This is my writing process for the English 209 Research Writing class. It includes a proposal for a topic, an annotated bibliography, research notes, and the final draft (in that order).
Lindsey Anderson
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/6/2012
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/6/2012
The Professor’s House
The Professor’s House (1925) by Willa Cather encompasses many themes; the most important being childhood dreams that were long forgotten. How are adults able to reconcile dreams that were left in the past and pushed aside for bigger and better things? Godfrey St. Peter has discovered a way to do this, through his protege Tom Outland. Throughout life St. Peter has put his all into his career, his wife, and his two daughters and everything seems to go awry when he decides he wants some time for himself. Thus, he begins to lead a “double life.” One part of his life is spent with his family although he isn’t there mentally, only physically. The other half is spent in his tiny study at his old house daydreaming about his dead friend Tom and what his life could have been like had he not made the choices he did. Cather uses St. Peter as a empathetic character to any adult who has pushed their dreams aside to live life the “way it is supposed to be lived.” Tom Outland came into St. Peter’s life to break up the monotony but he left rather abruptly causing St. Peter to fall into a depressive state. His materialistic daughters and overbearing wife don’t make things easier which is why he decides he must stow away to his old home and work there so he can concentrate on finishing his volumes of work.
Cather uses unconventional point of views to add depth to this story that is charismatic and beautifully depicted with descriptions of New Mexican landscapes. She has three sections in her book, two of which are third person point of view with a focus on St. Peter and his emotions. The other section is the story of Tom Outland as told by Tom Outland so it is a first person narrative. By doing this, Cather lets the reader see into Tom’s life and why St. Peter cares for the boy and develops a relationship with him. To draw the reader in, she uses vivid details of the desert. To keep the reader interested she exploits St. Peter and his double life. For my short research paper I want to argue that Cather’s depiction of Tom Outland and St. Peter’s relationship is not homosexual as John Anders says, but rather it is St. Peter’s way of living out the life he could have had if he had made different choices. His decisions have made him repress emotions that he carries around. Tom Outland is the cure to this repressed state. Ander’s reading seems to be the prevailing claim by most Cather experts so I will argue that the claim of homosexuality is incorrect and the relationship is an emotional bond between two men, like a father-son relationship. [[This is an interesting and provocative claim. Is Anders’ reading of the relationship the prevailing one by Cather critics? If so, then you are breaking new ground. If Anders’ reading is a rogue one, then what is the prevailing reading (if there is one)? In other words, what do you add to the conversation about this novel? Finally, I’m interested in your phrasing: “it is St. Peter’s way of living out the life he could have had if he had made different choices in life.” What choices might he have undone or made differently? Do you read St. Peter as regretful--wishing he had made other choices, and which ones? Was he prevented from making certain choices or forced to make others? Can you develop and state more specifically this central point?]]
Lindsey Anderson
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/20/2012
Anders, John P. "Engendered Space in The Professor's House." Willa Cather's
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/20/2012
Anders, John P. "Engendered Space in The Professor's House." Willa Cather's
Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1999. 97-117. Print.
Anders speaks of a homoerotic theme in The Professor’s House between St. Peter and Tom Outland. He states that their relationship is “overtly eroticized,” (Anders 99) and says that Tom Outland’s background has an “erotic auora,” (Anders 101). Anders’ article is the counter-evidence to my argument so I will be using aspects of this article to prove my thesis further. [[Good.]]
Arnold, Marilyn. "The Function of Structure in Cather's The Professor's House."
Colby Quarterly 11.3 (1975): 169-78. Colby Quarterly. Berkley Electronic
Press. Web. 14 Feb. 2012.
Arnold writes that The Professor’s House has three books because it shows the separation between St. Peter and his family. She goes on to state that materialism is a part of the professor’s breaking off from his family. Stating, “The basic movement of the book is from society to solitude,
from the social man to the solitary man,” (Arnold 170). I find this article useful because of the discussion of spatial structure in the novel as well as the mention of the consumer culture.
Burrows, Stuart. "Losing the Whole in the Parts: Identity in The Professor's
House." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and
Theory 64.4 (2008): 21-48. Project Muse. Web. 1 Feb. 2012.
Burrows article is arguing that of which Michaels wrote about Cather’s modernism. He states, “Cather’s fiction (one’s desires, needs, and experiences) repeatedly takes place by living through someone else or experiencing oneself as someone else,” (Burrows 24). This article will be useful when I am discussing the father-son relationship between St. Peter and Outland and disproving Anders homoerotic theory.
Gullon, Ricardo. "On Space in the Novel." Critical Inquiry 2.1 (1975): 11-28. JSTOR. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.
