Women on the Frontier in Mia ÁntoniaIn 1891, marking the elimination of the "free land," the Census Bureau announced that the frontier no longer existed (Takaki, A Different Mirror, 225). For large numbers of immigrants from the Old World, the end of the frontier meant constant impoverishment instead of the wealth they dreamed of: it came too late. My Ántonia, however, highlights another frontier, a frontier within America that most immigrants have had to face. It was the frontier between "Americans" and "foreigners." Immigrants were still "foreigners" to the "Americans" who came and settled before. They had to overcome the language and cultural barrier and struggle against harsh living conditions. The novel focuses on the ironic moment in which the frontier spirit - typically American - is realized through "foreigners". Furthermore, it is the women, the "hired girls", who are placed in the foreground in the novel. What America has made is foreigners within, or rather, foreign women on the border. The division between "Americans" and "foreigners" is found throughout the novel. Even if naturalized, immigrants are still “bohemians,” “Russians,” “Norwegian,” and so on. They are foreigners in conception, as Jim Burden's grandmother says: "If these foreigners [Norwegian] are so clannish, Mr. Bushy, we will have to have an American cemetery that will be more liberal-minded..." (emphasis mine 73). According to her, the demarcation between foreigners and Americans is purely cultural: although foreigners are not as clannish and liberal-minded as "Americans...... middle of paper ......an: heterogeneity at interior of a bohemian -American family. The children first learn Bohemian, the parents' native language, and English when they go to school. They eat both American and Bohemian food they are open to a broader experience than their parents Ántonia's first daughter, although married and has left home, is another significant heterogeneity of the family While the early Mormons scattered sunflower seeds on their way to freedom, Ántonia, a frontierswoman, has raised many future citizens of America although they have claimed the end of the frontier, her children may face another type of frontier, but it is clear that it is not the same frontier on which she had to measure her their mother. The frontier returns, but always in a different form.