The Professor's House

By Willa Cather

Professor Godfrey St. Peter doesn’t like the new direction that his life has taken. When he and his wife move into their new house, he decides to keep his study at the old house so that he will not have to let go of the way life used to be. After a gas leak, causing a near death experience, that he almost welcomed, he realizes that he needs to find a new way to cope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781515455899

Willa Cather

WILLA CATHER (1873–1947), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifteen books, was one of the most distinguished American writers of the early twentieth century.

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The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

© 2022 SMK Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or transmitted in any form or manner by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express, prior written permission of the author and/or publisher, except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-3514-3

Trade Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-6045-9512-3

E-book ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-5589-9

Table of Contents

The Family

Tom Outland’s Story

The Professor

The Family

The moving was over and done. Professor St. Peter was alone in the dismantled house where he had lived ever since his marriage, where he had worked out his career and brought up his two daughters. It was almost as ugly as it is possible for a house to be; square, three stories in height, painted the colour of ashes – the front porch just too narrow for comfort, with a slanting floor and sagging steps. As he walked slowly about the empty, echoing rooms on that bright September morning, the Professor regarded thoughtfully the needless inconveniences he had put up with for so long; the stairs that were too steep, the halls that were too cramped, the awkward oak mantles with thick round posts crowned by bumptious wooden balls, over green-tiled fire-places.

Certain wobbly stair treads, certain creaky boards in the upstairs hall, had made him wince many times a day for twenty-odd years – and they still creaked and wobbled. He had a deft hand with tools, he could easily have fixed them, but there were always so many things to fix, and there was not time enough to go round. He went into the kitchen, where he had carpentered under a succession of cooks, went up to the bath-room on the second floor, where there was only a painted tin tub; the taps were so old that no plumber could ever screw them tight enough to stop the drip, the window could only be coaxed up and down by wriggling, and the doors of the linen closet didn’t fit. He had sympathized with his daughters’ dissatisfaction, though he could never quite agree with them that the bath should be the most attractive room in the house. He had spent the happiest years of his youth in a house at Versailles where it distinctly was not, and he had known many charming people who had no bath at all. However, as his wife said: If your country has contributed one thing, at least, to civilization, why not have it? Many a night, after blowing out his study lamp, he had leaped into that tub, clad in his pyjamas, to give it another coat of some one of the many paints that were advertised to behave like porcelain, and didn’t.

The Professor in pyjamas was not an unpleasant sight; for looks, the fewer clothes he had on, the better. Anything that clung to his body showed it to be built upon extremely good bones, with the slender hips and springy shoulders of a tireless swimmer. Though he was born on Lake Michigan, of mixed stock (Canadian French on one side, and American farmers on the other), St. Peter was commonly said to look like a Spaniard. That was possibly because he had been in Spain a good deal, and was an authority on certain phases of Spanish history. He had a long brown face, with an oval chin over which he wore a close trimmed Van-Dyke, like a tuft of shiny black fur. With this silky, very black hair, he had a tawny skin with gold lights in it, a hawk nose, and hawk-like eyes – brown and gold and green. They were set in ample cavities, with plenty of room to move about, under thick, curly, black eyebrows that turned up sharply at the outer ends, like military moustaches. His wicked-looking eyebrows made his students call him Mephistopheles – and there was no evading the searching eyes underneath them; eyes that in a flash could pick out a friend or an unusual stranger from a throng. They had lost none of their fire, though just now the man behind them was feeling a diminution of ardour.

His daughter Kathleen, who had done several successful studies of him in water-colour, had once said: – The thing that really makes Papa handsome is the modelling of his head between the top of his ear and his crown; it is quite the best thing about him. That part of his head was high, polished, hard as bronze, and the close-growing black hair threw off a streak of light along the rounded ridge where the skull was fullest. The mould of his head on the side was so individual and definite, so far from casual, that it was more like a statue’s head than a man’s.

From one of the dismantled windows the Professor happened to look out into his back garden, and at that cheerful sight he went quickly downstairs and escaped from the dusty air and brutal light of the empty rooms.