Gullon’s article has no mention of the text The Professor’s House. Gullon
discusses the structure of a novel and the space (both physically and metaphorically) that a novel consists of. He makes references to different authors and poets to emphasize the meaning of “literary space.” He categorizes space into different sections making it easy to decipher what I would like to use in my research paper. “Literary space is that of the text; it is there that it exists, and it is there that it has an operative force. What is not in the text though is reality itself, irreducible to a written form,” (Gullon 12). This is an interesting point that Gullon makes using a physics point of view.
Leddy, Michael. ""Distant and Correct" The Double Life and The Professor's
House." Cather Studies 3.1 (1996): 182-96. EBSCO. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.
Leddy discusses the “double life” that St. Peter lives throughout the
novel. He includes information on spatial structure in the novel as well
as parallels such as Cliff City and Hamilton. This source will be useful
when discussing the relationship of St. Peter and Tom Outland and the
parallels that exist within it.
Lucenti, Lisa Marie. "Willa Cather's 'The Professor's House': sleeping with the
dead." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 41.3 (1999): 236+.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.
Lucenti focuses on St. Peter and his memories of Outland, his life before a career and marriage, and his feelings of loneliness. She states, “Tom Outland is not merely one ghost within the text, but many each one contained within and animated by a different character's memory of him,” (Lucenti). Lucenti represents all of the characters and their views on memories and how they saw Tom. Interesting article that I will come back to for information when writing about St. Peter.
Maguire, James H. "Fiction of the West." The Columbia History of the American
Novel. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 437-64. Print.
This source just has one great quote that I will be putting in my research
notes to use in the paper. Not a source that will show up since it doesn’t specifically relate to my paper.
Michaels, Walter Benn. "The Vanishing American." American Literary History
2.2 (1990): 220-41. JSTOR. Web. 3 Feb. 2012.
Michaels discusses the transformation into the consumer culture and
what it meant to be materialistic. He states, “Cather participates in a
more general discussion of what was perceived to be a crisis in
contemporary American culture, a discussion that, as it began to raise
questions about the nature of culture itself, tended increasingly to focus
on the American Indian,” (Michaels 228). This article has a lot of
historical facts within it. It could be used for a quote or possibly
reference, but will not be a major source.
Murphy, John J. "Burden, St. Peter, and Latour: Cather's Modernist
Traditionalist Personae." Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 42 (2009): 27+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Feb. 2012.
Murphy’s approach to this article encapsulates the isolation of St. Peter and his different ways of escaping reality. He takes Cather’s personal life into account and compares it to the character she created, St. Peter. This could possibly be useful for a reference, but may not make it into the actual paper.
Schwind, Jean. "This Is a Frame-Up: Mother Eve in The Professor's House."
Cather Studies. Vol. 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1993. 72-89. Print.
Schwind writes about an important but often over-looked character, Mother Eve. Schwind also mention s a few parallels such as, “Duchene’s misreading of Eve is paralleled within the novel proper by Godfrey St. Peter’s consistent misreading of his own “ladies and his consequent misperception of Tom Outland,” (77-78). She also mentions the physical space in both the old and new houses. The article includes information about the feminine structures and the lack of femininity in St. Peter. [[This is a great later addition to your research. I’m glad you added it!]]
Wallace, Honor M. ""An Orgy of Acquisition" The Female Consumer, Infidelity,
and Commodity Culture in A Lost Lady and The Professor's House." Willa
Cather and Material Culture: Real-world Writing, Writing the Real World.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2005. 144-55. Print.
Wallace writes about three different Cather novels but focuses on
materialism of Rosamond in The Professor’s House. He states, “The
difference [...] between good consumption and bad is twofold and in both
cases gender-specific,” (Wallace 151-152). He compares Tom’s manner to consumerism to Rosamond’s and announces that Tom “was the masculine provider,” (Wallace 153). This material can be used to write about how materialism came between the St. Peter family.
Woodress, James. "The Composition of The Professor's House." Writing the
American Classics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1990. 106-24.
Print.
Woodress discusses the process that Cather went through while writing The Professor’s House. This section of the book gives a lot of biographical information about Cather and how she relates herself to St. Peter. This will be useful for reference when discussing St. Peter and his relationship to Outland.
Lindsey Anderson
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/24/2012
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
2/24/2012
Research Notes
* My notes are in purple and quotes from research are in black *
Anders, John P. "Engendered Space in The Professor's House." Willa Cather's
Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1999. 97-117. Print.
(99) “the friendship between Professor St. Peter and Tom Outland is more overly eroticized.”
(103) “Cather evokes male friendship, and when she metaphorically opens a window, the view is very often homoerotic.”
(105) “she makes her pine trees part of her modernism, conflating identity and sexuality as well as dreams and desire.”
