O! Pioneers

O, Pioneers! Willa Cather (1913)
Page numbers in these notes refer to the Mariner Books edition (Boston: Mariner, 1995).
Notes by Joseph C. Murphy, Copyright 2005
Introduction∣Part I∣Part II∣Part III∣Part IV∣Part V

O Pioneers! (1913) is Cather's second novel. Her first, Alexander's Bridge (1912), about a Boston engineer, is an international study of manners and consciousness in the tradition of Henry James. In O Pioneers! , by contrast, Cather followed the advice of the writer Sarah Orne Jewett (acknowledged in the dedication), who encouraged her to write about her memories of her own country. For Cather, this was the Nebraska prairie where she moved, from Virginia , at age nine. Cather took her title from a poem by Walt Whitman ("Pioneers! O Pioneers!") about the heroic advance of pioneers westward across the American continent. She places her own poem "Prairie Spring" at the front of the novel. The poem divides clearly into two parts—the cultivation of the land (lines 1-9) and the song of Youth (10-19)—anticipating the novel's two narrative strains: Alexandra's taming of the land; and Emil and Marie's youthful and destructive passion. In moving from Alexander—her urban, engineer protagonist, whose name recalls the great conqueror of the ancient world—to Alexandra, Cather reveals her intention to portray a rural culture emanating from a strong woman, rather than a man. Although rural, Cather's prairie is a cosmopolitan place with immigrants from Sweden , Norway , Germany , Bohemia , and France. Alexandra's ability to thrive amid this great American diversity, and to foresee the potential of the land itself, makes her a heroine attuned to the historical progress of the United States. At the same time she is a mythical heroine, beyond historical time, in harmony with the natural cycles of birth and death.

I.	The opening chapter introduces the main characters in relation to a
	harsh winter landscape on a Nebraska tableland (the Divide or high country), thirty years in the past (roughly 1883). Alexandra Bergson is tall and strong with "clear, deep blue eyes... fixed intently on the distance" (4-5). When a traveling salesman remarks on her "shining mass of hair," she "stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian fierceness" that challenges his manhood (5-6). By contrast, her friend Carl Linstrum is thin and frail with "brooding dark eyes" and a mouth "too sensitive for a boy's" (7). Still, Alexandra encourages Carl to play a man's role, saving Emil's kitten from the telegraph pole, driving Alexandra's wagon, and finally lighting a lantern that "made a moving point of light along the highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country." Carl is also associated with a "magic lantern" that he promises to bring to the Bergson's to entertain Alexandra's father, who is dying (10-11). Both Alexandra and Carl are described as "lonely" (7). In a sense, they are both similar to the land, which Carl sees as wanting to "be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength,... its uninterrupted mournfulness" (9). However, Carl seems to be looking into the past, Alexandra into the future. What do these descriptions and interactions suggest about Alexandra and Carl, and the relationship of each to the land? What does the lantern imagery suggest about Carl's relationship to Alexandra? Marie Tovesky's playing with Emil foreshadows their future relationship. Already her "little red mouth, and round, yellow-brown eyes" are irresistible to the Bohemians who surround her and demand she "choose one of them for a sweetheart." She chooses Emil. What impact might the attentions of these "lusty admirers" have on the kind of woman Marie becomes (7-8)?
II.	John Bergson's "Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable" has been
	challenged by the land itself, which seems to reject human striving: "It's Genius was unfriendly to man" (13). His desire to tame the land has failed; what he has is the land itself—640 acres, paid for—but he is so tired from struggle and loss that he is "quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not find him" (15). It is his wife who has accomplished more in taming the land: she has persisted in her Old World routines and demanded order, insisting, for example, on a log house rather than a sod house. In this sense, she has succeeded more than her husband in putting "human landmarks" on the land; the work of the plow is almost invisible, "like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races" (12). John Bergson makes clear the unconventional order he desires on the farm after his death: Alexandra will be the "head" and the boys will follow her decisions (16).