His walled-in garden had been the comfort of his life – and it was the one thing his neighbours held against him. He started to make it soon after the birth of his first daughter, when his wife began to be unreasonable about his spending so much time at the lake and on the tennis court. In this undertaking he got help and encouragement from his landlord, a retired German farmer,good-natured and lenient about everything but spending money. If the Professor happened to have a new baby at home, or a faculty dinner, or an illness in the family, or any unusual expense, Appelhoff cheerfully waited for the rent; but pay for repairs he would not. When it was a question of the garden, however, the old man sometimes stretched a point. He helped his tenant with seeds and slips and sound advice, and with his twisted old back. He even spent a little money to bear half the expense of the stucco wall.

The Professor had succeeded in making a French garden in Hamilton. There was not a blade of grass; it was a tidy half-acre of glistening gravel and glistening shrubs and bright flowers. There were trees, of course; a spreading horse-chestnut, a row of slender Lombardy poplars at the back, along the white wall, and in the middle two symmetrical, round-topped linden-trees. Masses of green-brier grew in the corners, the prickly stems interwoven and clipped until they were like great bushes. There was a bed for salad herbs. Salmon-pink geraniums dripped over the wall. The French marigolds and dahlias were just now at their best – such dahlias as no one else in Hamilton could grow. St. Peter had tended this bit of ground for over twenty years, and had got the upper hand of it. In the spring, when home-sickness for other lands and the fret of things unaccomplished awoke, he worked off his discontent here. In the long hot summers, when he could not go abroad, he stayed at home with his garden, sending his wife and daughters to Colorado to escape the humid prairie heat, so nourishing to wheat and corn, so exhausting to human beings. In those months when he was a bachelor again, he brought down his books and papers and worked in a deck chair under the linden-trees; breakfasted and lunched and had his tea in the garden. And it was there he and Tom Outland used to sit and talk half through the warm, soft nights.

On this September morning, however, St. Peter knew that he could not evade the unpleasant effects of change by tarrying among his autumn flowers. He must plunge in like a man, and get used to the feeling that under his work-room there was a dead, empty house. He broke off a geranium blossom, and with it still in his hand went resolutely up two flights of stairs to the third floor where, under the slope of the mansard roof, there was one room still furnished – that is, if it had ever been furnished.

The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill. This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw. This dark den had for many years been the Professor’s study.

Downstairs, off the back parlour, he had a show study, with roomy shelves where his library was housed, and a proper desk at which he wrote letters. But it was a sham. This was the place where he worked. And not he alone. For three weeks in the fall, and again three in the spring, he shared his cuddy with Augusta, the sewing-woman, niece of his old landlord, a reliable, methodical spinster, a German Catholic and very devout.

Since Augusta finished her day’s work at five o’clock, and the Professor, on week-days, worked

here only at night, they did not elbow each other too much. Besides, neither was devoid of consideration. Every evening, before she left, Augusta swept up the scraps from the floor, rolled her patterns, closed the sewing-machine, and picked ravellings off the box-couch, so that there would be no threads to stick to the Professor’s old smoking- jacket if he should happen to lie down for a moment in working-hours.

St. Peter, in his turn, when he put out his lamp after midnight, was careful to brush away ashes and tobacco crumbs – smoking was very distasteful to Augusta – and to open the hinged window back as far as it would go, on the second hook, so that the night wind might carry away the smell of his pipe as much as possible. The unfinished dresses which she left hanging on the forms, however, were often so saturated with smoke that he knew she found it a trial to work on them the next morning.

These forms were the subject of much banter between them. The one which Augusta called the bust stood in the darkest corner of the room, upon a high wooden chest in which blankets and winter wraps were yearly stored. It was a headless, armless female torso, covered with strong black cotton, and so richly developed in the part for which it was named that the Professor once explained to Augusta how, in calling it so, she followed a natural law of language, termed, for convenience, metonymy. Augusta enjoyed the Professor when he was risque since she was sure of his ultimate delicacy. Though this figure looked so ample and billowy (as if you might lay your head upon its deep-breathing softness and rest safe forever), if you touched it you suffered a severe shock, no matter how many times you had touched it before. It presented the most unsympathetic surface imaginable. Its hardness was not that of wood, which responds to concussion with living vibration and is stimulating to the hand, nor that of felt, which drinks something from the fingers. It was a dead, opaque, lumpy solidity, like chunks of putty, or tightly packed sawdust – very disappointing to the tactile sense, yet somehow always fooling you again. For no matter how often you had bumped up against that torso, you could never believe that contact with it would be as bad as it was.

