UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff NNeebbrraasskkaa -- LLiinnccoollnn DDiiggiittaallCCoommmmoonnss@@UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff NNeebbrraasskkaa -- LLiinnccoollnn Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 2002 ""SShhee HHaadd NNeevveerr HHuummbblleedd HHeerrsseellff"" AAlleexxaannddrraa BBeerrggssoonn AAnndd MMaarriiee SShhaabbaattaa AAss TThhee ""RReeaall"" PPiioonneeeerrss OOff OO PPiioonneeeerrss!!,,//ii>> Douglas W. Werden West Texas A & M University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Werden, Douglas W., ""She Had Never Humbled Herself" Alexandra Bergson And Marie Shabata As The "Real" Pioneers Of O Pioneers!,/i>" (2002). Great Plains Quarterly. 2324. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2324 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. "SHE HAD NEVER HUMBLED HERSELF" ALEXANDRA BERGSON AND MARIE SHABATA AS THE "REAL" PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! DOUGLAS W. WERDEN Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers! (1913) has tradi domestic plots, American migration, and tionally been read within the twin contexts women leaving the home. 2 However, if we con of Cather's pioneering childhood and her sider 0 Pioneers! in relation to the gender role nostalgic reminiscences that glorify the lives redefinitions of Cather's adult life, we discover of prairie settlers. These critics interpreted a work that is not primarily about homestead the novel in light of Walt Whitman's poem of ing pioneers, but rather about two women who the same name in Leaves of Grass, which cel are pioneers in crossing socially constructed ebrates the conquering American pioneer gender barriers. Both Alexandra Bergson and who "civilizes" the land for production.! Marie Shabata overturn the presupposition More recent critics have contextualized it that farm women are necessarily subordinate within her family history, agricultural history, farmwives who support their husbands by working in the domestic sphere. As a woman farmer, Alexandra Bergson is a superior man ager of her land, money, workers, and ex tended family. Alexandra's movement in the novel is from an initial rejection of traditional KEY WORDS: Willa Cather, new woman, 0 Pioneers!, women's roles to an exploration of how she pioneer, spousal abuse, woman farmer ca~ be a woman in a dominant position and a family woman simultaneously, while Marie's movement is from a farm woman who em Douglas W. Werden is assistant professor of English at bodies contemporary ideals of women's roles West Texas A & M University. He researches literature and rural life and has written on such authors as Hamlin to rejecting them because of their oppres Garland, 20ra Neale Hurston, Linda Hasselstrom, siveness. Marie Shabata acknowledges that and Judy Blunt. Currently he is preparing a book on her marriage is not emotionally fulfilling, re the narratives of women homesteaders. sists her husband's verbal and physical abuse, and seeks personal fulfillment outside mar [GPQ 22 (Summer 2002): 199-215] riage. Each woman subverts traditional late- 199 200 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2002 nineteenth-century gender perceptions by es In the novel Cather uses the term "pio chewing the role of supporting a male regard neer" only twice, and both times it applies to less of the consequences. In doing so, each of the aging generation that is virtually elided these women appropriates traditional male from the text. When Emil cuts grass in the roles and explores pioneering possibilities for Norwegian graveyard, he is "not thinking women's lives. about the tired pioneers over whom his blade glittered" (40). Many of the "pioneers" are THE PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! dead and, at twenty-one, Emil has only shad owy memories of pioneering life, which is The American "pioneer" usually refers to "among the dim things of childhood and has those at the leading edge of American migra been forgotten in the brighter pattern life tions whether frontiersman, forester, moun weaves today" (40). The sea of native prairie tain man, miner, overland trail venturer, grasses has disappeared, replaced by "a vast prospector, gold rusher, or homesteader. These checkerboard, marked off in squares of wheat people are initiators, originators, and forerun and corn; light and dark, dark and light" (39). ners preparing the way for "civilization." Ety Telephone wires, painted farmhouses, weather mologically the word is derived from foot vanes, steel windmills, and red barns are all soldiers who "march with or in advance of an markers of "industrial agriculture."7 The farm army or regiment, having spades, pickaxes, etc. ers have transformed the region so radically to dig trenches, repair roads, and perform other that John Bergson would not have recognized labours in clearing or preparing the way for the country if he could have risen from his the main body."3 Within Cather's novel, genu grave. The second time Cather uses the term ine homesteading pioneers are curiously ab "pioneer" she