When I read Willa Cather’s My Ántonia as a teenager, I encountered one such alternative. Ántonia, along with many of the other prairie women of Cather’s novels, represents a feminine spirit at once vivacious and fruitful. Cather’s prairie woman, unlike the influencer or celebrity, is not performative. At first, Cather’s Ántonia is hardly magnanimous. Rather, she’s an eager girl: eager to learn English from and to adventure alongside her neighbor, Jim Burden, Cather’s narrator.