The second form was more self-revelatory; a full-length female figure in a smart wire skirt with a trim metal waist line. It had no legs, as one could see all too well, no viscera behind its glistening ribs, and its bosom resembled a strong wire bird-cage. But St. Peter contended that it had a nervous system. When Augusta left it clad for the night in a new party dress for Rosamond or Kathleen, it often took on a sprightly, tricky air, as if it were going out for the evening to make a great show of being harum-scarum, giddy, folle. It seemed just on the point of tripping downstairs, or on tiptoe, waiting for the waltz to begin. At times the wire lady was most convincing in her pose as a woman of light behaviour, but she never fooled St. Peter. He had his blind spots, but he had never been taken in by one of her kind!

Augusta had somehow got it into her head that these forms were unsuitable companions for one engaged in scholarly pursuits, and she periodically apologized for their presence when she came to install herself and fulfil her time at the house.

Not at all, Augusta, the Professor had often said. If they were good enough for Monsieur Bergeret, they are certainly good enough for me.

This morning, as St. Peter was sitting in his desk chair, looking musingly at the pile of papers before him, the door opened and there stood Augusta herself. How astonishing that he had not heard her heavy, deliberate tread on the now uncarpeted stair!

Why, Professor St. Peter! I never thought of finding you here, or I’d have knocked. I guess we will have to do our moving together.

St. Peter had risen – Augusta loved his manners – but he offered her the sewing-machine chair and resumed his seat.

Sit down, Augusta, and we’ll talk it over. I’m not moving just yet – don’t want to disturb all my papers. I’m staying on until I finish a piece of writing. I’ve seen your uncle about it. I’ll work here, and board at the new house. But this is confidential. If it were noised about, people might begin to say that Mrs. St. Peter and I had – how do they put it, parted, separated?

Augusta dropped her eyes in an indulgent smile. I think people in your station would say separated.

Exactly; a good scientific term, too. Well, we haven’t, you know. But I’m going to write on here for a while.

Very well, sir. And I won’t always be getting in your way now. In the new house you have a beautiful study downstairs, and I have a light, airy room on the third floor.

Where you won’t smell smoke, eh?

Oh, Professor, I never really minded! Augusta spoke with feeling. She rose and took up the black bust in her long arms.

The Professor also rose, very quickly. What are you doing?

She laughed. Oh, I’m not going to carry them through the street, Professor! The grocery boy is downstairs with his cart, to wheel them over.

Wheel them over?

Why, yes, to the new house, Professor. I’ve come a week before my regular time, to make curtains and hem linen for Mrs. St. Peter. I’ll take everything over this morning except the sewing- machine – that’s too heavy for the cart, so the boy will come back for it with the delivery wagon. Would you just open the door for me, please?

No, I won’t! Not at all. You don’t need her to make curtains. I can’t have this room changed if I’m going to work here. He can take the sewing- machine – yes. But put her back on the chest where she belongs, please. She does very well there. St. Peter had got to the door, and stood with his back against it.

Augusta rested her burden on the edge of the chest.

But next week I’ll be working on Mrs. St. Peter’s clothes, and I’ll need the forms. As the boy’s here, he’ll just wheel them over, she said soothingly.

I’m damned if he will! They shan’t be wheeled. They stay right there in their own place. You shan’t take away my ladies. I never heard of such a thing!

Augusta was vexed with him now, and a little ashamed of him. But, Professor, I can’t work without my forms. They’ve been in your way all these years, and you’ve always complained of them, so don’t be contrary, sir.

I never complained, Augusta. Perhaps of certain disappointments they recalled, or of cruel biological necessities they imply – but of them individually, never! Go and buy some new ones for your airy atelier, as many as you wish – I’m said to be rich now, am I not? – Go buy, but you can’t have my women. That’s final.

Augusta looked down her nose as she did at church when the dark sins were mentioned. Professor, she said severely, I think this time you are carrying a joke too far. You never used to. From the tilt of her chin he saw that she felt the presence of some improper suggestion.

No matter what you think, you can’t have them. They considered, both were in earnest now. Augusta was first to break the defiant silence.

I suppose I am to be allowed to take my patterns?

