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Review Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Summer, 1999 Telephone (402) 746-2653 Copyright © 1999 by the Willa Cather Roneer ISSN 0197-663X Memorial and Educational Foundation (The Wil~ Cather Society) Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter and ~0 N. Webster Street VOLUME XLIII, No. 1 Review Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Summer, 1999 Telephone (402) 746-2653 "The Heart of Another Isa Dark Forest": A Reassessment of Professor St. Peter and His Wife Jean Tsien Beijing Foreign Studies University The Professor’s House is a a male subject (the professor) rich and complex work which gazing at female objects much can be rea~l rewardingly from of the time -- and not usually in many aspens: as a critique of admiration. Lillian St. Peter and soulless American materialism her daughters are seen through in the 1920s, as a depiction of ’ the critical -- at times, harsh -- male midlife crisis involving gaze of Godfrey St. Peter, who steady withdrawal into the self repeatedly offers comments on in preparation for death, as the them they cannot repudiate; for, story of the destruction of youth- as objects of a male gaze, they ful intellectual idealism and are not given a chance to reveal ’letting go with the heart,’ as their thoughts. While the two autobiographical parallels of male protagonists (Tom Outland Cather’s personal problems, and St. Peter) are depicted as and in many other ways. idealists, their women (Rosa- This paper attempts to read mond, according to Louie, ’~irtu- the work closely from a feminist ally [Tom’s] widow") are cold point of view. As we know, and hard and seen either quar- there is no "pure writing" exist- reling or spending money ing in a vacuum outside gender. wastefully. This alienates St. Although Cather is a female Peter to such an extent that he author from whom we would not initially wishes that children expect the sexist attitudes, never had to grow up and be- stereotypes and ideology from a Professor Jean Tsien at Ellis Island, come worldly (126) and later male perspective, we notice that June 1997. finds women so unbearable that in The Professor’s House she he sympathizes with Euripides has adopted a third-person omniscient narrator who who moved to a cave by the sea to escape from them generally looks at the world through the eyes of (156). Of all his ladies, however, he seems to find his Professor St. Peter and Tom Outland. A male gaze wife, Lillian, most unbearable. We learn that the idea often involves a patriarchal attitude, and readers of living in the same house with her again has become perceiving this attitude in the portrayal of men in the repulsive to him. stereotypical roles of idealists and creators (therefore As the omniscient narrator almost never gives us superior) against women as materialists and spenders access to Lillian’s thoughts, as readers we need to (therefore inferior), must wonder how a woman writer obtain a more sympathetic view of her and uncover the who presented such affirmative portraits of women in true reason for this estrangement. To do so, we need Alexandra Bergson, Thea Kronborg, and ,~ntonia to reconsider the work from a woman’s angle of vision, Shimerda could have viewed her own sex in this way. pushing aside the obstructing male prejudice and The first thing we notice as readers is that, though carefully analyzing the reasoning of the male protag- the author is female, we are expected to identify with (Continued on page 2) -1- A REASSESSMENT Chicago with the intention of buying himself a new fur (Continued) coat, and he admits that "he [is] by no means an ascetic" (26). He has little right to be biased against onist in the "evidence" provided in the text, paying Lillian, for many of the small comforts she pays for out particular attention to what he evades and fails to say. of her inheritance are enjoyed by him. Let us, therefore, take another look at The Profes- Moreover, we never hear St. Peter complaining of sor’s House, wrenching ourselves away from St. Lillian’s interference with or obstruction of his work Peter’s vantage point in order to see things from during the fifteen years he was working on the history Lillian’s perspective. Since the text postulates a male of the Spanish adventurers in North America. We reader, we need to read against the grain by postulat- must conclude that she kept the children quiet and out ing a female reader who will question St. Peter’s of his way and saw that the house was run smoothly negative assumptions concerning his wife and who will while he worked in his attic room. When he went seek assiduously for evidence buried in the text and in away on sabbatical or during the holidays to France, St. Peter’s silences in order to reassess his wife. In Spain or the Southwest, she never burdened him the process, our opinions of the professor and his wife herself or with her children. He did not seem to will be subverted and a completely different side of appreciate the sacrifices she obviously made for him each revealed. so that he could concentrate on his work. Perhaps he We can start by reconstructing how St. Peter first could not recognize them because of his narrow male- viewed his wife as a young man in his student days in bound perspective; perhaps he merely took them for Paris. He had been struck by her "really radiant granted, feeling that as she was a women, it was her charm" and her "very interesting mind" (49). "Before natural duty to make sacrifices, which would have his marriage and for years afterward, Lillian’s . been a very common view at the time. He seemed to divinations about people and art (always instinctive and grudge the time spent with her n three evenings a unexplained, but nearly always right) were the most week n though he reserved the other four evenings, interesting things in St. Peter’s life" (50). In those days his weekends and holidays for his writing. In the past, they had been happy. It is clear that there had been before he knew Tom, St. Peter had not had close mutual admiration, that they had enjoyed each other’s friends in Hamilton, due to his idealism and intolerance company. But what has made him change his attitude of others, and consequently, he "was thrown upon his toward her from admiration to resentment and hostility? wife for company" (50). Lillian’s companion after her And why does Cather present Lillian in such an marriage was her husband; thus we can imagine how unfavourable light? hard it must have been for her to be abandoned and St. Peter’s prejudice against Lillian is conveyed to isolated after Tom became her husband’s companion. us primarily in the form of biased assumptions. For She must have been horribly lonely --’virtually his instance, he suggests that their married life has been widow" --yet St. Peter does not recall any complaints, happy only because Lillian had some money of her which speaks volumes for her understanding and own enabling small comforts, without which she would devotion. Her loneliness, as well as her determination have become resentful and bitter (257), implying that to go on living and adapt herself to new conditions, she cares too much for material comfort and not may have accounted in part for her strong interest in enough for him. Other than saying she was irritable and affection for her sons-in-law. St. Peter’s male when she had to do the servants’ work herself (not egotism can also be seen in other aspects. Owing to surprising, considering her birth and education, and his terror of the loneliness of death, he used to wish that she had two small children and a three-storey his wife could lie in the same coffin with him (272). He house to take care of), St. Peter does not produce any unconsciously turns his wife into an object he can use evidence that Lillian was either resentful because he of for his own convenience or dispose of when he no had not provided her with material comforts or had longer needs her. complained about the countless inconveniences in the His strongest complaint about his wife at this old house, like the tin bathtub and leaking taps (12). period of their relationship is that she had "vehement On the contrary, we find that Lillian has quietly done likes and dislikes which were often quite out of all her best to rescue her home from shabbiness and proportion to the trivial object or person that aroused make it comfortable, putting her own money into the them." In their early years together, however, he had household allowance to do so. As they never owned found these likes and dislikes "nearly always right" and a house before St. Peter has given her the money to had regarded them as "the most interesting things" in build a new one, she can hardly be blamed for exces- his life (50). How, why, and when did he change his sive spending. Other than such gadgets as an electric views of Lillian’s likes and dislikes so radically? His bell under the dining table, the house is neither showy only example of her "violent likes" seems to be her nor opulent, though it contains modern conveniences. fondness for her son-in-law Louie Marsellus, while her And it is not as if St. Peter were spartan himself. "violent dislikes" seem related to her sudden change of While he can put up with selected hardships, such as attitude to Tom Outland.
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