reinforces the idea that pioneers sent. are gone. The narrator comments that "A pio Homesteading is finished on the Divide, neer should have imagination, should be able except for the "the rough \;ountry across the to enjoy the idea of things more than the county line" near Old Ivar's homestead (18).4 things themselves" (25). Such adventuresome The Bergsons were pioneers of this region who spirit is present in Alexandra, Emil, and staked and "proved up on claims," but when Marie but is certainly absent in Lou and Os the novel opens they have accumulated the car who are conventional, unenterprising wealth of a debt-free section of land (640 maintainers of the status quo. Cather's title is acres). This is a significant acreage consider clearly not referring to historical settlers of ing that the government census of 1890 the plains. Instead, she invites us to recognize claimed the average Nebraskan farm was only that Alexandra Bergson and Marie Shabata 190.1 acres.s The novel begins with the death are pioneers of a new womanhood in opposi of the family's founding pioneer, and most of tion to more conventional early-twentieth the novel transpires twenty-seven years after century representations of women. Alexandra the Bergsons initially homesteaded their land. and Marie both seek freedom from society's Mrs. Bergson compares droughts from early constricting, prescriptive definition of a pioneer days to the current water shortage and woman's traditional role, especially that of a describes their predicament as less arduous farm woman who supports and serves a male. than those the family faced when they first In striving for personal and economic au arrived (31). The novel's main characters are tonomy, Alexandra and Marie each redefine second-generation settlers who do not create a nineteenth-century American farm woman's houses out of the wilderness, but like farmers role. in American agrarian novels they steadily Cather was not the first to link the "pio work to improve the land, the crops, the ani neer" concept and the women's movement. mals, and their fortune.6 In the popular literary magazine Punch8 (10 THE "REAL" PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! 201 November 1894), an unknown author adapted grants women's suffrage. To emphasize their Walt Whitman's poem "0 Pioneers" as a mo pioneer feminist roles, the matriarch of these tivational exhortation to the "Pioneers Club" women has on her parlor wall a picture of whose membership consisted of "strenuous lady Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in the nine champions, all extremely up to date" (1. 7): teenth-century women's movement. "artists, actresses, singers, writers, journalists, We also find evidence of Cather's political speakers, and temperance workers" (11. 21-23 ).9 awareness of gender-role "pioneering" in My The poem celebrates the spirit of Whitman's Antonia (1918): Book 4 is entitled "The Pio pioneers and applies it to women, exhorting neer Woman's [singular] Story," but none of them to fight for freedom from constricting its four chapters is about traditional pioneer Victorian gender roles and for personal au women. A "pioneer" woman does tell a story tonomy. Their weapons are not Whitman's in book 3, but an interpretation that covers pistol and ax, but the "eyeglass" (education) all four books would be to understand the title and the "cycle" (physical strength): 10 as also referring to woman pioneering gender roles. Cather treats three daughters of immi We primeval fetters loosing, grant farming pioneers who work in town to We our husbands taming, vexing we and support their families; Tiny, Lina, and Antonia worrying Mrs. GRUNDY, are turn-of-the-century "working girls." The We our own lives freely living, we as first chapter describes the success of Tiny bachelor-girls residing, Soderball, who started a boardinghouse in Pioneers! 0 Pioneers! Seattle and later joined the Alaskan gold rush. She became one of the founders of Dawson The author recognized the fighting, goal-ori City, where she started a hotel, was deeded a ented, unflagging spirit of Whitman's poem as claim, sold the hotel, worked her claim, specu the same spirit needed for the battle against lated in land, and returned to San Francisco the fetters of patriarchy. This is especially with a fortune. The second chapter is about apparent at the conclusion, where the anony Lena Lingard, who moved to San Francisco mous author wryly notes that most of and developed a fine dressmaking business into Whitman's poem needs little adaptation to a comfortable living. Antonia is the final "pio apply to the women's movement (see Appen neer woman" represented in book 4. Cather's dix). It is not possible to know if Cather was narrator praises her decision to bear and raise familiar with this poem, but she understood her child without shame. Instead of marrying that the women's movement saw its struggle and keeping house, she plows fields, herds for freedom as a pioneering activity. The cattle, and works uncomplainingly on the October 1909 issue of McClure's published farm even on