(109) “Tom’s blanket [...] charges romantic friendship with erotic feelings.” This blanket is just a token of remembrance for St. Peter of Tom.
(116) “The professor could once face a family dinner only after reminiscing about Tom Outland or his youthful adventures in France with the Thierault brothers; that fortifying impulse, however, now is gone.” This could possibly be because the professor needed to be in a child-like state to deal with family matters, not because he had to think of a previous homoerotic love for his protege.
Arnold, Marilyn. "The Function of Structure in Cather's The Professor's House."
Colby Quarterly 11.3 (1975): 169-78. Colby Quarterly. Berkley Electronic
Press. Web. 14 Feb. 2012.
(169) “The Professor's House is concerned principally with the conflict between society and solitude, between community and isolation-a conflict dramatized graphically in the person of Professor Godfrey St. Peter and echoed in Tom Outland.” - This is the meaning behind the three separate books in the novel.
(170) “It is clear that what is really separating St. Peter from his family is the ideal represented in Tom Outland and the mesa. It is an ideal of non-materialism, solitude, and primitive oneness with the landscape.” - Good quote for when comparing the two men.
Burrows, Stuart. "Losing the Whole in the Parts: Identity in The Professor's
House." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and
Theory 64.4 (2008): 21-48. Project Muse. Web. 1 Feb. 2012.
(24) “The Professor’s later rather more literal experience of a “second youth”—his regression to his childhood self at the end of the novel— can therefore be seen less as a reaction to the reproductive threat posed by Louie than as the logical endpoint of Cather’s sense that familial relations are a matter not only—as Michaels contends—of inheritance, but of identification.” - Another reason why the professor pushes his family away (physical space). He does not want to become Louie. He wants to stay 100% American.
(24) “discovering who one is in Cather’s fiction (one’s desires, needs, and experiences) repeatedly takes place by living through someone else or experiencing oneself as someone else.” - Proves that it’s not a homoerotic relationship, but the professor trying to live through Tom.
(27) “Unlike everyone else in his family, it seems, the Professor cannot
become someone else, not even for a moment.” - Everyone has chosen a different identity than the one they were born with. The professor can’t, so he withdraws.
Cather, Willa. The Professor's House. New York: Vintage Classics, 1990. Print.
(5) “His walled-in garden...” One type of space, much like his attic study...walled in.
(19)“...but his misfortune was that he loved youth - he was weak to it, it kindled him,” Wanting to be young again. Youth could also be Tom Outland.
(24) “‘Surely you’ll admit that you like having your own bath,” (physical space causing more separation from family)
(35) “St. Peter awoke the next morning with the wish that he could be transported on his mattress from the new house to the old.” More physical space mentioned.
(36) “‘Nice hands,” he murmured, looking critically at them as he took it, “always such nice hands.” First mention of hands (second mention are Tom’s hands). Counterpoint to homosexual reading.
(57) “‘it’s hardly dignified to think aloud in such company. It’s in rather bad taste.” Lillian says this to correct her husband’s behavior. She believes that his students aren’t intelligent enough to understand his views on life.
(65) “She was intensely interested in the success and happiness of these two young men, lived in their careers as she had once done in his.” Lillian giving all of her attention to the son-in-laws rather than focusing on her marriage. Revenge for when St. Peter only focused on Tom Outland?
(70) “‘It’s not her clothes, it’s a feeling she has inside her.” Kathleen commenting on Rosamond and how her attitude has changed since she married Louie.
(71) “‘He and all this money have ruined her.” But Kathleen is jealous, so this makes her just as bad because she envies the money, clothes, and other belongings that her sister has.
(75) Professor and wife go to Chicago for lectures along with Rosamond and Louie. Professor acts a little differently. Different space makes him have different personalities. At his study he is open-minded and responds to questions or comments with ease and he thinks before he speaks. At his new home, he often speaks before he thinks or he doesn’t speak at all.
(78) “‘it’s been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged.’” St. Peter regretting the choices he made early in his life.
(84) “He had grown to like the reminders of herself that she left in his work-room - especially the toilettes upon the figures. Sometimes she made those terrible women entirely plausible.” Mannequins are representative of his daughters. He used to see them as little girls, but now they are women without personalities...a blank canvas that is molded by the men that they have married.
(103) “the muscular, many-lined palm, the long, strong fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master. What a hand!” St. Peter describing Tom’s hand.
(107) “He couldn’t have wished for a better companion for his daughters, and they were teaching Tom things that he needed more than mathematics.” Tom learning about life and how to love while the girls are learning about history.
(133) “his clothes covered with dust, his eyes closed, a dead cigar hanging between the relaxed fingers of his dark, muscular hand.” Scott seeing St. Peter on his way home from Chicago from helping Rosie pick out furniture. This is the first time the reader gets a messy physical description of the professor and it’s rather depressing and he seems much older than he really is. Also the mention of a hand again.
