On Topophilia In Willa Cather’s Pioneering Novels From The Perspective Of Place

Willa Cather is an outstanding American writer of the 20 th century and the first woman author to depict the pioneers of the West.Her works penetrate profound ecological thoughts as well as the attachment to the place.The two novels which are discussed in this paper,O Pioneers! and My Antonia,have received much scholarly attention since their publication,and Cather became famous owing to these two works.Both novels tell the stories of immigrants from Eastern and Northern Europe who overcame many barriers in the wilderness in Nebraska of America and eventually built a close tie with the new place,showing complex emotions of the pioneers who were bored when staying in the hometown and missed the old place when moving to new place.This thesis focuses on two typical pioneering novels of Willa Cather,O Pioneers!and My Antonia,which present the immigrants’ conflicting emotional experiences:when in Europe,they expected a new life in a new place;when in America,they kept reminiscing about the past and their hometowns.However,there was no turning back and they had to adapt themselves to American west prairie and build up an affective bond with the place.By applying the theories of Yi-Fu Tuan and Buell’s place theory on the relationship between people and place,this thesis analyzes the immigrants’ acquisition of place experiences and the changing of their ecological thoughts.Firstly,the paper analyzes the immigrants’ tiredness of their old place and desire for a new life in a new place.The driving forces that prompted European immigrants to leave their homeland and come to the United States include European push factors,such as the plight of social and personal crises;and American pull factors,such as the imagination of wildness transformation and pastoral life.Immigrants aspired to possess a place and change nature at their will.Secondly,this thesis explores the unique experiences of the pioneers in Nebraska.Through their physical contact with nature and interaction with the place,pioneers gained experiences that were different from their past ones in Europe.Life in the new place made them realize that nature could not be conquered and that they had to follow the natural forces in this new environment.In adapting to the new place,the pioneers often missed the old place and the old items they brought with them as well as the native language they used made the distant homeland more intimate for them.Finally,after three stages of the transformation of ecological awareness,the discovery of place values and the formation of place identity,the pioneers took their roots into the new land and built their topophilia with American prairie.The pioneers who had been sticking to the American West found that only by following the laws of nature could human beings better survive,get food support from the land and spirit support from nature,and gain social and cultural identity in the new place.From their initial idea to transform nature at will to the discovery of the truth that they could not control nature,then to living in harmony with nature and place,these pioneers experienced a great change in their thinking and gained a deeper understanding of the connection between human and places as well as the relationship between human beings and nature.They came to realize that all things are equal and places should be revered.As a result,they established affective ties with places,thus building up topophilia with the new place.