the day she silently delivers her while Cather worked there as an editor, sug daughter alone in a room behind the stove. By gests that she was familiar with the use of "pio grouping these diverse herstories under the sin neer" in relation to the women's movement. gular heading "The Pioneer Woman's Story," It contains a short story by Helen Green en Cather invites the reader to see commonality titled "Pioneer Goes Suffragette."ll The term among the narratives, to understand their sto pioneer in the title refers to the town of Pio ries as those of pioneer women. Each woman neer, Idaho, where the story is set, but more rejects society's traditional roles for women: importantly it applies to women living beyond Tiny and Lina are business entrepreneurs; traditional women's roles, including a mother Antonia is a single mother, farm laborer, and who settled on a plains ranch, a daughter from farm manager. None of these women depends a mountain gold-mining camp, and women upon a man for economic support; rather, they from a traveling burlesque show. These women all rely upon a supportive female community. are the first female voters in Pioneer after Idaho Cather used the term "pioneers" to include 202 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2002 independent women in My Antonia in 1918 The government censuses report that be and made the same rhetorical connection five tween 1875 and 1900 approximately 250,000 years earlier in 0 Pioneers! women operated their own farms.14 The 1900 census counted just over 300,000 women as ALEXANDRA BERGSON AS A GENDER farm owner-operators, tenants, or "foremen." ROLE "PIONEER" By 1920 the number had dropped to just over 265,000, yet "farmer" was still the sixth larg The novel's initial conflict is Alexandra's est money-making occupation for American struggle to establish herself as an independent women. IS The census defined "women farm woman farmer. The traditional role of Ameri ers" as women who own, co-own, manage, or can women on the farm is as "farm women" co-manage a farm. This excludes not just that is, women living on a farm but not farmwives but paid or unpaid women farm la involved in farming activities, except when borers who toil on the "home farm" or "work they are needed. Typically, "farm woman" and out."16 The census's distinction shows that "farmw ife" are synonymous terms, revealing a landownership, level of authority, and deci prevailing assumption that a farm woman is a sion-making-not tasks performed-distin domestic appendage to the male farmer. The guish a woman farmer. terms suggest an inherent subordination that From the start, Alexandra occupies a tradi places the farmer at the defining center of the tional male position of responsibility and woman's life. Deborah Fink claims, "that power. Before her father's death, Alexandra women would enter farming as appendages or functions as the head of the family, assigning wives of farmer husbands was taken for granted her brothers' daily work, exemplified when that no explicit discussion of the fact was nec she sends Lou and Oscar to the river to cut essary."12 Government and private farm publi wood. The dying Mr. Bergson makes her po cations actively exalted the position of sition official, though normally the seven farmwife in order to encoumge women to seek teen-year-old Lou or the nineteen-year-old and accept a role that called for long arduous Oscar would inherit the responsibility for the hours of physical labor to support a man. In family's welfare since it was often given to an analysis of a 1937 publication the Nebraska sons as young as five or six. Mr. Bergson de Farmer, Deborah Fink notes how this influen viates from tradition by bestowing the respon tial magazine constantly encouraged women sibility for the family's welfare on a woman to get married: because of her "resourcefulness," "good judg ment," and "strength of will" (12-13). Know No mention was made of the possibility ing the controversial nature of his decision, that an educated woman who could sup he makes his sons promise on his deathbed to port herself might choose not to marry .... be guided by Alexandra's management, but If farms needed married women, then in doing so he also lays the foundation for a women must understand the importance of sibling rivalry exacerbated by the tension be marriage. They must not tarry in indeci tween Alexandra's managerial skills and new sion but marry when they could.!} ideas and her brother's physical labor that implements her ideas. However, Alexandra appropriates the position The novel's brewing gender conflict reaches of "farmer." The occupation of "farmer" and its climax when Lou and Oscar attempt to the term "farmer" are both traditionally un deny Alexandra's managerial role and claim derstood as applying only to males, like scien to be the family's "real" farmers. In a devious tist or mechanic, yet women farmers have bit of revisionist history, Lou argues that he always existed. and Oscar were always in control of the farm THE "REAL" PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! 