III.	Cather marks the passage of time (in this chapter, in chapter IV, and also in
	Part II, chapter I) from the death of John Bergson. Why is this moment in time significant? Six months after the father's death, the family's visit to Crazy Ivar, a kind of spiritual hermit on the prairies, exposes deep rifts between the thinking of Alexandra and her brothers. Alexandra is sympathetic to Ivar's spiritual views of landscape and animals as an alternative to the mainstream pioneer outlook. Ivar sees birds as beings close to God, crossing the spiritual highway of the sky: God "watches over them and counts them, as we do our cattle" (24). Alexandra plans to follow Ivar's advice to give their pigs a clean corral. Lou and Oscar think Ivar is crazy and a bad influence on Alexandra. How does Ivar's lifestyle compare and contrast with that of Mrs. Bergson?
IV.	John Bergson's death is followed by three years of prosperity, then three
	years of drought. Hard times discourage Lou and Oscar and prove them unfit for pioneering: "A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves" (28). Lou's impulsiveness and Oscar's plodding labor make them good work companions, but it is Alexandra's vision that protects her father's investment in the land. Alexandra depends on Carl for understanding—just as Lou and Oscar depend on each other—but Carl himself is meant for city life. In a surprising passage, complicating Bergson's perception of his daughter as "intelligent" (14), Alexandra is described as having "not the least spark of cleverness," but rather possessing a mind "slow, truthful, and steadfast" (35).
V.	After five days with Emil looking at the river country, Alexandra's return to
	the high country brings her a new relationship to the land. By looking at the land "with love and yearning," Alexandra prompts its Genius, "the great, free spirit which breathes across it" (before described as "unfriendly to man" [13]) to bend "lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman" (37-38). Cather here defines historical time as something that begins in the heart—in a feeling toward the land. This moment marks a new beginning, a marker of time alternative to the death of John Bergson, who wanted to believe in the land but could never love it as Alexandra does. By putting her heart in the land, Alexandra can feel the "future stirring" there (41). Alexandra tells her brothers that the family should buy more land on the Divide rather than sell it. How have Alexandra's views of the land been influenced by Ivar's? Does Alexandra show consideration of her brothers' feelings in this chapter? Does she have good business sense?

I.	Sixteen years on from John Bergson's death (therefore around 1899), his
	youngest son Emil, now twenty-one and a college graduate, is mowing the tall grass in the graveyard where the father is buried—the Norwegian graveyard mentioned in Part I, chapter I. The Divide is now fertile and cultivated, "a vast checker-board, marked off in squares of wheat and corn" (45), and Alexandra's farm is like a small village, an orderly expression of herself. Emil's interactions with Marie, a married woman, are laced with sexual tension. "I wish I had an athlete to mow my orchard," she tells him. She smiles at him, and he purposely looks away (48). Marie mentions their habit of dancing.
II.	This sketch of Alexandra's household explores the theme of diversity. For
	kitchen help, Alexandra prefers three light-hearted and inefficient Swedish girls because she wants to "hear them giggle" (51). Alexandra wants people around who are different from herself; she values diversity. "It's bad if all the members of a family think alike," she says, acknowledging that she and Lou have different opinions about the new silo (53). She has found a place in her household for Ivar, whose unconventional views and religious spells make him a social misfit. People talk of sending him to the asylum. People "have built the asylum," Ivar observes, "for people who are different. Ivar considers America , a land celebrating freedom and individualism, to be less tolerant of different beliefs than was "the old country" (55).
III.	A family party exposes further developments, and tensions, among the
	Bergsons. Ivar has gone into politics and speaks English without an accent. Oscar, who has married a Missouri woman, still has an accent but speaks only English in his household. Ivar warns that the community might take Ivar away by force. Lou's wife Annie has "reasons" to ease tensions between her husband and Alexandra (60): Alexandra has proposed to give Milly a piano. However, this plan is liable to make Oscar jealous; Oscar's wife and Alexandra don't get along. Carl's surprise visit after many years gets a cool reception from his old friends Oscar and Lou, but Lou shows some interest in Carl's Alaska prospecting plans. Lou criticizes Carl's "[w]andering" (67)—although, ironically, Lou would have wandered from the Divide himself if Alexandra hadn't kept him there. Annie, however, is impressed with the looks of this single man from the city, and even recommends Milly as his future wife.
