How Does Jim Burden Buy Happiness In My Antonia

Mia Cuda

My Antonia In Class Essay

“Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Most children learn this proverb and immediately try to disprove it, or simply do not believe it. However, age allows one to see the truth in this phrase. In My Antonia, a novel by Willa Cather, the protagonist, Jim Burden, reflects on his childhood in the American frontier. Despite having achieved wealth and an elevated social position, benefits most associate with attaining the American Dream, Jim Burden still longs for the happy days of his youth.
From a young age, members of the Black Hawk, Nebraska community were instilled with the idea that daughters of merchants “were ‘refined’ and that the country girls, who ‘worked out’ were not” (Cather, pg. 80) Even though the

American farmers had as many challenges as the immigrant farmers, they still thought themselves to be of a higher class. It is partially for this reason, and also the Black Hawk boy’s “respect for respectability” (pg. 81) that Jim was initially wary about pursuing a relationship with Antonia that was more intimate than the sibling-like relationship of their youth. When he does try to kiss Antonia after a night of dancing she rejects him. “Now don’t you go and be a fool like some of these town boys. You are going away to school and make something of yourself” (pg 90). Antonia recognizes Jim’s high potential to achieve the “American Dream” of prosperity, and she wants to make sure that he does not forgo his chance for upward mobility to follow his heart and stay in Black Hawk. Losing Antonia, the most precious person in his life, was a blow that Jim never fully recovered from.
Jim did in fact go on to attain the success that Antonia desired for him. He travelled back east to attend Harvard, and became a lawyer. In New York, Jim married Genevieve Whitney, who entirely lacks the qualities that Jim found so endearing in Antonia and Tiny, being “unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable of enthusiasm” (pg. 3). While his marriage greatly improves his social stature and financial situation, it is one of convenience and not “love”. For Jim, vocational success came at the expense of his emotional fulfillment. Jim develops an incurable sense of longing and desire for his true love, Antonia. This emptiness lies hidden externally, as others continue to comment on his “ardent disposition” (pg. 3), but appears when Jim reflects on the joys of his youth.
Twenty years after leaving Antonia with the promise that he would soon be back, Jim returns to Black Hawk.

He is apprehensive about seeing Antonia, fearing that she will no longer be the idealized person who exists in his memory. “I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it” (pg. 127). Jim is not let down when they meet, as even though she is now a “battered woman” (pg. 137), she possess the wonderful spirit that Jim adores. In contrast to Jim’s material prosperity and lacking personal life, Antonia has chosen to live the labor-intensive farmer and has a devoted husband and children.
While some may view Antonia’s life as a failure, as she never integrates herself into American society and remains impoverished, she is content with her lifestyle.
Jim’s visit to Antonia allows him to rediscover “the precious, the incommunicable past” (pg. 144). The times that existed in the past are now gone, and Jim realizes this. However, he still is able to feel great happiness when he looks back on the day of his youth. This relationship with the past is very American. We, like Jim, sometimes lose our way and focus only on material acquisition. However, this can lead one to an empty life filled with the feeling of loss for something cherished. It is only when we chose to live in the present, and put effort into our most important relationships, that we feel

fulfilled.