Your patterns? Oh, yes, the cut-out things you keep in the couch with my old note-books? Certainly, you can have them. Let me lift it for you. He raised the hinged top of the box-couch that stood against the wall, under the slope of the ceiling. At one end of the upholstered box were piles of notebooks and bundles of manuscript tied up in square packages with mason’s cord. At the other end were many little rolls of patterns, cut out of newspapers and tied with bits of ribbon, gingham, silk, georgette; notched charts which followed the changing stature and figures of the Misses St. Peter from early childhood to womanhood. In the middle of the box, patterns and manuscripts interpenetrated.

I see we shall have some difficulty in separating our life work, Augusta. We’ve kept our papers together a long while now.

Yes, Professor. When I first came to sew for Mrs. St. Peter, I never thought I should grow grey in her service.

He started. What other future could Augusta possibly have expected? This disclosure amazed him.

Well, well, we mustn’t think mournfully of it, Augusta. Life doesn’t turn out for any of us as we plan. He stood and watched her large slow hands travel about among the little packets, as she put them into his waste-basket to carry them down to the cart. He had often wondered how she managed to sew with hands that folded and unfolded as rigidly as umbrellas – no light French touch about Augusta; when she sewed on a bow, it stayed there. She herself was tall, large-boned, flat and stiff, with a plain, solid face, and brown eyes not destitute of fun. As she knelt by the couch, sorting her patterns, he stood beside her, his hand on the lid, though it would have stayed up unsupported. Her last remark had

Reviews for The Professor's House

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A melancholy, meaningful glimpse at the ones we love and the changes that time brings in our relationships and our perceptions of both others and ourselves. Cather employs an evocative cast of characters and settings (I particularly like the Lake Michigan setting) to bring a rich novel.

[bookishtexpat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was such a lovely book. Each time I picked it up I felt like I was transported to the St. Peter's or with Tom, and I loved all of it. I have to say I'm not a huge fan of how Cather portrays all the women in this novel - except for Augusta who is fabulous - but overall it was such a delightful and thoughtful work.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The simplest description I can give of this book is that it is about one man's mid-life crisis. Certainly in the 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond, I read a lot of books that fit this description, and frankly I got a bit tired of the sometimes whininess of these characters. But this is Willa Cather, and her prose is beautiful and honest, and though in general I didn't always sympathize with the professor's plight, I never got tired of the book.The book is in three parts. The first and last concern the professor and his family. The middle part consists of an interlude in the life of Tom, a former student of the professor's, who had also been the fiancé of one of his daughters before being killed in the war. This middle portion had been written separately from the parts about the professor and his family, and I personally did not find that it added significantly to the overall story of the professor. I thought it would have done better as a separate novel, and it was, in fact, the part of the book I liked best. It involves Tom's life as a cattle handler, during which time he discovered an ancient Indian pueblo which he excavated. This was a fascinating story, including Tom's attempts to interest the Smithsonian in the Indian artifacts, and it is in this part, in Cather's descriptions of the landscape in particular, that Cather's strength's shine through.In the family parts, the professor's 8 volume history of Spanish explorers has finally brought him financial success, and, largely through his wife's efforts, a new house has been built. As the family moves, the professor decides he wants to retain his study in the attic of the old house, and begins to spend more and more time there. His two daughters are at odds with each other. The older, Rosamund, who had been engaged to Tom, is now married to Louie and is extremely wealthy, largely due to an invention of Tom's which his will left her. The younger daughter Kathleen and her husband Scott are struggling and seem envious. The professor becomes more and more isolated from his family, and ultimately refuses to travel with the family to Europe for the summer. Instead he spends his time daydreaming in his old study, with the faulty stove (mentioned in the first part, so we know it will play an important role), finding himself less and less interested in engaging in life.This is the fourth novel by Cather I have read, the others being My Antonia, O Pioneers and Sapphira and the Slave Girl. She is one of the female writers of the last century who were undeservedly overlooked in considering Nobel Prizes for Literature. I don't know where this one is ranked by her literary critics, but I think it is a worthy entry in Cather's body of work. And I do know that I want to read more of her work.3 1/2 stars

