While Willa Cather lived a very discreet life, modern biographers note that her long-time companion was a woman, in what was most likely a lesbian relationship. Because Cather praises the country in favor of the city, the novel can also be considered a pastoral novel. Cather glorifies frontier values of independence, hard work, and asceticism, and she implicitly contrasts it to the competition and isolation of modern society. Although by the time of the novel's publication, the frontier had already been mostly settled, Cather idealizes the American frontier and depicts it as a perfect alternative to the modern, corrupt world that we now live in. My Antonia follows the second path and offers a vision of the idyllic world of the American West. At other times, they present an idealized view of pre-industrialized, still innocent society (a literary trend called primitivism). Often, modernist works evoke a sense of disillusionment with modern society, a feeling of fragmentation and despair at the increasing trends towards industrialization and urbanization. However, My Antonia presents a distinctly American vision of modernism.

Modernism was a movement that encompassed both sides of the Atlantic (hence the term Anglo-American modernism). While My Antonia follows a conventional plot structure (with the exception of the frame narrative of the introduction), it is full of the rich, complex symbols and detailed character development that characterizes the modernist novel. There was also a greater emphasis on a character's interiority - his thoughts, motivations, and unique consciousness.

Authors innovated with narrative voice and structure, often foregoing linear plots in favor of more creative forms of narration. It reached its peak during the 1920s, and it was characterized by a tone of experimentation. Modernism was a literary movement that began at the very end of the nineteenth century and continued until the end of the 1930s. First published in 1918, My Antonia is a modernist novel.

My antonia by willa cather