(135) “‘I should say she had a faultless purchasing manner. Wonder where a girl who grew up in that old house of ours ever got it.’” St. Peter tried to raise his daughters to be unmaterialistic but was not successful.
(140) “Since Rosamond’s marriage to Marsellus, both she and her mother had changed bewilderingly in some respects - changed and hardened.” Became dependent on material things to keep them happy whereas St. Peter strove away from this mindset.
(150) “Lillian and the Marselluses sailed for France early in May.” Physical space between family and the Professor.
(159) Beginning of Outland’s story. This section is told by St. Peter through Willa Cather. Not a reliable narration of what happened since Tom himself isn’t telling it because he is dead.
(168) “The cabin stood in a little grove of pinons, about thirty yards back from the Cruzados river, facing south and sheltered on the north by a low hill.” “It was the sort of place a man would like to stay in forever.” A space that Tom and Roddy had that the Professor is remembering. The second quote could possibly be the Professor’s own thoughts of the cabin (parallel to his study?)
(179) “I saw a little city of stone, asleep.” Tom finding “Cliff City.” More physical space. Described in detail on page 180-181.
(203) Tom’s arrival into Washington DC. Much different than anywhere he has ever been before. Spent a lot of time there and got nowhere. Trip lasts from page 203 - 213.
(214) Tom finds out that Blake sold all of the “treasures” they had found at Cliff City to a German. Tom feels betrayed.
(216) “I had never told him how I felt about those things we’d dug out together, it was the kind of thing one doesn’t talk about directly.” Tom feels that Roddy should have been able to tell that the things from Cliff City meant a lot to him even though he didn’t say so.
(224) “I went to sleep that night hoping I would never waken.” Parallel to how the professor feels about his life.
(229) “Anyone who requites faith and friendship as I did, will have to pay for it.” The professor and Tom were friends, and the professor paid for the friendship by losing his family. Tom paid for his friendship with Roddy by losing Roddy.
(233) “All the most important things in his life...had been determined by chance.” “Tom Outland had been a stroke of chance he couldn’t possibly have imagined.” St. Peter had no control over his life, he let his life control him...left things up to chance, therefore things didn’t turn out the way he would have hoped.
(235) This page mentions trips that the Professor and Tom took together. Father-son bonding as well as intellectual bonding.
(237) “He had escaped all that. He had made something new in the world - and the rewards, the meaningless conventional gestures, he had left to others.” Tom created a name for himself then left the world before he could be bought into the consumer culture.
(240) “His career, his wife, his family, were not his life at all, but a chain of events which had happened to him. All these things had nothing to do with the person he was in the beginning.” Chance led him into this life. These are the things that shaped the professor and caused him to become depressed. Tom Outland cured his saddened state while he was present, but now the professor feels as if he has lost his old self all over again.
(240) “the design of his life had been the work of this secondary social man, the lover.” Blaming Lillian for his life turning out the way it did.
(241) “He seemed to know...that he was solitary and must always be so...” Even though he was surrounded by family, he felt as if he should have lived a life as a lone man, not a family man.
(257) “Perhaps the mistake was merely in an attitude of mind. He had never learned to live without delight.” Reminiscing on life and how joyless he had let it become.
(258) “he had felt no will to resist [dying], but he had let chance take its way, as it had done with him so often.” Knows that everyone must die, so instead of resisting it, he almost welcomes it into his life.
Gullon, Ricardo. "On Space in the Novel." Critical Inquiry 2.1 (1975): 11-28.
JSTOR. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.
-(12)“One of the functions of the narrative "I" is to produce this verbal space, to give a context for the motion which constitutes the novel; a space that is not a reflection of anything but, rather, an invention of the invention which is the narrator, whose perceptions (transferred to images) engender it.” - This quote can be used when talking about Tom Outland’s part of the story. It is actually St. Peter’s version through Willa Cather. The material is being told through hearsay through St. Peter, the character that Willa Cather created. How reliable is Outland’s story?
(15) “A second observation is related to the possibility of linking the treatment of space to the formation of an ideology.” - Cather uses space to give us a different perspective of Tom Outland and to create his presence in the story.
(17) Page 17 speaks of silent space and what it means. This is important because the professor is often quiet while reminiscing. He doesn’t talk much and when he does, it’s usually one or two sentences, not a long speech (minus the speech he gives to Miller, the student at university).
(19) “Every day we experience the dual or triple space which we occupy and in which we function.”The professor lives like this, living in a physical world to which he does not have much interaction, but the interaction in his brain and his thinking is a different type of space.
(26)“Space determines distance, and not only physical but psychological distance as well.” - The professor’s space both in his study and in his mind seem to coincide.
