Back to the Mother: Matrilineal Linkage in Willa Cather’s My Antonia

Abstract

The paper approaches the question of female identity in Willa Cather’s My Antonia from a psychoanalytic perspective based on opposing Jacques Lacan’s view of identity as a form of “masquerade” and Julia Kristeva’s view of identity as a form of “jouissance.” Though Antonia is a victim, she manages to establish herself as a desiring subject in the Symbolic.