Jim Burden's fear of "his" Antonia

Finished Willa Cather's "My Antonia" and read through the intro and other supplementary material in the Oxford Lit edition that I borrowed - I knew almost nothing about Cather's life and still of course know only the outlines of her life - but I give her a lot of credit, based on what I know - born with few advantages, uprooted early in life and moved (with her family, unlike the fictional Jim Burden) to the Nebraska prairie, and in this uprooting and this somewhat isolate life she found material to last her a lifetime. She obviously was an outcast and misfit in her society - dressing like a man for most of her adolescence, a behavior or decision that would be reasonably well accepted today, especially in metropolitan areas, but must have been very difficult for her in 19th-century Nebraska, to say the least. Her sexual orientation plays no overt role in My Antonia but, as at least a few critics cited in the intro have noted, sexual orientation plays an oblique role in our interpretation of this ambiguous and complex novel: does she write about Jim Burden and his heterosexual attraction to Antonia because unable to recognize or publicly express her own longings? Is her lesbian orientation part of the reason she cannot develop Jim as a character with a sex drive of any sort? Could be interesting to compare My Antonia with another great novel of a young man attracted to an older, unavailable woman: thinking of Sentimental Education - but notice the differences, in Flaubert the man eventually could get what he desired so deeply, but by that time his youthful desires mean nothing to him. Jim Burden, in My Antonia, on the other hand, finds a fulfillment in Antonia - in a way feels warmest toward her and closest to her - when she does become unavailable: he's not drawn to her when she is a single mother working on a farm and maybe he could have had her for his "sweetheart" or his wife, as he wistfully says (but he does nothing to make this so) - he's drawn to her when he sees her as a happily married farm wife with a brood of 12. He can only feel close to her when she's not available, when she's not a threat.