Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG
If you know where to look, sex is all over the place in O Pioneers! But, just as Alexandra's innermost feelings and desires form an "underground river," that only surfaces now and then, sexual themes and images are restrained from making a full appearance (3.2.1). Though, for most audiences, it's apparent when the narrator is alluding to something sexual, O Pioneers! doesn't exactly set out to corrupt the youth. This is a PG novel, for sure.
Let's take a closer look at some allusions to sexuality. First off, there's Emil's "revelation" in the church, after Amédée's funeral (4.6.7). Emil is entranced by a performance of the "Ave Maria," a Christian hymn about the mother of Jesus. (Though Emil seems to have a different "Maria" in mind, here.) The more he gets swept up in the music, the more he is driven to new heights of "rapture" concerning Marie Shabata. Check it out:
He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering and without sin. (4.6.6)
If we consider the events that follow this moment of "rapture," when Emil rides feverishly over to the Shabatas' homestead and sleeps with Marie in the orchard, we get the sense there's something the narrator is leaving out, here. To put it bluntly: sex.
Emil is not concerned that it's sinful to love Marie, who's a married woman. He fears it's a sin to lust for her. With his revelation, however, he becomes convinced that his lust is a "rapture" that transcends sin. His lust doesn't disappear; the revelation only liberates him to fulfill his sexual desires.
Maybe that's why the narrator calls his revelation "equivocal," pointing out that he's surely not the only person to have justified unlawful lust in this way (4.6.7). In short, the narrator isn't buying Emil's excuse—though we have to infer the reason why. This adds to our impression that Emil, and, we might add, the novel itself, avoid openly addressing sexuality.
Alexandra
Here, we can also think about the way O Pioneers! portrays Alexandra's sex life (or lack thereof). All we know about her sexual desires is contained in her brief, recurring fantasy, in which "some one very strong" lifts her from her bed and carries her across the fields. Pretty steamy, right? Well, not so much.
It isn't until the end of the novel that Alexandra realizes this fantasy is sexual. For the first time, she glimpses the male figure that is responsible for all this lifting and carrying. His face is invisible, and pretty much all she can see is his arm. And that's when she finally gets it: "His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers" (5.1.28).
This is about as much as we get, as far as steaminess is concerned. If we look more closely at this passage, though, we come away with a few lingering questions. For one, is this male figure even human? He sounds more like a god or superhero. Can he represent Carl, her anything-but-mighty love interest, or is he perhaps a personification of the Divide? We have some more to say about the way the Divide is personified in our section on "Style," and in Alexandra's "Character Analysis." Check it out.