The Professor's House - Willa Cather

Willa Cather’s novel focuses on an aging professor who is facing the challenges of change. Unfortunately, his family members do not share his beliefs and he must cope with loneliness in his own, old ways. Willa Cather creates a variety of contradicting ideas in her novel The Professor’s House. She introduces opposite sisters, friends who share conflicting ideas, and a common theme of new versus old.

Cather introduces two sisters, Professor Godfrey St. Peter’s two daughters, Kathleen and Rosamond. All the two have in common is their childhood memories. After marriage, Rosamond indulged herself into a life of luxury with her husband. Rosamond also differs from her husband primarily based on their attitudes toward everyone besides each other. She does not maintain a generous attitude nor does she wish to see her items go to waste while her husband is willing to allow others to enjoy their items if they are not being put to good use. When they are ready to move to their new home, her husband suggests letting Kathleen and her husband look through the items they are not using. Rosamond’s initially “looked at him in astonishment” (145) making it clear that she does not want to give up her things. She is a selfish materialistic woman with a husband to mooch off of.

On the other hand, Kathleen is also married, but does not have a large income from her husband, who is a journalist. Kathleen has always admired her sister until she married. Now she simply envies her for her looks and belongings. However, she maintains a much kinder heart and attitude and loves her husband, especially for his extra work, motivation, and sacrifice for her. After marriage, Kathleen strongly differs from her sister, even in the fact that she visits her father in his old study to check on him; she puts her family before material items.

In addition, Cather includes Tom Outland’s story, which completely interrupts the story of Professor St. Peter. One possible reason is to show the difference between the new modern world and the old antique world. Tom and his friend Roddy Blake discover a ground on which Indians used to live before the tribe suffered extinction. Tom travels to Washington with the hopes of finding archaeologists to analyze the area and learn more about the country’s history. However, the capitol was not interested in the same knowledge. Instead, the officials whom Tom needed to meet with would only meet for an expensive lunch, on Tom. The wealthy officials were not interested in history; they were only interested in money. This represents a significant difference between the modern world and the past. Everyone is only interested in the value of an item as opposed to the item itself.

Tom was an old world man and saw the value in all of the pottery and other belongings in the area. Unfortunately, Roddy didn’t maintain the same values and beliefs that Tom had and sold all of the items to a German man for a large sum of money. Roddy said that “he knew I cared about the things, and was proud of them, but he’d always supposed I meant to ‘realize’ on them, just as he did, and that it would come to money in the end” 220). Tom’s anger expressed toward him did not relate to the money that they earned; instead, he was upset that his friend would simply give up the value of some great pieces of history to some passerby. Tom did not have a materialistic mindset, nor did he wish to gain top dollar for his discovery. He wanted the items to fall into the right hands: the hands of people who could appreciate history and the work that the Indians put into their home and belongings.

The character that most represented the struggle of transition from the old world to the new modern world is Professor Godfrey St. Peter himself. The professor builds a new house to improve his family’s lifestyle, but he is unhappily accepting this change. Instead of building a new study for his work, he continues to work in his old study. This represents that he is not able to cope with such a significant change in his lifestyle. Early in the novel, the professor transfers his unhappiness into a question asked by a student regarding the progression of technology. His complains that the people of the modern world simply rest on the luxuries of technology. He basically complains about the laziness of the modern age and wishes to maintain his work ethic. Therefore, he transfers his energy into trying to hold on to his previous lifestyle in his old house. As an example, he exclaims, “I can’t have this room changed if I’m going to work here” (10) when Augusta, the seamstress, is about to take her forms to the new house. He cannot accept the change in his lifestyle which parallels with his failure to accept the modern world.