Jacobs, John. "The Professor's House." Modern American Novel. Shenandoah
University, Winchester, VA. 22 Feb. 2012. Lecture.
“Tom Outland is the mannequin that everyone puts a different set of clothes on.” (Lecture)
Leddy, Michael. ""Distant and Correct" The Double Life and The Professor's
House." Cather Studies 3.1 (1996): 182-96. EBSCO. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.
(185)“Both Cliff City and the attic study are a matter of difficult travel” - Each space has their own obstacles to overcome before being able to arrive at the destination.
(187) The Blue Mesa and St. Peter’s garden have many parallels. . - Possibly why their relationship is close. They bond over the things that made them happy.
- Use this source when composing the paper. No specific quotes really stand out, but when I reach a certain topic it may come in handy.
Maguire, James H. "Fiction of the West." The Columbia History of the American
Novel. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 437-64. Print.
(441) “She [Cather] gave her novels an apparent simplicity that masks an underlying complexity of style, structure, and material.” Great quote to use in the beginning or end of the paper.
Michaels, Walter Benn. "The Vanishing American." American Literary History
2.2 (1990): 220-41. JSTOR. Web. 3 Feb. 2012.
(234) “But Tom calls such "substitutions" "sad" and they are, in any case, ineffective: he is himself betrayed by Roddy (as the Professor is by Rosie) and Louie gets himself "related to" the books just as he got himself related to Tom, "by marriage."” This could be why Tom and St. Peter have a close bond as well. They were both “betrayed” by those they cared for.
Schwind, Jean. "This Is a Frame-Up: Mother Eve in The Professor's House."
Cather Studies. Vol. 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1993. 72-89. Print.
(72) “Compositionally, Tom’s story is set within the St. Peters’ story “like a turquoise set in dull silver” (epigraph).” Use in section talking about Outland.
Sedgwick, Eve K. "Across Gender, Across Sexuality: Willa Cather and Others."
The South Atlantic Quarterly 88.1 (1989): 53-72. Print.
(69)“Each of these refractions seems moreover to be a way of telling the same story: the story of how expensive and wasteful a thing creative energy is, and how intimately rooted in a plot of betrayal of exploitation: Tom Outland’s conscious and empowering betrayal of his beloved friend on the mesa, the Professor’s self-decieved expropriation of the labor, vitality, and money of his wife and daughters.” - A parallel that is important to the relationship of Outland and St. Peter.
Wallace, Honor M. ""An Orgy of Acquisition" The Female Consumer, Infidelity,
and Commodity Culture in A Lost Lady and The Professor's House." Willa
Cather and Material Culture: Real-world Writing, Writing the Real World.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2005. 144-55. Print.
(151)“And yet there may be some question as to what exactly is wrong with Rosamond’s habits of consumption.” -It’s wrong because she is using Tom Outland’s money (her dead fiance) to furnish her new home that is much too extravagant. She is using his money to show that she has money.
(152) “Rosamond’s buying power emphasizes display and promiscuity...” This is why her father pulls away. Does not want his daughter to have this image (on the train when he sees Scott on his way back to Hamilton)
(153) Outland is “masculine provider” - shows no feminine qualities just like the professor. Each lack a meaningful relationship with a woman, so they use friendship to bond with one another, like a father-son bond since St. Peter can’t get along with any women.
Woodress, James. "The Composition of The Professor's House." Writing the
American Classics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1990. 106-24.
Print.
(106) “”Tom Outland’s Story,” the long self-containted tale that Cather inserted in the middle of the novel, already had been written. Its genesis lay eight years in the past...” One reason why the spatial structure in this novel is so different.(109) “[The professor] is strangely discontented with life and reluctant to face the future.” Mid-life crisis, life going on without him.
(114) “His [St. Peter] problem is the problem of every thinking person: how does one live in a world of change?”
(117) “While the professor goes through his midlife crisis, he lives much in his memories.” Memories not just of Tom, but of Lillian and his keeping Kathleen one summer as well.
(119) “Tom had appeared one day out of nowhere while he was writing his history and had grown closer to him than a younger brother.” Familial relationship.