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Godfrey St. Peter, by all accounts, is doing well. He is a professor of history with a distinguished publishing record, a beautiful wife, two married daughters one of whom has become surprisingly wealthy, and over the years he has had a few pleasant colleagues, a handful of good students, and one very important, even transformative, relationship with a student, protege, and later fiance to his oldest daughter. Unfortunately, Tom Outland then went off to do what he could in the First World War and died there, leaving all his worldly possessions, including a patent on a gas that would become very lucrative, to St. Peter’s daughter. At the opening of the novel, Godfrey and his wife are in the process of moving into a new house that he has built with money his multi-volume historical work on Spanish adventurers has won. But Godfrey is uncomfortable in his new house and wants to keep his pokey study in the old house that they rented. The truth is that Godfrey is uncomfortable in his own skin, and like his former protege, he would like to shed it.The novel follows Godfrey over the course of a year with one extended intermission telling the story of Tom prior to his arrival in the university town of Hamilton. It is utterly fascinating. Characters step forward and recede without a later nod. St. Peter’s daughters and their spouses reveal admirable and not so admirable facets of character but without apparent purpose. Indeed, all are merely window dressing for the existential crisis that Godfrey is about to undergo.I’m astounded by the surety of Cather’s writing and the fact that every novel of hers that I read seems to be a new departure. As is the case with all challenging novelists who challenge themselves. Well worth reading, pondering, and then reading again.

[brleach · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A quiet novel, but somehow a compelling one. The descriptions are beautiful but never overwrought or cliche. The characters are human, by turns delightful and flawed.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Professor's House is a short novel that Cather based around a short story she had previous written about a drifter named Tom Outland who finds an ancient Indian ruins in the mesas of the Southwest. He and a friend excavate the site and have a falling out along the way. Cather takes this as a centerpiece and adds a long beginning and short ending about how Outland's appearance in a Midwestern college town affects the life of the Professor and his family. The part about the Professor explores changing family relationships as children age and marry, and also the influence of unexpected wealth. Outland's influence is felt though he is not present during the action.This is a quirky little book. I very much enjoyed it while reading it, but the more I think about it subsequently, the more I question the wisdom of the format. The two stories don't really gel as well as they should and I felt that there were too many loose ends at the end of the book. I love Cather's writing, she has beautiful descriptive passages and interesting characters, but I'm not sure how well this book really worked.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Professor's House by Willa Cather is really two stories: that of midwestern university Professor Godfrey St. Peter and his family, and that of Tom Outland, a successful inventor who grew up in New Mexico, became a student and friend of St. Peter, and died in WWI. As to the first story, set in the 1920s, the Professor's successful series of books on "Spanish Adventures in North America" has brought financial comfort and a lovely new house. However, the Professor isn't ready to let go of his old house, especially his attic study, and is re-assessing his life. He has two daughters, one now rich from an engine invented by Outland, and successfully commercialized by her new husband. The other daughter married a journalist and is jealous of her sister's life. Neither is a comfort to the Professor, and he also is becoming estranged from his practical wife as he increasingly seeks solitude.He loves that cramped attic study and its view: "From the window he could see, far away, just on the horizon, a long, blue, hazy smear - Lake Michigan, the inland sea of his childhood. Whenever he was tired and dull, when the white pages before him remained blank or were full of scratched-out sentences, then he left his desk, took the train to a little station twelve miles away, and spent the day on the lake with his sail-boat; jumping out to swim, floating on his back alongside, then climbing into his boat again."The Professor is trying to edit for publication Tom Outland's diary of his days in New Mexico. That provides the framing for the beautiful central section of the book, a description of Tom's days as a railroad call boy, then a cattle herder. Eventually Tom finds a route up to the top of a high mesa, and discovers cliff dwellings there."The hill-side behind was sandy and covered with clumps of deer-horn cactus, but there was nothing but grass to the south, with streaks of bright yellow rabbit-brush. Along the river the cottonwoods and quaking asps had already turned gold. Just across from us, overhanging us, indeed, stood the mesa, a pile of purple rocks, all broken out with red sumach and yellow aspens up in the high crevices of the cliffs." Up there he finds "a little city of stone, asleep", with all that the original dwellers left behind.This is not a long book, but she packs a lot in. Some readers will relate strongly to the Professor's questioning of his life, along with his observations of money's effect on his family members, and of the various family rivalries (including that of the sisters' husbands). For me, the book's major reward was the section on Tom's time in New Mexico, which contains some of the author's most breathtaking descriptions of the southwest, and vividly conveys the wonder of Tom's experience.She is simply a superb writer. Although for me the juxtaposition didn't totally work, the book is a forceful and memorable read. I haven't been to New Mexico in ages, and now I want to go back to experience the territory she writes about.

