The Professors House
In Willa Cather's The Professor's House, we see a changing persona in Godfrey St. Peter. Early in the story, St. Peter is a man continually looking and preparing for his future, a man who holds dear to his principles and ideals. The story concludes with an almost frail St. Peter, withdrawn from everything he deems important in his life. He abandons everything that has made him who he is and lives in the memory of his lost and "primitive" (Cather 241) youth. He longs for his Kansas boyhood when he truly lived as a boy more aware of the important things in life. It's an insight with reference to the intense memory of his fallen friend Tom Outland, who has become a symbol of St. Peter's lost youth. His growing distaste for society and how his family is caught up in its materialism makes him long for that world he believed to be pure and whole as a young Kansas boy (Hilgart 388). These intense emotions bring him to an indifference to life so great he is willing to accept death. Throughout the entire story, we see St. Peter growing more and more detached from his family. His manner at family dinner parties is mute and passive. Lillian, the professor's wife, has an acute awarene
Finally, we see in the professor a complete fall-out from the personality his family and friends knew. He learns of his family's prompt return and becomes disturbed and almost fearful of them. His homeward bound family has become a symbol and reminder of what he dislikes in his life. They are a contradiction to the perfect world he has rediscovered and threaten to invade it. St. Peter's family accepts his detested world and become a part of it. They are the exact opposite of what he now realizes he is, a man without ambitions, dreams, and future plans in life. He is now seeing through eyes of the Kansas boy; aware of what's important and pure in life. St. Peter has become an out of place orphan of society, not belonging and with no one to go to. It is in this incredible loneliness we see him accept death. Then one evening, the attic stove nearly asphyxiates him in his study; a tomb he has already created by shutting himself off from the family below and the world outside. He lets the stove take him, passively accepting death as a friend who will take him from a world he doesn't accept. Leddy, Michael. "The Professor's House: The Sense of and Ending." Studies in the Novel 23 (1991): 443-449. ss of St. Peter's changing manner yet cannot place it's cause. She lectures him and he gives her the excuse he is merely tired for never "slight [ing] anything" (Cather 143) in his life. St. Peter at this point knows this is a disguise for what he is truly feeling. His problem is the change he sees in his family. This change is mainly due to the introduction of his daughters' husbands, most notably Marsellus. Marsellus, Rosamond's husband, is perhaps the main culprit to this change. His money causes vanity in Rosamond, which in turn evokes jealousy in Kathleen, St. Peter's other daughter. We see the professor's perplexity at Lillian's change in attitude around Marsellus. She becomes caught up in his glitter and excess. Lillian is attracted to his vivacity and eagerness which is an almost an exact contradiction to St. Peter's somber attitude. He remembers his daughters as innocent girls, untainted by the world, and a wife who responded to his youthful exhilaration as she does now to Marsellus. To St. Peter, an unfamiliar family is formed by this change and he, constrained by his values, does not change with them. His uncertainty of them is seen when he tells Lillian the story of Euripides going to live alone in a cave by the sea because his house had not agreed with him. St. Peter says to this, "I wonder whether it was because he (Euripides) had observed women so closely all his life" (Cather 136). The change in St. Peter's family is disappointing to him. He is a man with high expectations, moral
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Approximate Word count = 1843
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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