O Pioneers!

“‘My God, girl, what a head of hair!’ he exclaimed, quite innocently and foolishly. She stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew in her lower lip—most unnecessary severity. It gave the little clothing drummer such a start that he actually let his cigar fall to the sidewalk and went off weakly in the teeth of the wind to the saloon.”

Alexandra is a beautiful woman, but her beauty is useless when it comes to her true passion: building and maintaining her family’s farm. Alexandra’s unwillingness to engage in flirtations with men and her fierceness are subversive for a woman of this time. Alexandra is uninterested in male attention and discourages their flirtations through a stereotypically masculine attitude that the novel even likens to violence; a look from her “stabs” her admirer.

“The light fell upon the two sad young faces that were turned mutely toward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the sombre eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking into the past.”

Lost innocence and youth characterize both Carl and Alexandra. Alexandra is “anguished” over the future, while Carl misses the past. This implies that neither character is able to live in the present moment because the present is too difficult and full of struggle. This reflects the struggle to survive in pioneering spaces: There is no time for young people to be carefree, so they either dream of a different future or mourn the pasts they might have had.

“Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”

Isolation characterizes the pioneer lifestyle. When a group of people are settling unchartered territories, they are wholly divorced from human communities and human society. This can be “depressing and disheartening”—a constant reminder of their isolation and their enormous undertaking.