as the sole laboring figure capable of generating a vision that resists the capitalist appropriation of the Nebraskan prairie through the creative process of intrinsic labor. Her labor is no longer dictated solely by economic necessity; instead, it becomes an intrinsic and life-affirming expression of existence.