203 operation and allowed Alexandra to adminis potential marriage partner because they feel ter it just to humor her: he is too young for her and only after Alexandra's money. Lou and Oscar are afraid This is what comes of letting a woman that they and their children will permanently meddle in business ....W e ought to have lose claim to Alexandra's money and farms, taken things into our own hands years ago. especially the "Bergson homestead." Invok But she liked to run things, and we hu ing patriarchal familial claims, Oscar repeats, mored her. ... Oh, now, Alexandra, you "The property of a family belongs to the men always took it pretty easy. Of course we of the family because they are held respon wanted you to. You liked to manage round, sible, and because they do the work" (85). and we always humored you .... But, of This view that Alexandra's property is at their course, the real work always fell on us. disposal is more insidious than their attempt Good advice is all right, but it don't get to denigrate her labor because it attacks the the weeds out of the corn. (85) foundation of her freedom-her economic autonomy. Alexandra recognizes her broth Alexandra points out how crucial her deci ers' attempt to control her personal relation sions were for the farm's success and reminds ships, devalue her work, and control her Lou of the many major managerial blunders economic base (her land). She refuses to tol that she averted. To this, Lou mumbles, "That's erate it: "All that does n't (sic) concern any the woman of it; if she tells you to put in a body but Carl and me. Go to town and ask crop, she thinks she's put it in" (86). The men your lawyers ... the authority you can exert by of the family patronize her, arguing that physi law is the only influence you will ever have cal exertion is essential to all farm labor and over me again" (86). She terminates her rela denigrating Alexandra's mental work. More tionship with her brothers and even attends important, Lou challenges her capacity to do another church, so she will not have to see "real" work. However, Lou and Oscar know them. Thus she asserts that as a woman farmer farming as a tradition and haven't begun to and a family member, she will make her own understand farming as a business. Social Sci decisions and be free of traditional gender roles entists Sonya Salamon, Ann McKey, and Keim where males hold sway over family decisions. Salamon, in their article "Land Ownership and Despite Lou and Oscar's attempts to deny Women's Power in a Midwestern Farming Alexandra's success as a woman farmer, the Community," distinguish the farmer from oth community recognizes and admires her farm ers on a family farm: "A real farmer makes the knowledge and skills. As a young girl, crucial decisions about when to plant, harvest Alexandra knew more about horses than their or sell and assumes the full responsibility for neighbor Mr. Lindstrum and helped him let those decisions because he 'takes the risk.' "17 the wind out of a colicky horse. Whenever Decision-making and active responsibility for he was uncertain, Mr. Lindstrum sought the farm's well-being are the very roles that Alexandra's advice: "I wonder what the Alexandra performs, such as installing a wind Bergsons are going to do about that? I guess I'll mill, building a silo, investing in land, plant go and ask her" [my emphasis] (27). Mr. ing alfalfa, and planting wheat. This reflects Lindstrum knows that Alexandra is the post-pioneering agriculture where land is no Bergson family farmer. The townsmen also longer conquered to provide sustenance but respect Alexandra, as she blushingly acknowl carefully managed to provide a living. IS edges: "The men in town, at the banks and the As the conversation progresses, it becomes county offices, seem glad to see me." She mod clear that their purpose is also to limit her estly claims that the reason is "it is more freedom by rejecting Carl Lindstrum as her pleasant to do business with people who are 204 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2002 clean and healthy-looking" (68), but she uge for Mrs. Lee, whom she invites for a yearly knows that their liking is also due to the busi weeklong visit. Mrs. Lee enjoys the license ness she can bring them. Alexandra breaks that Alexandra gives her: speaking Norwe society's gendered perceptions that women gian all day, wearing a nightcap, sleeping with were neither to be business administrators nor windows shut, going to the stables in farm to perform tasks in a dominant position. Her boots, and drinking brandy before bed. challenge to these boundaries provides a pio Alexandra also nurtures the young Swedish neering route for other women farmers-farm girls who do the housework. "It was to hear ing with the mind instead of with the body. them giggle that she kept three young things She makes her family prosperous through in in her kitchen" (44). Cather notes that she telligent farm leadership, long-term planning, could have performed the work herself if nec and land speculation-not through the physi essary, but she never writes about her partici cal labor that dominates most pioneering nov pation in these domestic rituals. Nowhere els.19 does Cather allow Alexandra to do household After Alexandra's conflict with her broth labor, thus avoiding identifying her heroine ers, she needs a supportive community, so she with the women writer's tradition of domestic expands her exploration of traditional women's ritual. 