to dig trenches, repair roads, and perform other labours in clearing or preparing the way for the main body.'3 Within Cather's novel, genuine homesteading pioneers are curiously absent. These people are initiators, originators, and forerunners preparing the way for 'civilization.' Etymologically the word is derived from foot soldiers who 'march with or in advance of an army or regiment, having spades, pickaxes, etc. The American 'pioneer' usually refers to those at the leading edge of American migrations whether frontiersman, forester, mountain man, miner, overland trail venturer, prospector, gold rusher, or homesteader. In doing so, each of these women appropriates traditional male roles and explores pioneering possibilities for women's lives. Each woman subverts traditional late nineteenth-century gender perceptions by eschewing the role of supporting a male regardless of the consequences.

Marie Shabata acknowledges that her marriage is not emotionally fulfilling, resists her husband's verbal and physical abuse, and seeks personal fulfillment outside marriage. Alexandra's movement in the novel is from an initial rejection of traditional women's roles to an exploration of how she can be a woman in a dominant position and a family woman simultaneously, while Marie's movement is from a farm woman who embodies contemporary ideals of women's roles to rejecting them because of their oppressiveness. As a woman farmer, Alexandra Bergson is a superior manager of her land, money, workers, and extended family. Both Alexandra Bergson and Marie Shabata overturn the presupposition that farm women are necessarily subordinate farmwives who support their husbands by working in the domestic sphere. These critics interpreted the novel in light of Walt Whitman's poem of the same name in Leaves of Grass, which celebrates the conquering American pioneer who 'civilizes' the land for production.1 More recent critics have contextualized it within her family history, agricultural history, domestic plots, American migration, and women leaving the home.2 However, if we consider O Pioneers! in relation to the gender role redefinitions of Cather's adult life, we discover a work that is not primarily about homesteading pioneers, but rather about two women who are pioneers in crossing socially constructed gender barriers. Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (1913) has traditionally been read within the twin contexts of Cather's pioneering childhood and her nostalgic reminiscences that glorify the lives of prairie settlers.

1913 willa cather novel