[jj2me]

I liked it, though wasn't blown over.

Probably the only thing that will stick with me long term is the sidelight about "there are only two or three human stories ..."

"It's queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

I was struck by the lack of fear of anyone in the story from outside sources. The women could walk anywhere with no safety concerns. How civilized, peaceful, and stable that (fictional) place was. What about criminals, deadbeats, passers-through? No human threats of any kind in a pioneer area?

Differences in culture seem to mirror current-day differences between various cultures, like the passage contrasting the Swedes and Norwegians with the French boys, who "liked a bit of swagger."

I feel the same as several others about the character Alexandra. It's like Cather imagined how an even-tempered, logical person would act, but it was over-the-top for me. We all get annoyed to varying degrees, and we all have desires for ourselves. I don't believe such a person as Alexandra can exist. A businesswoman and family leader/matriarch, with all the obstacles and human deception and incompetence that a person performing those roles would encounter, always just pleasantly and effectively plodding along--it just didn't resonate as real human behavior. Her temperament was like that of no person I've met in my life.

I'm pretty sure I missed what her dream meant, the one she said she would tell Carl.

"... she had again, ... the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried lightly by some one very stong... His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the world ..." She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her."

Maybe I'm too literal, but I recall Carl as being described as having narrow shoulders or something to that effect, like a professor's, but not foundations-of-the-world shoulders. Besides, if it was of Carl, all during her girlhood she never actively dreamed of him? It took 40+ years for her subconscious mind to finally point to the only non-family member male that she liked?