IV.	Carl and Alexandra have become very different, but complementary,
	individuals. Carl is intelligent but dissatisfied; he is just one of the "rolling stones" of the city, all alike, free but without land or stability (72). Alexandra has gained incredible wealth and stability by simply "sitting still" on the land (69), but says the minds of prairie dwellers become "stiff" (73). She wants Emil to experience Carl's freedom, and she herself thrives on the existence of a wider world, represented by people like Carl. For his part, Carl has been "haunted" by the wild prairie he grew up on, and laments its passing. History has moved forward, Carl observes, repeating the same "two or three human stories... as fiercely as if they had never happened before" (70). The chapter ends with Alexandra's story about Carrie Jensen. What is this story's significance?
V.	Carl goes out at dawn to the border between Alexandra's property and his
	father's old pasture, which now belongs to Frank and Marie Shabata. As Carl remembers how young Alexandra looked when they used to milk cows on either side of the fence—"as if she had walked straight out of the morning" (75)—Emil appears with Marie and shoots five ducks. Carl's memory of his relationship with Alexandra contrasts with the relationship between Emil and Marie. Alexandra appears like a goddess of the Dawn, in harmony with nature, but the young couple tarnish the morning: by shooting ducks Emil violates Ivar's respect for all living things, and foreshadows the violence to come. Seeing them makes Carl feel "unreasonably mournful" (76).
VI.	Carl's conversation with Alexandra grows flirtatious and even a little
	jealous of Alexandra's other friends and admirers. Of the path between her house and Marie's he says, "I ought to be thankful that this path hasn't been worn by—well, by friends with more pressing errands than your little Bohemian is likely to have" (77). Alexandra seems confused when Carl tries to talk about how "you astonish me" (78); as will become clear later, she is blind to romantic love. Carl's artistic perception is evident in his view of Alexandra and Marie: "They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight..." (80). What does this "picture" show about the contrasting qualities of Alexandra and Marie? The orchard is a key setting in the novel, originally planted by the Linstrums, later maintained by Emil and Alexandra, and soon to be a meeting place for Emil and Marie. There are apricot trees that come from apricots Alexandra and Carl bought as children when they couldn't afford to go to the circus. Frank's brief appearance immediately reveals his jealous and angry nature. Alexandra remarks to him: "I've found it sometimes pays to mend other people's fences" (82). What significance does this remark have? How does it reflect upon the fence between Alexandra's and Frank's properties?
VII.	Frank Shabata's skill at affecting "melancholy and romantic" airs won the
	heart of Marie, and the resistance of Marie's father convinced Frank, who was really "only half in love with her," that "he would not stop at anything" to marry her (84-86). What is Cather suggesting about romantic love?
VIII.	Frank Shabata and Lou Bergson are revealed to be somewhat similar types:
	impulsive, jealous, and political. Frank goes off to the saloon, and Marie and Emil are free to flirt. The sound of the scythe being sharpened by Emil, who is finally preparing to mow the orchard, is an "invitation" to Marie (88). Emil minds his business, but eventually finds Marie sitting under the white mulberry tree. Marie says she could worship trees like the Bohemians of old; Emil's response to this statement is to drop a handful of mulberries into her lap. Marie suggests that Alexandra might be in love with Carl, a notion that Emil finds ridiculous: "Alexandra's never been in love... She wouldn't know how to go about it" (90). After Emil tells Marie that she can no longer treat him like boy, she signals her understanding of Emil's romantic intentions.
IX.	Amedee is blind to Emil's feelings for Marie, just as Emil is blind to
	Alexandra's feelings for Carl, and Alexandra is blind to the mutual feelings of Marie and Emil. Emil teasingly kisses Angelique and threatens to steal her from Amedee, until he sees "Marie Shabata's tiger eyes flashing from the gloom of the basement" (95). What emotions are expressed in these eyes? Amedee's "sunny, natural, happy" love contrasts with Emil's love for Marie, which is hidden, unhappy, and, although natural enough, forbidden (95). Their feelings of love are like two separate corn seeds, one sprouting into the light, the other rotting in the earth.