[alcracka · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Well, this was very pleasant and all, but...have you ever heard of a bridge version of a book? Don't feel bad if you haven't; I just made it up. What it is is you know how there are abridged versions of books, where they include the important and exciting parts and chop out some of the meandering and tangential stuff? Have you ever wondered what happens to that stuff they chop out? Well, that ends up in a bridge version of the book, and that must be the version I read because nothing fucking happened.

[perednia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Odd but moving story. The mid-section about the Anasanzi ruins more affecting than the tale around it.

[perlle_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have an interest in both New Mexico and France, and this book meanders through both. The relationships were fascinating even though not much happens throughout the book.

[shereadsnovels · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather is an author I've heard a lot about but whose work I've never read until now. I should probably have started with her most famous book, My Antonia, but something drew me to this one, The Professor's House.The Professor of the title is Godfrey St Peter, a man in his fifties, around the same age as Willa Cather was when she wrote this novel. At the beginning of the book, St Peter and his wife are preparing to move into their new home. At the last minute the Professor decides that he doesn't want to give up his old house just yet, so that he can continue to work in his old study and spend some time alone with his memories.Most of the book revolves around St Peter reminiscing about his family and friends and coming to terms with the idea of leaving the past behind and embracing modern life. At the forefront of the Professor's thoughts is his former student Tom Outland, who had once been engaged to his daughter Rosamond. On his death in the First World War, Outland left everything he had to Rosamond - and this inheritance is causing trouble for the St Peter family.If you prefer books with a gripping plot and lots of action you'll want to avoid this one, as it was one of the slowest moving books I've ever read. I have to admit there were a few times during the first few chapters that I came close to abandoning it, but I kept reading because it was so well written. I would describe this as a calm, quiet, reflective book; one with such powerful, eloquent writing and beautiful imagery that it doesn't really matter that not much actually happens.The Professor's House is possibly a book I would appreciate more if I read it again when I'm older, as I found it difficult to identify with a fifty-two year old man looking back on his life. This was my first experience of Willa Cather and although I don't think she's going to be a favourite author, I will probably read more of her work at some point in the future.

[theokester · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm having a hard time deciding how to review The Professor's House. The plot itself is very straightforward and easy to describe. The characters are vivid and well-defined which adds to the realism of the novel. But it seems to me that the meat of this novel is in the themes and nuances.I have read some of Cather's short stories many years ago and only have vague memories of them other than a memory that she had exquisite attention to detail. As I read this book I found that memory to be true. The writing vibrantly presents minute details to the reader…from the shape and texture of a hand to the nature of a dress or necklace to the depiction of setting both in and out of doors.Her characters are likewise detailed. We are held at a close third person so we don't actually get into the characters' heads, but the detailed account of appearance and action allows the reader to feel very intimate with the characters.The layout of the book is interesting in that it consists of three "books." The first book is entitled "The Family" and follows the Professor as he works to finish his own writing while teaching and balancing the various dramas unfolding in his life and the lives of his family members. The second book is "Tom Outland's Story" and is the first person narrative of Tom, an old student of the Professor and friend of the family who is now dead (from WWI) but left behind an invention and legacy that resulted in great wealth for one of the Professor's daughters. The final book is entitled "The Professor" and is a very short wrap up of the novel which focusses on thoughts, emotions and actions of the professor after he reads and ponders Outland's story.The overarching plot of the book is interesting if not terribly engaging. There were moments of drama and emotion that drew me in, but there were other segments that were almost boring with the mundane interactions. As I mentioned initially, the meat of the novel though isn't the plot itself, but the themes and emotions it instills. Looking to these themes, part of this book seems to be an exploration of emotional displacement and emotional paralysis or release. The Professor is very attached to his old house and his work and doesn't want to move into the new house with his family. Outland is almost a portrayal of a return to the past for the professor and in the end, Outland's story provides an almost existential release to the professor. The claustrophobia of the old house and the room in which the professor works serve as a metaphorical trap that is holding the professor hostage in his current/past life/behavior and causing emotional turmoil and angst from which he can't see a clear escape.At a higher, more sociological level, the novel portrays some interesting counterpoints on society. The Professor is doing well enough off teaching at the university and does even better once he receives an award for his writing. His two daughters are well enough off as well though one is moving into the "upper class" while the other is sitting fairly "middle." The family interactions and conversations give interesting insight into the class reactions of the era and some of the internal and external results of class mobility. As the professor's daughter and son-in-law gain their wealth and rise to a higher social status, there are jealousies and even some resentment and anger both within and outside of the family.Looking at the writing, it is clear that there are MANY levels at work in this novel. Cather's frequent use of color helps categorize different themes or values. Her descriptions of the houses, rooms and other settings set the balance between the different classes or social situations. To further illustrate that NOTHING appears to be arbitrary in this book, it was pointed out to me that there is particular significance in the name of the ship that Outland takes to the war, the name of the ship that the Professor's family returns home on, and even the book that Outland uses to study latin.So, even though the book's plot isn't terribly engaging, I can see this work as having a lot of valuable insight into the social and mental ideas of the 1920s, many of which have relevance today especially given the almost parallel economic situation around us.While it's not likely something I'd read over and over, it is something I can recommend to those interested in human behavior, the 1920s, or life in general. Cather paints a vivid and beautiful picture of a family…not a perfectly adjusted and blissfully happy family, but a realistic, flawed and interesting family.***3 stars out of 5

