O Pioneers By Willa Cather: A Literary Analysis

Half of working mothers say that they often take unpaid time off to take care of a sick child. This shocking statistic shows that mothers in modern society are expected to work and raise their families simultaneously. In the same way, women long ago were expected to follow similar expectations. O Pioneers by Willa Cather is a perfect example of the antagonists that women face in their day-to-day lives. “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant also shows that plot, or how their lives play out, effect many women’s attitude and the expectations they face from society. Finally, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows that symbolism in a story can effetely show the limitations that women are put into. In Cather’s O Pioneers, Alexandra
Even though women are not literally imprisoned, Gilman shows that the expectations they face mentally and, on occasion, physically imprison them. The wife, who is also the narrator, is put into a house by her husband so that she can heal. In the house, she starts to hallucinate women trapped in the wallpaper, “But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.” (4). The woman is starting to hallucinate, but also show the symbolism behind the wallpaper. The body behind the front design represents women, and the design is the ideas that lock women inside of expectations. Likewise, the woman eventually believes that she also came out of the wall, “I wonder if [all the creeping women] came out of the wall as I did?” (11). This emphasizes even more the symbolism of the wallpaper. The narrator comes out of the wall, basically, out of society’s expectations, and is seen by her husband as sick because of that. These symbols show that women are imprisoned by society’s