47 pages • 1 hour read
The Professor's House
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Symbols & Motifs
The Old House
The old house is a symbol of St. Peter’s struggle for identity and meaning and his longing for isolation. In the first sentences of the novel, St. Peter is introduced in conjunction with the old house:
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 (1).
The house is characterized as being run down, ugly, and small. Its lack of comfort is a juxtaposition to the security St. Peter feels inside of it. St. Peter can appreciate an ugly and old house, which highlights his characterization as someone who doesn’t need wealth and fancy objects to be happy. Crucially, the old house is also his sanctuary. He continues to pay rent on the old house when his family moves into the new house just so that he can continue to use the attic room as his study. St. Peter appreciates the setting of his study in the old house because it’s the setting for his happier days with Tom and evokes memories of scholarship, intellectualism, and art.
However, even the most tranquil sanctuary can become suffocating—and Cather makes this metaphorical possibility materially concrete. The only source of heat in the attic room at the old house is an old gas stove that vents its dangerous fumes into the room, meaning that the window must remain open at all times. Even then, the air is not entirely healthy; St. Peter admits to his wife that he has often gotten headaches while working. When a storm blows the window closed while St. Peter is sleeping in the room, he nearly dies from the fumes. Only the timely arrival of his former housekeeper, Augusta, prevents St. Peter’s death. St. Peter’s near-death experience, which may or may not reflect a more serious desire for self-harm, jolts him into the realization that he needs to transform himself.
The Blue Mesa
The Blue Mesa represents both the sublime unknowability of nature as well as the power of humans to impose order and create livable spaces. When it is first pointed out to Tom and Rodney, the Blue Mesa is a challenge: Rumor holds that it is impossible to climb. The unknowability of the Blue Mesa makes it mysterious and develops it as the ideal setting for a man with an adventurous spirit to prove his capacity to explore the unknown. To Tom, “[t]he mesa was our only neighbour, and the closer we got to it, the more tantalizing it was. It was no longer a blue, featureless lump, as it had been from a distance” (110). His attraction to the Blue Mesa characterizes him as adventurous, courageous, and excited about life. What’s more, he writes: “No wonder the thing bothered us and tempted us; it was always before us, and was always changing” (115). The looming glory of conquering what other men haven’t been brave enough to even approach is characteristic of Tom’s forward-thinking intelligence.
Money
Money, as well as the “worldliness” that being concerned about money implies, is a recurring motif in The Professor’s House, and one that divides the characters. St. Peter wears the impracticality of his scholarship as a badge of honor and rigor against an education system that is increasingly preoccupied with profitability. He considers himself and Doctor Crane to be virtually the only members of the faculty who are not looking to monetize their research. Tom Outland, too, belongs to this group of people. The narrative strongly implies that Tom either didn’t know or didn’t care about the moneymaking potential of his patent; it was up to Louie Marsellus to exploit it. Indeed, Louie emerges as Tom’s opposite, and his influence extends to others: “That worldliness, that willingness to get the most out of occasions and people, which had developed so strongly in Lillian in the last few years, seemed to Louie as natural and proper as it seemed unnatural to Godfrey” (95). Much of St. Peter’s estrangement from his older daughter, Rosamond, stems from the worldliness she shares with her husband—if anything, she is more protective of her wealth than Louie. Kathleen, St. Peter’s younger daughter, complains that Rosamond’s displays of wealth make it impossible for them to have a close relationship, and a difference in economic class drives many of their misunderstandings.
For his part, St. Peter is wary of accepting favors or gifts from Louie, believing that they obligate him to go along with his son-in-law’s whims. Moreover, he is disappointed in Doctor Crane’s attempt to claim part of the profits from Tom’s patent at this late date, believing that his colleague has become just as craven as the others—a betrayal of both friendship and scholarship. A more profound falling-out around money takes place between Rodney and Tom. While Tom is attempting to gift the artifacts from the Blue Mesa to the United States, Rodney sells many of their most precious objects, including at least one set of human remains, to a trader from Europe. For Tom, this action constitutes a betrayal of the past itself; he refuses to accept any share in the profit, and he never sees Rodney again.
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