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1073 The Professor's House, by Willa Cather (read 7 Sep 1970) This is an easy-to-read book about a 52-year-old professor. It sounded so fake at the beginning, but as it went on it didn't seem so bad. The point of the story is unclear to me. At the end the professor almost dies, and then apparently feels he can go on with life.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather' prose is beautiful in its simplicity. She uses restraint in "The Professor's House", a book about the harmful and corrosive effects of money and aging. It may be a book of more interest to middle-aged readers, but personally I enjoyed it. Some quotes, all of which speak to looking back at midlife:"...now they were not very young any more; they would neither of them, probably, ever hold a better position. Couldn't Langtry see it was a draw, that they had both been beaten"?"He had been mistaken, he felt. The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own"."The world was sad to St. Peter as he looked about him; the lake-shore country flat and heavy, Hamilton small and tight and airless. The university, his new house, his old house, everything around him, seemed insupportable, as the boat on which he is imprisoned seems to a sea-sick man. Yes, it was possible that the little world, on its voyage among all the stars, might become like that; a boat on which one could travel no longer, from which one could no longer look up and confront those bright rings or revolution"."It's the feeling that I've put a great deal behind me, where I can't go back to it again - and I don't really wish to go back. The way would be too long and too fatiguing. Perhaps, for a home-staying man, I've lived pretty hard. I wasn't willing to slight anything - you, or my desk, or my students. And now I seem to be tremendously tired". "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"."He did not regret his life, but he was indifferent to it. It seemed to him like the life of another person"."Happiness is something one can't explain. You must take my word for it. Troubles enough came afterward, but there was that summer, high and blue, a life in itself".

[lauralkeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Godfrey St. Peter is a successful, published history professor. He is financially secure, with a loving wife and two married daughters. And yet, having built a new home for his family, he finds himself unable to leave the house where he has spent most of his adult life. His study, in particular, is filled with memories. After "officially" moving house, he quietly pays a year's rent on the old house, in order to enjoy both the study and his garden. He gradually withdraws from family life, even going so far as to spend Christmas Day at the old house, away from his extended family. He also comes to some stark conclusions about key figures in his life. His daughter Rosamond came into money after the death of her fiancee Tom Outland, her father's former student. Rosamond and her husband Louie live an extravagant lifestyle which St. Peter gradually finds more and more repugnant. Louie caters to St. Peter's wife, Lillian, who is too easily influenced by this attention. St. Peter spends considerable time reflecting on Tom Outland, evoking the satisfied feelings that come from having an impact on another person's life. As the novel progresses, St. Peter becomes more and more withdrawn from his family and yet also becomes more in touch with things that truly matter to him. Willa Cather's prose is beautifully descriptive, illuminating both the mid-western town where St. Peter lives, and the desert southwest of Tom Outland's youth. Her characters are richly developed; even the unlikeable ones are multifaceted and completely human. Cather's writing talents make The Professor's House an enjoyable novel.

[zmrzlina_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful read that makes you consider how all ends are just the beginning of something new