“My Ántonia” by Willa Cather (post 3): Jim speaks to Ántonia, not as a man would speak to a woman, but as male host personality to female alternate personality.

In the following passage, Jim says he likes Ántonia so much that she would have made a wonderful person in her own right. But the fact is, she is a part of his own mind.

No man would say to a real woman that he’d be equally happy to have her as a sweetheart, wife, mother, or sister:

“Do you know, Ántonia…I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister—anything a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me” (Book IV, Part IV) (1, p. 312).

The title of this novel is not “Ántonia,” a person in her own right, but “My Ántonia,” Jim’s alternate personality, Ántonia.

Willa Cather’s signatures and pseudonyms (see past post) suggest that she had both female and male personalities.

1. Willa Cather. My Ántonia. Edited by Charles Mignon with Kari Ronning. Historical Essay and Explanatory Notes by James Woodress with Kari Ronning, Kathleen Danker & Emily Levine. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1994.