20 Instead, Alexandra hires young women gender roles. Her first role is that of mother/ to perform these tasks, but she also revels in guardian to her youngest brother, Emil. After their companionship: "These girls, with their their mother's death, Alexandra cares for him, long letters from home, their finery, and their building a large new house on the homestead love-affairs, offered her a great deal of enter solely so Emil can learn about life beyond farm tainment, and they were company for her when ing. Although she encourages Emil to attend Emil was away at school" (44). The Swedish college, her deeper concern is for her brother's hired girls give Alexandra a surrogate family happiness: "He shall do whatever he wants and proximity to the world of romance. She to .... He is going to have a chance, a whole lives vicariously through them, observing their chance; that's what I've w~rked for" (60). flirtations and joking about marrying them off. When Emil is on vacation from university, he Alexandra also has six male hired hands who returns to her home, not to Oscar's or Lou's, also appreciate her efforts to create a support because her house is the one in which he was ive home. Comfortable at last in her support raised. Alexandra treats Emil as her son, and ive community, economic freedom, and social Emil looks to her as a mother figure, talking to prominence, Alexandra oversees both her her about his dreams for homesteading, study domestic and agricultural spheres while offer ing law, and visiting Mexico. ing support to her employees. Alexandra expands her supportive group Alexandra explores the role of marriage beyond relatives by creating a community with cautiously because it traditionally implies herself as the household matron. When Old subordination. Unlike many farm women, Ivar loses his claim, "Alexandra took him in, Alexandra does not marry for economic or and he had been a member of her household personal security; she has these freedoms be ever since" (45). She gives him a job caring fore marriage. As a woman farmer, her posi for her stock, invites him to live in the house, tion is incompatible with the traditional role allows him to choose to sleep in the barn, and of "farmer's wife," a role of subordination she protects him from the community. When fears she must assume if she marries a farmer. neighbors pressure her to have him commit Therefore, Alexandra can only accept a hus ted to an asylum, Alexandra refuses: "I am still band outside the agricultural community. In running my own house, and other people have her relationship with Carl Lindstrum, the pio nothing to do with either you [Ivar] or me" neering Alexandra offers him the unconven (47). Alexandra also provides a periodic ref- tional role of a "farmer's husband," which THE "REAL" PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! 205 leaves her secure in her positIOn as "the MARIE SHABATA AS A GENDER-RoLE farmer." Defying another gender role, she pro PIONEER poses marriage to Carl Lindstrum because she wants to deepen the happiness that she has As a child and as a woman, Cather read and found in his friendship: identified with male literary heroes full of self determination, self-possession, power, and I don't need money. But I have needed you autonomy.21 She reveled in the romance of the for a great many years .... People have to self-assertive individual whose personal force snatch at happiness when they can, in this could make a difference.22 Both in fiction world. It is always easier to lose than to and in life, Cather disliked the "identification find. What I have is yours, if you care of personal fulfillment with a self-indulgent enough about me to take it. (92) romanticism."23 Therefore, she reviled novels that celebrated a woman's unquenchable de Far from a spontaneous declaration of passion, sire for a man's love, whether it was the nine Alexandra's thoughtful proposal reflects her teenth-century American domestic novels or desire for happiness through intimacy with the late-nineteenth-century British sensation another person who understands her but will alist fiction.24 She despised any story that not limit her. Later, when Carl and Alexandra depicted women as "victims of over-idealiza do decide to marry, he realizes that there will tion of love," the exact words she used to cri be no economic dependency nor forced obli tique Kate Chopin's The Awakening and gations in such a union. Alexandra will keep Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. 