Tom Outland v. Rosamond

After reading Book 1 in its entirety I find it hard to believe that Rosamond and Tom Outland were once engaged. It seems strange that the same woman would be attracted to Louie and Tom who seem to be complete opposites. So far Louie and Rosamond's characters seem to be perhaps the most interested in materialistic wealth. Rosamond and Louie clearly have plenty of money and they are in no way modest. Rosamond is continually flaunting her possessions, whether it be clothes or her new house and this creates tension between her and Kathleen. From what we have been told about Tom he seems to be the exact opposite which was made evident from his first visit to the St. Peter's house (pages 101-103). Book 2 may give us more insight into the lives and courtship of Tom and Rosamond but at the moment they seem to be very different characters who represent different lives and different values.

Louie's connection to Tom Outland

 During the course of the novel, we see Louie attempting to gain the Professor's approval time and again, and over time he has more and more success with that. But over time we see that Louie isn't just looking to please the Professor, he's trying to fill the void left by Tom Outland's death. When reminiscing on Tom's early days in Hamilton, the Professor thinks of how he would leave them "princely gifts" even though he had so little himself. For Mrs. St. Peter he gave an earthen jar some centuries old, and for Kathleen and Rosamond he gave pieces of turquoise fresh from the earth, and this was just after he had met the family. On page 141, when the Professor has decided to decline the invitation to a summer abroad in France, he describes the invitation being "princely," a description that was only used in connection with Tom. Additionally, on page 144, Louie actually puts on the purple blanket Tom had left for the Professor when he left for war. This word choice over the descriptions of certain generosities given by the two men and Louie's trying on a blanket that was one of Tom's belongings seems to suggest that they are connected both to Rosamond as lovers and to the Professor as sons, though Louie still seems to be trying to fit himself into that role. It seems that he succeeds when the Professor is described as the "vanquished father-in-law"(149).

The Scholar in contrast to the Family Man in The Professor’s House

One of the most clearly developed dichotomies within the first eight chapters of Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House is found within Professor St. Peter himself who has, “managed to live two lives, both of them very intense” (11). He seems to feel the need to keep his scholarly pursuits completely separate from the familial parts of his life, in “the one place in the house where he could get isolation…from the engaging drama of domestic life” (10). Even more so, his university job is separate from his book writing as well, as the narrator explains, “all the while that he was working so fiercely by night, he was earning his living during the day…but that was another life” (11). The text seems to be developing the idea that in order for the mind to flourish, it must be separated from factors of the heart (in this case, the family). Indeed, the description makes it seem as if the professor really severs ties from the “human” parts of his life when he goes into his attic study, which is in itself an inhuman space. It is mechanical and inorganic, with wire and sawdust busts replacing the real women that live and breathe downstairs. Moreover, there is a certain poisonous quality to the attic study, with the gas stove spewing out toxic fumes that might asphyxiate a deeply absorbed man “before he knew it” (10). Because of the nature of the study, working on these scholarly pursuits is dangerous to the professor’s health and has the high possibility of leading to sickness or death. Yet, despite these negative aspects, the professor feels a certain fondness for the place, a certain attachment that he refuses to let go of. As his daughters grow up and his relationship with his family changes, the professor views his study as a sort of sanctuary that remains unchanged, despite its toxicity. This then begs the question, how will scholarship and the family be further developed in the text? Will the poisonous aspects of scholarly work that are such a large part of the attic increase to point where they start affecting the family? It seems as if there is already some negative changes occurring in the familial relationships, so it will be interesting to see how this dichotomy within the professor and his house evolves and shifts.

Varying reactions to new wealth in the West

As with McTeague, The Professor’s House takes up the issue of wealth gained through chance and the envy that ensues. Similar to Trina’s luck in winning the lottery, Rosamond has gained her fortune through no action of her own, but through the will of her deceased fiancée who invented a product that was only successful after his death. Again, as we saw in McTeague with the bitterness that rises in Marcus and Zerkow after Trina’s win, Kathleen harbors a good deal of resentment for her sister’s good fortune: “...she comes here with her magnificence and takes the life out of all our poor little things” (69). However, while the external reactions to the newly wealthy are near-identical between the two novels, the behavior of those who have gained money differ greatly. While Trina becomes a hoarder, jealously guarding her stash so she can continually add to it, Rosamond outwardly flaunts her riches, upsetting her sister by outshining her whenever she can. While we see money become something of an obsession for both of these characters, their differing expressions of that obsession show that money in the West inspires a great deal of emotion that can take on different forms. Money is something to be protected, to be wasted and, in the case of Archilde’s mother in The Surrounded, to be rejected entirely. Although different writers portray its presence and effects in different ways, the prominence of money throughout several Western novels demonstrates its strange and unusual power over that setting.