Lindsey Anderson
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
3/18/2012
Dr. Michelle Brown
ENG 209
3/18/2012
The Space Between Relationships in The Professor’s House
American novels written during the first part of the twentieth century introduced new writing techniques and forms that helped make the plot and characters more memorable and meaningful. One of those techniques is how the novel is structured. Spatial structure in a novel is one of the most important aspects that adds depth to a book. The Professor’s House (1925) by Willa Cather has many types of space contained within the text because of the different sections as well as the many spaces that the characters live or work in. Both of these types of space contribute to the meaning of the novel as well as the relationships that are carried out during the course of the narrative. There are spaces such as the Blue Mesa and Cliff City which are landscapes as well as spaces that occupy a house like studies and gardens. Spatial structure is used in this novel to magnify the relationships between the main character, Professor St. Peter and those he interacts with: Tom Outland, Lillian, and his daughters, Rosamond and Kathleen. Each section emphasizes a part of St. Peter’s life and the relationships that he holds with others. The Professor’s House is composed of three sections: “The Family,” “Tom Outland’s Story,” and “The Professor.” Each section represents a different aspect of St. Peter’s life such as past (“Tom Outland’s Story”), present (“The Family”), and future (“The Professor”). Readers often think that the middle section about Tom Outland is abrupt, when in fact it is a break from the monotony of St. Peter’s life. Cather wrote the story of the Professor around the story of Tom Outland as James Woodress says, ““Tom Outland’s Story,” the long self-contained tale that Cather inserted in the middle of the novel, already had been written. Its genesis lay eight years in the past,” (Woodress 106). Even before I delve into the space inside the book, there are already two types of space that need to be discussed: the space of time that Cather took to compose the text as well as the spacing of the three sections.
It is well known that The Professor’s House is partly autobiographical because of the similarities between Cather and St. Peter. Woodress points out some of these parallels in his essay, “The Composition of The Professor’s House” saying, “The same age as Cather, the professor was born on a farm on the shores of Lake Michigan, which has for him the same emotional pull that the mountains of the Shenandoah Valley had for Cather,” (Woodress 111). These similarities are important to point out because St. Peter is the main character in the novel so his personality and interactions with others are what build the novel and eventually the outcome of his future. Cather shaped the character of the professor around Tom Outland’s story and created a work of literature that recognizes the up and coming consumer culture as well as how relationships (or lack thereof) can form how a person acts towards others. “The Family” section befits both of these descriptions in The Professor’s House.
“The Family” is the first section in the novel which is fitting because it is the current situation in St. Peter’s life. During this part, Cather develops all of the characters including a little of Tom Outland. St. Peter, the focus of the novel, seems to be headed towards a mid-life crisis. He is weathered down by his family because they have adapted to the consumer culture when he has not. Both of his daughters are now married and living their own lives while his wife has taken on a new love: Louie and Scott (St. Peters’ sons-in-laws). Although this section is entitled “The Family” it is mainly about how St. Peter has come to despise them. This part of the novel builds up a certain amount of suspense and makes the reader wonder about the sanity of St. Peter and if he will even survive the entirety of the novel. He has come to his mid-life crisis thinking, “how does one live in a world of change?” (Woodress 114) which is why “Tom Outland’s Story” is set in the middle of the novel.
The story of Outland is the most talked over section in The Professor’s House. As Jean Schwind says, “Compositionally, Tom’s story is set within the St. Peters’ story “like a turquoise set in dull silver” (epigraph),” (Schwind 72). Tom’s story is refreshing to the depressing stories of St. Peter. In this section Cather writes from a first person narrative, though it is unreliable since Tom is dead at the beginning of the novel. The narrative is actually told through St. Peter, so the reader sees an idealized version of Tom and his past. This part of the novel emphasizes the past and there is no mention of St. Peter or his town of Hamilton. Ricardo Gullon gives some meaning to this type of narration that Cather uses by saying, “One of the functions of the narrative "I" is to produce this verbal space, to give a context for the motion which constitutes the novel; a space that is not a reflection of anything but, rather, an invention of the invention which is the narrator, whose perceptions (transferred to images) engender it,” (Gullon 12). By telling Tom’s story from this point of view, a reader can see Tom from a different perspective and his interactions with someone other than St. Peter and his family. This section adds depth to the meaningful relationship that Tom and St. Peter build upon once they meet.
“The Professor” is the third and final section of Cather’s work. Unlike “The Family,” this part is dreary and dismal, not only because St. Peter nearly dies, but because of the outcome of his near death experience. St. Peter feels that instead of dying, he must go on but “He doubted whether his family would ever realize that he was not the same man they had said good-bye to,” (Cather 258). St. Peter’s future looks bleak to him, but he knows he must go on because that is life and life is an obligation. His depressed state comes from his feeling that “Unlike everyone else in his family, it seems, the Professor cannot become someone else, not even for a moment.” - Everyone has chosen a different identity than the one they were born with,” (Burrows 27). The professor’s study becomes his sanctuary, his special space, from his family and what they have become.
