O pioneers

In O Pioneers! the Bergsons do not have money. Willa Cather’s own family had travelled from Virginia to Nebraska to build their lives there as farmers. O Pioneers! is set in Nebraska and celebrates the moment when the westward settlement of the North American interior reached the prairies. It was my choice in the Decades Project featuring fiction by women, this one for the decade 1910-1919. O Pioneers! is the second novel by Willa Cather and it draws on her experience of settling in the prairies of Nebraska. What sets this depiction of the American Dream apart from others is that the creator of this wealth is a woman – Alexandra Bergson. The novel promoted the idea that hard work and maintaining good order can produce abundant food from the ground and money in your pocket. In 1913, a young woman from Nebraska published a novel that endorsed the American Dream.