X.	Carl had proposed to stay with Alexandra "only a few days" (63), but he is
	still there after four weeks. Lou and Oscar are afraid Alexandra will marry Carl. (Although less intelligent than Emil, the brothers are quicker to perceive Alexandra's intentions here—as are people in general, who have begun gossiping.) The brothers are concerned that Carl will get title to Alexandra's property, but equally concerned about what people will say. Oscar, and especially Lou, have always been afraid of public opinion. They claim authority over Alexandra's property on the grounds that it all came from wealth generated by the original homestead, which they worked. Given Alexandra's own acknowledgement that she became rich by simply "sitting still," is there any merit to Oscar and Lou's argument? It is worth remembering, too, that there is a disturbing precedent for Alexandra's situation in the family's history. Alexandra's grandfather, whom Alexandra (according to John Bergson) resembles in intelligence, made an unwise marriage late in life and lost his fortune (see 14-15).
XI.	Emil's conversation with Alexandra shows him to be blind to anyone's
	feelings but his own, though he grants right to marry Carl if she wants to. Love makes Emil completely distracted: "His spirit went out of his body and crossed the field to Marie Shabata" (104).
XII.	Buckling under pressure from Oscar and Lou, Carl decides to leave for
	Alaska and get "something to show for myself" (106). To accept Alexandra's wealth without having any of his own, "I should have to be either a very large man or a very small one, and I am only in the middle class" (106). What does Carl mean by this? What does he mean when he says to Alexandra, "It is your fate to be always surrounded by little men" (105)? The chapter closes with first Carl, then Alexandra, looking at the portrait of John Bergson, based on a photograph taken just before he left Sweden for America (described on page 62). Why would Carl be attracted to Bergson's portrait at this moment? Alexandra hopes her father "is among the old people of his blood and country, and that tidings do not reach him from the New World " (106). She thinks he would be sorry about what has happened to the family. Is Alexandra right about this?

I.	The events in this chapter dramatize how simple customs and memories can
	relieve the dead of winter. Mrs. Lee makes her customary visit to Alexandra for a week, despite the troubles between Alexandra and Lou. Marie invites Mrs. Lee and Alexandra for coffee and rolls stuffed with stewed apricots (taken, presumably, from the trees that Alexandra and Carl planted long ago). Upstairs, Marie discovers an old yellow cane that Frank used to carry (see 84) and reflects that Frank would have been happier with a different wife, more timid and submissive—a train of thought that Alexandra does not encourage. Still, Marie finds relief in Emil's letters to Alexandra from Mexico , which she knows are written for her eyes. Later in the winter Marie seems brooding and distant, but she keeps her flowers blooming in the kitchen and thinks of the "secret of life" hiding under the snow in the orchards (117).
II.	Alexandra is blind to Marie and Emil's passion because she puts her
	personality into the land. She is prosperous but largely unconscious of personal feelings. Her memory of a wild duck—"a kind of enchanted bird that did not know age or change"—typifies her mental life, "a white book, with clear writing about weather and beasts and growing things," but free of "sentimental reveries." "She had never been in love"—suggesting that she must understand her feelings toward Carl, however strong, as a kind of friendship (119). Her one romantic dream, beginning in girlhood, is of a large man, "yellow like the sunlight," smelling like "ripe cornfields," who carries her "swiftly across the fields" (120). How is her experience of this dream different in girlhood vs. adulthood? Who is this great man?

I.	Emil is freshly returned from his travels, in full Mexican dress, and
	Alexandra, driving him to a supper and fair at the French Church , feels "well satisfied with her brother." She recalls that pivotal moment when she drove with Emil back from the river country and felt convinced of the Divide's promising future (37-38). Emil is the fruit of that destiny because he has "a personality apart from the soil" (124). Are Emil's accomplishments worthy of Alexandra's great satisfaction? Has he proven himself "fit to cope with the world," as she thinks (124)? Cather observes that "Norwegian and Swedish lads were much more self-centred, apt to be egotistical and jealous" than the French and Bohemian—suggesting that Frank is an unrepresentative Bohemian (125). The psychology of Frank's relationship with Marie is further explored. Frank knows deep down that if he could give up his grudge against Marie, she would "come back to him" (128). What is his grudge against Marie, and why can't he give it up? Is his grudge justified? Is Marie partly to blame for their distance? Emil drops "a handful of uncut turquoises, as big as marbles," into Marie's lap (130), just as he dropped mulberries there in their previous meeting (90). Their kiss in the dark is "like a sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakening something in the other" (130). Marie turns pale and when Alexandra extends the "kind, calm hand" of a "fatalist," Marie shivers (131). Why does Marie react to Alexandra in this way? What is a fatalist?
