creatures, driven by some inner force which they do not comprehend: they
are, that is perhaps no more than to say, primitive and epic in their
dispositions.

Is it by virtue of a literary descent from the New England school that
Miss Cather depends so frequently upon women as protagonists? Alexandra
Bergson in _O Pioneers!_, Thea Kronborg in _The Song of the Lark_,
Ántonia Shimerda in _My Ántonia_--around these as girls and women the
actions primarily revolve. It is not, however, as other Helens or
Gudruns that they affect their universes; they are not the darlings of
heroes but heroes themselves. Alexandra drags her dull brothers after
her and establishes the family fortunes; Ántonia, less positive and more
pathetic, still holds the center of her retired stage by her rich,
warm, deep goodness; Thea, a genius in her own right, outgrows her
Colorado birthplace and becomes a famous singer with all the fierce
energy of a pioneer who happens to be an instinctive artist rather than
an instinctive manager, like Alexandra, or an instinctive mother, like
Ántonia. And is it because women are here protagonists that neither
wars, as among the ancients, nor machines, as among the moderns, promote
the principal activities of the characters? Less the actions than the
moods of these novels have the epic air. Narrow as Miss Cather's scene
may be, she fills it with a spaciousness and candor of personality that
quite transcends the gnarled eccentricity and timid inhibitions of the
local colorists. Passion blows through her chosen characters like a
free, wholesome, if often devastating wind; it does not, as with Miss
Jewett and her contemporaries, lurk in furtive corners or hide itself
altogether. And as these passions are most commonly the passions of
home-keeping women, they lie nearer to the core of human existence than
if they arose out of the complexities of a wider region.