25 She said her farms because, as she tells him, "There is a that these latter two stories "demand more great peace here, Carl, and freedom" (158). romance out of life than God put into it."26 o This freedom lies not only in her spiritual com Pioneers! is a correction to such crippling munion with nature and the land but also in excesses. Alexandra and Carl's relationship, economic self-sufficiency; with the farm, as well as Marie's life, reveal that marriage Alexandra will always have a resource for eco and romantic love need not be the all-con nomic survival and will never be financially suming goals of a woman's existence. 27 Instead, dependent. Her inveterate friendship evolves Marie finds love to be only one of a multitude into a bond that suggests Cather's own prefer of a woman's needs. ence for pragmatic, nonsentimental alliances As a child, Marie seems to embody and over intensely romantic ones. validate several romantic cliches. She is a cute, Alexandra Bergson is a feminist pioneer pampered doll who precociously chooses the throughout the novel; she breaks traditional recipient of her affections. As a teenager, her gender boundaries by becoming a successful courtship and marriage are like pages from a woman farmer, creating a nurturing, support dime romance novel: Frank, the handsomest, ive household around her, proposing to her most eligible bachelor in the territory pro future husband, and asserting her right to pos~s to her, only to have her father oppose maintain her land. Like Alexandra, Marie the union and exile her to a convent in St. Shabata also revises traditional gender bound Louis. But as soon as she is of legal age, they aries, but unlike Alexandra, Marie initially elope. Mr. T ovesky resigns himself to their adopts the traditional servile role of a farm wife. marriage and buys them a farm as a wedding Her resultant suffering reveals the inadequa gift. At the beginning of their marriage, Marie cies of romance myths, happily-ever-after adores Frank and cares for nothing but him; marriages, and domestic submission. Finally, however, the fairy-tale romance is short-lived. Marie's search for emotional fulfillment and Frank wants a "slave," who will feed his ego self-respect propels her to escape an abusive by "admir[ingJ him abandonedly," and at the spouse. start of their marriage Marie adopts this role 206 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2002 (114). But Marie begins to mature and wants forced to farm for a living when he had aspired something different while Frank doesn't: Marie to a life of leisure. Battered women have de says, "I've got to remember that Frank is just scribed their husbands in a similar way: the same now as he was then .... And now I pay for it" (119). As she understands herself Though [abusers] may be terrifying, they and Frank more, she realizes that she is not often have about them an aura of helpless the type of woman Frank should have mar ness, fear, inadequacy, and insecurity. The ried; she is much too outgoing and indepen battering husband is likely to be a "loser" in dent: "Frank's wife ought to be timid, and she some basic way. He is probably angry with ought not to care about another living thing himself and frustrated by his life ... [and in the world but just Frank! I didn't when I has] feelings of inadequacy and low self married him, but I suppose I was too young to esteem,3l stay like that" (102). Marie knows that her sanity demands that she resist subsuming her Frank is frustrated and insecure, not merely personality in her husband's. Her world must because of his lot as a farmer but because he no longer revolve around Frank and his needs: has always felt that other farmers failed to appreciate his innate superiority (61). "[Frank] The spark of her life went somewhere else, felt sorry for himself" (174) because he be and [Frank] was always watching to sur lieved he had lowered himself to till the soil. prise it. He knew that somewhere she must His mother in the Old Country was a hard get a feeling to live upon, for she was not a working woman farmer, but in America, woman who could live without loving. He wanted to prove to himself the wrong he He was easily the buck of the beer-gardens felt. What did she hide in her heart? Where ... [and] set all the Bohemian girls in a did it go? (114) flutter ... [with] his silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves Frank senses Marie's increasing personal au and carrying a little wisp of a yellow tonomy and her growing resistance to his au cane .... He had a way of drawing out his thority. He has delusions about her fidelity, cambric handkerchief slowly, by one cor suspecting that other men covet his three most ner, from his breast-pocket, that was mel valuable possessions: "his farm and his horses ancholy and romantic in the extreme. (73) and his pretty wife" (61), so he fires the hired man. Since Marie is friendly with everyone Therefore, when he is forced to farm to sup and everyone loves her, Frank's jealousy be port his wife, he feels ill-suited, degraded, and comes what Donald Dutton calls "conjugal defeated. Frank's exasperation increases when paranoia," an obsessive fear characterized by he sees Marie's easy adaptation to and enjoy delusions of sexual infidelity by one's spouse, ment of the farm: "He wanted his wife to