II.	Marie expresses frustration at Signa for marrying Nelse Jensen, a grumpy
	man (first described on 51-52). Alexandra suggests that Swedish girls marry men they fear because they "think a cross man makes a good manager" (133). In what sense does Alexandra's opinion suit a "fatalist," as she is described at the end of the previous chapter? Marie is annoyed by Alexandra but seems to adopt some of her fatalism. "When one makes a mistake, there's no telling where it will stop," she tells Emil (134). She sees the necessity for Emil to go away. Her words, "How could I help it?" express her love for Emil, and Emil trembles (135). How is the ending of this chapter similar to the ending of the previous chapter?
III.	Emil has resolved to go away to study law, in order to "make good to
	Alexandra" (136). Looking at John Bergson's portrait, he reflects: "No... she didn't get it there. I suppose I am more like that" (137). What is "it"? What does Emil mean? Emil is ashamed of Lou and Oscar because they are "bigoted and self-satisfied"—a characterization he extends to Swedes in general, saying "they're never willing to find out how much they don't know" (138). Is this characterization fair in any way? Could it apply to Alexandra? To Emil himself?
IV.	Amedee is sick, but his wife Angelique does not have "much anxiety"
	because she feels "secure in their good fortune" (141). Her attitude parallels that of Alexandra toward Emil at the end of the previous chapter: "She felt no anxiety about Emil. She had always believed in him, as she had believed in the land" (139).
V.	Marie realizes that "as far as she was concerned, Emil was already gone.
	They couldn't meet any more. There was nothing for them to say. They had spent the last penny of their small change; there was nothing left but gold. The day of love-tokens was past. They had now only their hearts to give each other" (144). What "small change" have Marie and Emil spent? When? As beautiful as this metaphorical language is, it is also economic language, in a novel that has been greatly concerned with economic matters—mortgages, loans, and interest. How do the "economics" of Marie and Emil's relationship relate to economics more generally in the novel? What economic issues have influenced the relationship between Alexandra and Carl? Marie looks forward to the time after Emil's departure when she can possess his "memory." She wants to hold "this treasure of pain" in her heart, like the pond holding the reflection of the moon as an "image of gold" (145). What does "gold" represent here, and how does it relate to the earlier economic language?
VI.	Emil takes the place of one of Amedee's cousins in a horse procession to
	accompany the bishop to the French Church. Thus, although Emil is a Protestant, not a Catholic, he spends this Sunday surrounded by Catholic ritual at Marie's church—but Marie is inexplicably absent. Here, listening to the hymn "Ave Maria," he feels "a kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering and without sin"—similar to the feeling Marie herself attains at the end of the previous chapter. Still, he must see Marie, and he races past the "brown hole" of Amedee's grave, without horror: "The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth" (149). Compare this passage to the description of Alexandra at the end of Part I, feeling that "her heart were hiding down there, somewhere" in the earth (41). How are their feelings toward the earth similar or different? As Emil rides like an arrow "his life poured itself out along the road before him" (150). The language recalls the description of young Frank Shabata himself, in love with Marie: "Any one could see, with half an eye, that his proud heart was bleeding for somebody" (85). Are there any similarities in the feelings of Emil and Frank toward Marie? Cather's description of the final meeting between Emil and Marie is charged with imagery from Keats's poetry. The desire of both to hold love forever without change recalls the theme of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Lovers' blending of dream and reality (Marie is dreaming of Emil when he lies down beside her) also appears in Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes," possibly the source of Cather's name for the French Church , Sainte-Agnes.
VII.	On some level the similarities between Emil and Frank persist. Just as Emil
	acts impulsively, diminishing distance" (149), so does Frank: "his blood was quicker than his brain" (152).