St. Peter has two spaces that he frequents on a daily basis: his new house and his old house. The old house is his one true love, the place where he can be at peace with his thoughts of the past. The new house is full of consumer culture and things he wishes to avoid at all costs. The old house is described with gloomy details such as being “painted the colour of ashes,” (Cather 3), with “wobbly stair treads,” (Cather 3), and “a slanting floor and sagging steps,” (Cather 3). His cherished study seems to be the only pleasing space, though the word “pleasing” could be debated since he refers to the house as being a, “dead, empty house,” (Cather 7). His study had one window overlooking Lake Michigan and two “forms” that his sewing-woman Augusta used to make clothing for his wife and daughters. These mannequins are important to the space because St. Peter uses them to remember the past; often how his daughters used to play in the garden below or how he and his wife used to be in love. Gullon notes, “Space determines distance, and not only physical but psychological distance as well,” (Gullon 26). The study and St. Peter seem to be one with each other because St. Peter not only writes and works in the study, he dreams about his past and dreads his future. The new house is everything that St. Peter is against which is why most of his time is spent at the old house.
The new house that has just been built for the St. Peter family is cold and distant to the professor. The rooms are large and create a separation from the family even more than it already is. Lillian, St. Peter’s wife, had the builder craft St. Peter his own bedroom and bathroom. She says to St. Peter, “’Surely you’ll admit that you like having your own bath,’” (Cather 24). This is Lillian’s way of coaxing her husband to say what she wants him to say. The new house is also full of materialism and consumer culture. This is what St. Peter hates most about it. They had a maid who served dinner, but “the electric bell, under the table, wasn’t connected as yet,” (Cather 28) so Lillian was having trouble getting the maid’s attention to serve the next course. This extravagance, in St. Peter’s mind, is outrageous and not necessary in their new home because it wasn’t necessary in their old. St. Peter’s garden in his old home is also an important space because it is his luxury; his only one at that. The garden that St. Peter creates is French in style and has no grass although it supports the life of different species of trees and flowers. St. Peter’s memories, not only of his once loving family, but also of Tom Outland, his student and protégé, are in the old house and will remain there forever.
Tom Outland is a character of many faces. He seems to change with each person he encounters making him the, “mannequin that everyone puts a different set of clothes on,” (Jacobs). Since his character is unreliable and somewhat unrealistic, the space that his character is in becomes more significant to the novel itself. In “Tom Outland’s Story,” the reader discovers a world that was long forgotten, much like Tom himself. The Blue Mesa is a vast, open space with a feeling of pureness and land that is untouched by the consumer culture. Tom and his only friend Rodney Blake travel to the mesa for work in the cattle herding business. The space of the mesa is vital to the story because it often is paralleled with what is happening in Tom and Rodney’s relationship. Tom’s relationship with Rodney begins with a rough start; Tom must help out Rodney because he has gotten drunk at a poker game and needs help getting his winnings and himself home. Rodney sees Tom as a friend because Tom didn’t steal his money, so this made him trustworthy. In return, when Tom gets pneumonia, Rodney is by his side caring for him every step of the way. This develops a bond of a younger brother looking up to an older brother. When they head to the mesa they are in good spirits and want to explore when they have free time. Their explorations lead to the findings of “Cliff City” as they end up calling it. Eventually their relationship deteriorates because Rodney breaks Tom’s trust by selling some of their findings from “Cliff City” to a German traveler.
“Cliff City” is a place in the mesa that Tom discovers then shows Rodney. It is full of artifacts of which Tom and Rodney are excited to investigate together. These dwellings appeal to them because they are full of history as well. Neither Tom nor Rodney have much of a history: Tom’s parents died young and he went to work at an early age. Cather doesn’t give any history on Rodney other than the fact he works on the railroads and seems a little shy. These two bond over the finding of “Cliff City” because it gives them something to attach themselves to as well as a way to possibly make money, but this is not at the forefront of their minds. Once the trust of Rodney and Tom is broken, Rodney leaves and Tom is left to pursue “Cliff City” himself. Eventually this falls short and Tom knows he must leave the mesa to search other parts of the country. The appeal of the mesa also subsides in Tom’s mind and he knows that a change is needed, so he moves on. Tom says of the mesa, “Something had happened in me that made it possible for me to co-ordinate and simplify,” (Cather 226) which is counteracting to the material culture that the rest of the world is diving into. Marilyn Arnold states, “It is clear that what is really separating St. Peter from his family is the ideal represented in Tom Outland and the mesa. It is an ideal of non-materialism, solitude, and primitive oneness with the landscape.” (Arnold 170). This small reference that Tom makes is what St. Peter is drawn to when he first meets Tom in his garden.
The relationships that St. Peter has with the other characters in the book are developed more thoroughly by using spatial structure in both physical descriptions of spaces as well as psychological undertones of space. St. Peter puts himself into a depressing psychological state because the only thing he can dwell on is how his family is slowly leaving him for the materialistic culture that is becoming their future. One way that St. Peter counteracts this consumerism is by developing a relationship with Tom Outland. This relationship is the most important in the book because the professor and Tom need each other.