re which is a common characteristic of spousal sent that he was wasting his best years among abusers.28 Frank fits many of the personality these stupid and unappreciative people; but traits and emotional characteristics associated she had seemed to find the people quite good with the type.29 In addition to this conjugal enough" (138). Alexandra recognizes Frank's paranoia, his emotional volatility, desire to thinly disguised self-contempt and observes control Marie, exasperation with his current that, "to get on with [him] you've got to make life, reliance on alcohol, and misuse of fire a fuss over him and act as if you thought he arms all conform to characteristics of spousal was a very important person all the time, and abusers as described by many psychologists.3D different from other people" (61). He wants Like many abusive husbands, Frank feels the same admiration he had when he was a frustrated professionally. He resents being young city dandy. THE "REAL" PIONEERS OF 0 PIONEERS! 207 Spousal abusers tend to be emotionally tain control over the other person," an obses volatile, suffering "intermittent explosive sive need that increases with the diminishing disorders."32 As J. E. Alcock notes, "The abuser of other forms of control over their world (so is often impulsive and unable to control emo cial, economic, sexual).35 Frank holds that the tions. Emotions rapidly build to an extreme, male is the dominant figure in the family and although sufficient control is generally main that his authority should be unquestioned. tained to avoid inflicting serious permanent Therefore, when Marie seeks companionship injury or death. "33 Other psychologists describe outside their marriage, Frank seeks to rein her this behavior as rooted in interpersonal and in; he fires Jan Smirka, is hostile toward her at intrapersonal stress conflicts, and in the fail church, and berates her for befriending Mrs. ure of anger management skills.34 Throughout Hiller. Frank knows that his cruelty is driving the novel, Frank shows no capacity for emo her away: tional self-control. The first time Alexandra mentions him, she characterizes him as "one Frank knew well enough that if he could of these wild fellows" (61), which Frank vali once give up this grudge, his wife would dates the first time we meet him: "He was come back to him. But he could never in breathing hard, as ifhe had been running, and the world do that. The grudge was funda was muttering to himself. ... Even in his mental. Perhaps he could not have given it agitation he was handsome, but he looked a up if he had tried. Perhaps he got more rash and violent man" (71). Because Mrs. satisfaction out of feeling himself abused Hiller's hogs have gotten into his wheat, Frank than he would have got out of being loved. works himself into a rage, vents to Marie, If he could once have made Marie thor threatens to sue Mrs. Hiller (a widow with a oughly unhappy, he might have relented lame son), throws himself on the couch, turns and raised her from the dust. (113 -14 ) his face to the wall, clenches his fists on his hip, and falls asleep (71-72). He often works Frank clings to his grudge against his wife himself into these rages and is "rough and because it gives him power over her while his quarrelsome with his neighbors," most of pathological need to feel himself abused sug whom tolerate him only for Marie's sake (72). gests a masochistic urge to preserve the source Frank's combative nature is so dominant that of his own agony. He wants total control of at the end of the novel Alexandra fears he Marie, and a sadistic impulse within him will get himself into trouble while in jail (150). would relinquish his grudge only if he could Even the follies of other people entage him: crush her spirit and make her totally un "Frank was always reading about the doings happy. "For three years he had been trying to of rich people and feeling outraged. He had break her spirit ... he wanted her to feel that an inexhaustible stock of stories about their life was as ugly and as unjust as he felt it. He crimes and follies" (75). Unable to control had tried to make her life ugly" (13 8). He also his bitter futility, he often turns to Marie, tries to control her perception of life so that who "soothed [him] when he had worked him through her he can affirm his vision of him self into a frenzy" (136). His paranoia, jeal self as a victim of circumstances. Frank be ousy, and self-destructive emotional outbursts gins to "bully her and to be unjust" (114), show that, despite his Byronic youth, Frank transferring to her the injustice he feels life has become a sad, unstable man. has directed toward him. As a result, Marie Feeling helpless and undervalued, Frank is ceases to sympathize, thereby sharpening preoccupied with being in control of Marie's Frank's feelings of rejection and his desire to life. As Alcock notes, spousal abuse often re control her and possess her only for himself. sults from "exaggerated efforts to gain or main- The text is never explicit about how Frank
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