Jim gets his chance to show her that he “was a boy and she was a girl” (p. 31) when they are surprised one day by an immense rattlesnake. Thinking quickly, Jim kills the snake, and Antonia is indeed very impressed, calling Jim, in her imperfect English, “just like big mans” (p. 33). Thus are the seeds sown, thinks the reader, for the romance promised by the title as the two characters mature into young adults. Most readers will also see that Cather has transposed to her American Eden the biblical scene in which the serpent introduces sexuality into the lives of Adam and Eve. In Cather’s version, Jim kills off the serpent before it has the chance to tempt Antonia, which perhaps means that our protagonists will be more fortunate than their ancient forebears—or is it less?—and not be expelled from their prairie garden, their innocent pastoral romance. Yet Cather’s understated reenactment of the Fall also suggests that the emotional bond between Jim and Antonia will never be consummated by physical passion, which is, of course, exactly how things turn out.

As the story shifts away from the Divide to Black Hawk, Cather continues to tantalize readers with the prospect of a love affair as her two protagonists emerge into adulthood. Like the other daughters of immigrant farmers working to improve their situation, Ántonia secures a position as a “hired girl” for one of the well-established Black Hawk families. In Jim’s opinion, these “country girls” are “almost a race apart” (p. 120) from the daughters of the prosperous town merchants because of the physical hardships and psychological testing they endured as their families struggled to cultivate the land. When dancing becomes the center of social life for the town’s youth, these vigorous young women catch the eye of many sons of the “good families.” Once Ántonia is discovered by these other young men, Jim begins to describe her in more overtly erotic terms: “She was lovely to see, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a little parted when she danced” (p. 134).

But if Ántonia’s appeal for Jim acquires a new dimension, Cather also undercuts the romantic plot with an almost farcical scene that dramatizes both the depth of Jim’s attachment to Ántonia and the limits of their intimacy. After escorting Antonia home from an evening dance, Jim asks for a goodnight kiss:

“Why, sure, Jim.” A moment later she drew her face away and whispered indignantly, “Why, Jim! You know you ain’t right to kiss me like that. I’ll tell your grandmother on you!”

“Lena Lingard lets me kiss her,” I retorted, “and I’m not half as fond of her as I am of you” (p. 135).

Jim attempts to seize the moment by behaving the way he knows a man should with the woman he desires, but Cather won’t let the boy-man have his way. Instead, Antonia easily repulses the advance and warns Jim not to “get mixed up” with Lena, who has a reputation for letting boys go too far. Responding to Ántonia’s protective-ness, Jim reiterates his affection for her and indulges in a childish fit of pique:

“I don’t care anything about any of them but you,” I said. “And you’ll always treat me like a kid, I suppose.”

She laughed and threw her arms around me. “I expect I will, but you’re a kid I’m awful fond of, anyhow!” (p. 135)

Much is implied beneath the studied innocence of this dialogue. Ántonia and Jim exchange declarations of affection, but they do not follow the expected script of a male-female relationship. For one thing, Antonia assumes a masculine posture simply by maintaining firm control over the situation. Such confident, un-ladylike behavior is consistent with the way in which she responds earlier in the novel to her father’s suicide, when she eagerly takes on the strenuous task of plowing the fields and boasts that she “can work like mans now” (p. 76). Jim, on the other hand, appears somewhat feminized as he acquiesces without putting up a struggle. Of course, because Jim is four years younger than Antonia, this scene of desexualized affection comes across as completely plausible, but it is important to keep in mind that Cather may have created this age difference precisely in order to prevent her two protagonists from relating in the expected romantic fashion.

The extent of Jim’s passivity is brought home once one realizes that Cather is playing off this encounter against a very similar scene that occurs only a few pages earlier. At the close of another evening of dancing, another young man, Harry Paine, also tries to kiss Ántonia, but he responds to her resistance quite aggressively: “he caught her and kissed her until she got one hand free and slapped him” (p. 125). Cather does not by any means suggest that Paine’s behavior deserves praise, especially since it fails to win over Ántonia and Paine disappears from the narrative after this brief episode.