When St. Peter meets Tom Outland for the first time, he notices not only his looks, but the way he is eager to learn and do what it takes to get into the university that St. Peter teaches at. St. Peter questions him about his skills in language, math, and science then learns more about him. Tom seems open enough to tell him a little history about himself and his parents, but when Lillian questions Tom, he becomes reserved and wishes not to speak much. The questioning of St. Peter happens outside in the garden while the questioning of Lillian happens inside the home of the couple. Tom may have felt more pressure during the inside space because it is enclosed and he had no way of a quick escape unlike the garden which would have been easy to flee from. Over time the two form a father-son bond that is only broken when Tom is killed in World War I. Tom was also a son to St. Peter because of his caring nature toward St. Peter’s daughters, Rosamond and Kathleen. Tom would come over and make “Hopi villages with sand and pebbles,” (Cather 104) and tell “them stories […] about the adventures he had had with his friend Roddy,” (Cather 104). John Anders argues that Tom and St. Peter’s relationship is “overly eroticized,” (Anders 99) and that when “Cather evokes male friendship, and when she metaphorically opens a window, the view is very often homoerotic,” (Anders 103). These claims are hyperbolic and untruthful because the two men have both bonded over the fact that they feel as if they have no one that understands their true feelings in their life. A father-son relationship is far more likely because of the age difference (about 25 years) and their distaste of the consumer culture.
St. Peter’s relationships with his daughters, Rosamond and Kathleen have slowly disintegrated into almost nothing after Tom Outland was killed. Rosamond has become materialistic in every way from her clothes to her new home she is building with her husband Louie that they have named “Outland.” Wallace says, “And yet there may be some question as to what exactly is wrong with Rosamond’s habits of consumption,” (Wallace 151). It is wrong in St. Peter’s eyes because the couple is using the money that Tom Outland’s inventions generated to build themselves an extravagant home with far too much room for just the two of them. Their expensive taste is the complete opposite of what Tom Outland would have wanted to be remembered by, yet this is exactly what they are doing in his memory. St. Peter’s relationship with Kathleen is nearly as bad, not because of her consumeristic ways, but because of her jealousy of Rosamond and her money. Her jealousy is just as bad as being materialistic and St. Peter views this as a bad quality. He says to Kathleen, “And we mustn’t behave as if we did want it [Rosamond’s money]. If you permit yourself to be envious of Rosie, you’ll be very foolish, and very unhappy,” (Cather 72). St. Peter has a “special kind of affection,” (Cather 72) for Kathleen so even though their relationship isn’t strong, he feels that he should be easier on her than on his older daughter Rosamond. St. Peter’s wife, Lillian, is a relationship that was doomed from the beginning because he felt that his life was “determined by chance,” (Cather 233).
The relationship of Lillian and St. Peter was not always a bad one. They were very much in love when they first courted, but because the world changes, so do relationships. After becoming jealous of Tom, Lillian dove into the consumer culture and her daughters followed soon after. This disappointed St. Peter and eventually drew him away from her and her love. “she became another person, and a bitter one,” (Cather 233). Lillian had a lot of influence on Rosamond and Kathleen and is responsible for their attitudes toward money and objects. St. Peter’s family life has turned cyclical, and Rosamond’s pregnancy is just another generation that will grow up wanting more than they truly need. St. Peter and his family are driven away from one another and the houses become their separate spaces where they can reside in their own thoughts.
The different spaces in The Professor’s House all determine how relationships fall into or out of place. St. Peter’s study added to the deteriorating of his familial relationships but added to his relationship with Tom Outland. The mesa parallels this in “Tom Outland’s Story” because the mesa seems to ruin his friendship with Rodney, but it adds to his friendship with the professor once they meet because St. Peter has an interest in the mesa for he wrote eight volumes about the Spanish conquerors. The new house as well as the “Outland” home add to the professor’s dislike for the people that his family have become, pushing him further away from their lives. Each space is designated to emphasize the relationships and their depth to the life of St. Peter.
Cather uses both style and structure to build relationships within The Professor’s House. By creating both physical and psychological space, she forms deeper meanings to St. Peter’s relationships with Tom, Lillian, Rosamond, and Kathleen. These relationships are the most important part to The Professor’s House because they show how one person can’t always depend on those that he should be able to. Maguire says of Cather, “She gave her novels an apparent simplicity that masks an underlying complexity of style, structure, and material.” (Maguire 441). This is especially true for The Professor’s House because of the simple yet effective language, the many spaces that the characters inhabit, and Cather’s use of psychology that is underlined in the professor’s mind.Works Cited
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