Lena Lingard's change throughout the book "my Antonia" by Willa Cather

Essay by dfine238High School, 11th grade April 2004

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Lena Lingard's change

In the first half of the book Lena evolves slowly but surely as she moves from the country to the little town of black hawk, her progress is shown with the other working girls, yet it's more concentrated on by the author, I believe, to show the importance of this character to the story. Yet in the second half of the book Lena evolver into a business woman, hardly distinguishable from any other person in her city, San Francisco, this change is much more abrupt and also much more anticipated than her previous change. All in all Lena made her way from a socially misfit farm girl to a socially embraced businesswoman, but this change didn't happen overnight she, as the book progressed, evolved, not just physically but mentally as well.

Lena's physical changes were always first to be seen, everything else was always talked about afterwards.

Expressed here, in book two chapter four, "...and there she was brushed and smoothed and dressed like a town girl, smiling at us with perfect composure." Jim cannot believe the change that has taken place in such a short period of time. The move from country to city has changed, at the very least, Lena's outside appearance; she's in a new dress which shows her evolution, this setting change shows that Lena is maturing from a menacing girl to an accepted adolescent. Though not an embraced individual, Lena is now more or less, received as a normal person under the eyes of Black Hawk; it's only later when she's embraced as a person and a business woman. In Lincoln she finally blended in with society as shown in book three chapter two, "she was so quietly conventionalized by her city clothes that I might have passed her on the...