The Professor's 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.”

Cather introduces the reader to the protagonist and titular character, Professor Godfrey St. Peter, as inseparable from his beloved first house. The house itself is characterized as ugly and dismantled, which creates a juxtaposition between the physicality of the house and the symbolic meaning of the house. The symbolic meaning of the house is much deeper and more beautiful than its physical depiction might suggest.

“St. Peter had managed for years to live two lives, both of them very intense. He would willingly have cut down on his university work, would willingly have given his students chaff and sawdust—many instructors had nothing else to give them and got on very well—but his misfortune was that he loved youth—he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant.”

St. Peter is devoted to his work and passionate about his students. But this passion for work also takes him away from his family. St. Peter has long been divided between work and family, which continues to be one of the central conflicts in his life. This quote also sets up St. Peter’s devotion to Tom, one of his students.

“A man can do anything if he wishes to enough, St. Peter believed. Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. He had been able to measure it, roughly, just once, in his student Tom Outland,—and he had foretold.”

In this quote, Cather introduces the character of Tom as instrumental in St. Peter’s character development. Tom is described here as the embodiment of St. Peter’s values and beliefs in willpower and hard work.