A Lacanian Approach to the Other in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and My Antonia

This paper is to make a comparison between Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and My Antonia with an attempt to examine “the discourse of the Other” in terms of Lacanian theory. From one of Lacan’s perspectives, “the other,” Cather’s O Pioneers! and My Antonia share a common ground in each double characters. Alexandra and Antonia, Cather’s heroines in the two novels, emerge as the women with vitality and they are active participants in their destiny. Despite their effort to define themselves through the land, female protagonists have limitations in their desires to experience the outer world. While the women hold onto the farm in hard times, the men like Carl, Emil, and Jim go off to the outer world to seek adventure and the vast knowledge of the world. Female characters, being submerged in the prairie, are deeply repressed because their situation in the land restricts their options to encounter the broader world outside. Therefore, male protagonists embody women character’s repression and project women’s wish-fulfillment. Conclusively, double identity representing mirror-self leads to the consideration of the double, Alexandra and Carl in O Pioneers!, and the other double of Antonia and Jim in My Antonia. In this sense, the human subject is decentered with constant inhibition by the Other.