VIII.	Cather offers an analysis of the bloody orchard that would satisfy
	professional crime scene investigators: from the position of the bullets and trails of blood she pieces together a physical and emotional account of Emil's and Marie's final moments. But this is "only half the story." The other half is suggested by "two white butterflies... fluttering in and out among the interlacing shadows; diving and soaring, now close together , now far apart"; and by "the last wild roses of the year open[ing] their hearts to die." What "other half" of Emil and Marie's story do these natural details suggest? Ivar adds a third perspective on the scene—a religious one: "Sin and death for the young ones!" (157).

I.	An afternoon in the graveyard during a storm makes Alexandra feel close to
	the dead: "After once you get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you is sweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when you were a baby. It carries you back into the dark, before you were born; you can't see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know them and aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like that with the dead. If they feel anything at all, it's the old things, before they were born, that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does when they are little." Ivar's correction of Alexandra—that "[t]he dead are in Paradise"—and his private belief that Emil the sinner is not in Paradise , serve to contrast his Biblical fundamentalist convictions with Alexandra's view of the earth as redemptive (164). This view of death as part of an organic cycle, reminiscent of Whitman's poetry, is further developed in the last line of the novel: "Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!" (180). That night, Alexandra has again the dream about the strong man carrying her, but this time she sees the man more clearly, sees his arm as "the arm of the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well" (165). Who is this man, and where does Alexandra expect to be carried? In the days after this dream, Alexandra resolves to see Frank Shabata in prison, feeling that he is less to blame than either Marie or Emil—even less than she herself, who encouraged Emil to spend time with Marie. At some level, however, Alexandra can understand how Emil and Marie came together, and she sometimes thinks of Marie with an "aching tenderness." Alexandra, who has never known passionate love, even "felt awe of them" when she first saw their dead bodies (166). Does Alexandra's distribution of blame make sense? Do Alexandra's thoughts about Frank have anything to do with the dream she had?
II.	This chapter revolves around two institutions, in and near Lincoln ,
	Nebraska : the university and the prison. How are these institutions different, as described here? How are they similar? Alexandra feels "unreasonably comforted" by talking to a university freshman, whose behavior reminds her of Emil's (169). Why is she comforted? Alexandra's interview with Frank, who has been reduced to an almost subhuman condition, makes her "[blame] Marie bitterly" (173). Leaving the prison, she feels that the whole world is a prison, until she receives a telegram from Carl.
III.	Alexandra changes from black to white clothes after returning home with
	Carl. Why? She reflects that Carl is a better match for Alaska than the Divide because dreamers belong on the frontier—thus identifying Carl as a dreamer and the Divide as no longer the frontier. Carl understands the love between Emil and Marie, and says they met their fate because they "were both the best you had here" (178). Note that his memory of Emil and Marie near the pond the previous year as "young and charming and full of grace" does not correspond to his actual experience (177). At the time, he felt "unreasonably mournful to find two young things abroad in the pasture" (76). What does this discrepancy say about the nature of memories, and about Carl? Alexandra talks about her own memory: returning to the Divide from Lincoln reminded her of when "I drove back with Emil from the river that time"—that moment when she first responded to the land with her heart (178). When Carl says Alexandra belongs to the land, he seems to accept that she will never really belong to him. Alexandra even alludes to her dream about the strong man carrying her, saying she will tell Carl about it after they are married. How is Carl's relationship with Alexandra different from the relationships of Emil and Frank to Marie? How is Cather challenging the convention of romantic novels that end with the heroine's marriage? Alexandra recalls Carl's remark that the same story writes itself over, and adds, "[o]nly it is we who write it, with the best that we have" (179). Why is this clarification important? The land, Alexandra says, belongs to the future. How is this vision different from her earlier focus on Emil as the purpose of her work? Although Alexandra belongs to the land in a mythical sense, it doesn't satisfy her everyday human needs. Her final words in the novel are: "I have been very lonely, Carl" (180). Loneliness—a feeling that Carl and Alexandra have always shared with the land—will be overcome by their marriage, with the understanding that the land is always waiting to receive Alexandra's heart "into its bosom" (180).