The Role of Women in My AntoniaIn her novel My Antonia, Cather represents the frontier as a new nation. Blanche Gelfant notes that Cather "created images of strong, resourceful women on whom the fate of a new country depended." This responsibility, along with the “economic productivity” cited by Gilbert and Gubar (173), reinforces the sense that women occupy a different place in this frontier community than they would occupy in more settled regions of America. What emerges from the text is the privileged relationship of women to the land. While Jim Burden goes to school, it is Antonia who shapes and works the new land the pioneers inhabit, going "from farm to farm" to fill the need for farm workers (111). Although Otto and Jake fulfill this need at the beginning of the text, it is primarily Antonia's cultivation of the land that is followed throughout the rest of the text. Likewise, the concrete contributions of the “engaged girls” stand in stark contrast to the invisible and/or passive employment of male characters such as Mr. Harling. Similarly, Jim recognizes that it is "committed girls" like Antonia who will form the backbone of the company when the next generation comes: "the girls who once worked in the kitchens of Black Hawk are now running [sic ] large farms and beautiful families; their children are better off than the children of society. the women they served" (150-1). These assertions – about the direct involvement of women in the development of the region, both agriculturally and socially – highlight an important point: "it is not enough to think about nationalism affecting gender in a one-way relationship” (Walby 237) In other words, ...... middle of article ...... Proper: Attitudes toward women in the. short fiction by Willa Cather” Modern Fiction Studies 36:1 (Spring 1990): 81-89.Mosse, George. Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe New York: Howard Fertig, Inc., 1985. Ryan, Maureen. “No Woman’s Land: Gender in Willa Cather’s One of Ours.” »: 65-75. Summers, Claude J. "'A Losing Game in the End': Aesthetics and Homosexuality in Cather's 'Case of Paul.'" Modern Fiction Studies 36:1 (Spring 1990): 103-119 .Walby, Sylvia. “Woman and nation.” Cartography of the nation. Gopal Balakrishnan New York: Verso, 1996. Woolf, Virginia. London: Hogarth Press Ltd., 1938. Wussow, Helen. and ethnicity in three fictions by Willa Cather. "Women and language 18 (spring 1995): 52-5.