SOURCE: Baker, Bruce P. “Nebraska's Cultural Desert: Willa Cather's Early Short Stories.” Midamerica 14 (1987): 12–17.

In the following essay, Baker explores Cather's early view of Nebraska as a hostile place for artistic pursuits.

For many years Willa Cather's novels set in Nebraska have been praised for their evocation of the era of the pioneers, a time of splendid heroism and achievement symbolized by the famous plow against the sun in My Ántonia. On the plains of the great Midwest, sturdy and creative men and women joined themselves with the fertile soil and brought forth a kind of new Eden wherein fallen man seemed to be able once again to unite with the raw material of the earth and create something beautiful and enduring. For example, in Cather's rhapsodic tribute to the pioneer spirit in O Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson transforms “The Wild Land” in part one into the rich, fruitful fields...