Quote 5
She
lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by
instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was
a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that
something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath
for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning
in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her
hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel
the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All
the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been
so tireless in serving generous emotions.
It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She
was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
This quotation, which concludes Book V,
Chapter I, finds the adult Jim still contemplating
the fascination he feels for Ántonia. Here he attributes her significance
to her nurturing and generous presence, which suggests an enviable
fullness of life. Ántonia evokes “immemorial human attitudes which
we recognize by instinct as universal and true” because she is full
of love and loyalty. As Jim portrays it, Ántonia is a “rich mine
of life,” an inexhaustible source of love and will from which others
draw strength and warmth. This portrayal explains why Ántonia lingers
so prominently in the minds of so many people from Jim’s childhood
(Jim, Lena, the narrator of the introduction). In her presence they
have been filled with the love and strength that she exudes, and
they will never forget the way it made them feel.
Apart from standing as the novel’s final important analysis
of Ántonia, this quote is important because it reveals the psychological changes
that the passage of time has wrought in Jim. Whereas before he avoided
Ántonia for twenty years because he did not want to see the lovely
girl he knew transformed into a hardened, overworked matron, he
can now see beyond Ántonia’s age to her essential inner quality,
which he finds can still “stop one’s breath.” This newfound connection
to the present indicates that Jim can finally move beyond his dreamlike
preoccupation with his nostalgia for his youth and contemplate Ántonia
as more than a symbol of the past.
