Women’s Labor and Land Relations in My Ántonia: An Ecofeminist Reading

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines women’s labor practices and land relations in My Ántonia from an ecofeminist perspective. Set within the historical context of American westward expansion, the novel reveals how patriarchy and industrial development jointly shape the conditions of both women and nature, positioning them within similar structures of social domination. This study focuses on the multiple meanings of women’s labor in the text, viewing it not only as a means of material survival but also as a crucial practice through which female identity and subjectivity are constructed. The analysis is developed on three levels: land ethics, bodily experience, and everyday practice. It argues that women’s relationship with the land in My Ántonia is not based on domination or conquest, but rather on care, interdependence, and sustained interaction. Centering on the figure of Ántonia Shimerda, the paper further demonstrates how women, through agricultural labor and maternal experience, closely bind their lives to the land and gradually reconstruct their identities under the dual constraints of gender norms and immigrant status. This paper contends that My Ántonia does not portray women and nature merely as passive victims. Instead, through concrete representations of daily labor, the novel articulates a non-dominant ecological ethic in which women’s labor functions as an embodied practice infused with emotion, memory, and cultural identity. By highlighting the close connection between women’s experience and ecological consciousness, this study offers a deeper understanding of female subjectivity and human-land relations in Cather’s fiction.