Narrator's use of the Professor's first name

Throughout the first six chapters of the novel, Godfrey St. Peter is referred to as either the Professor or as St. Peter; but on pages sixty-four and sixty-five, the narrator switches that and calls him by his first name. This happens as he is considering his wife's intimate relationships with his sons-in-law, particularly Louie, "With Louie, Lillian seemed to be launching into a new career, and Godfrey began to think that he understood his own wife very little"(64). The conversation Louie and Lillian were having was about Rosamond, and the narrator begins to examine the relationship between the Professor and his wife through this scene. While it is well known that he and his wife had grown apart over the years, the Professor actually seems wistful over the distance between them. The narrator's switch to an informal reference shows the sensitive nature of the information being imparted to the reader in this scene. After Louie leaves and the Professor begins conversion with his wife, he is again referred to as St. Peter and he resumes his position opposite his wife as the moment of reflection ends and he is once again distant from his wife. It will be interesting to see if there are other moments of clarity inside the mind of the Professor and if the narrator again switches to using his first name as a signal to the reader that it is a moment of inner thought for him.

A Monstrous Landscape

At the start of Chapter XX, we get a detailed description of the landscape that directly contrasts the busy atmosphere described when McTeague looks out onto Polk street in San Francisco. Norris introduces the natural world in a very daunting way. The reader feels out of place and out of touch with the seemingly untouched new setting. Quickly Norris reveals that the so called peaceful natural world is actually being taken over by the humans that establish themselves working as miners throughout the land. Contrasting the distant description of this nature, McTeague offers his perspective of living within the colossal mountains. He feels a definite sense of comfort living in a vast land that seems fitting for a brutish giant such as himself. As he describes the mountains in the distance he finds them similar to "his own nature, huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity" (Norris, 213). The "immensity" and "enormous power" that the mountains possess directly reflects McTeague's own blind strength and uncontrolled anger. The mountains make McTeague feel less out of place than he felt constantly in the presence of Trina and other humans in San Francisco. Norris introduces the landscape as something that ordinary people may find hard to connect with, but intentionally goes on to highlight McTeague's stability and pleasure with living amongst "a company of cowled giants" (Norris, 213). The mountains look much less like beasts to McTeague as he himself is described throughout the narrative as an uncontrollable monster when he enters his fits of rage. Norris juxtaposes these two descriptions of the new landscape to underline McTeague's own brutality and lack of place in normal society.

Significance of the Caged Bird in McTeague

The canary that McTeague so desperately cares for takes the place of his trophy wife that he was looking for when he married Trina. He believed that Trina, along with her five thousand dollars, would provide a sense of security like the security he once experienced during his time in the mines with a canary. To McTeague, the canary signifies security, because as a young boy working in the mines, as long as the bird was singing, there was no deadly gas in the mine. Norris compares the canary to Trina, yet McTeauge admires the caged bird because it does not act up and causes little to no stress on him. Trina, on the other hand, refuses to give McTeague money, or security, forcing him to live in a cage of his own. At the very end of the novel, Norris shows how McTeague has started to embody the same qualities of the canary. In his fight with Marcus in the middle of the desert, the two men fall over the dead mule, and “the little bird cage broke from the saddle with the violence of their fall, and rolled out upon the ground” (Norris, 243). After McTeague has killed Marcus, he realizes that in his last action before death, Marcus has handcuffed the two of them together. McTeague is described as “stupidly looking around him, now at the distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary chittering feebly in its little gilt prison” (243). McTeague, like the canary, is trapped out in the open, with his own world destroyed, left dying in the desert. When the canary’s prison is destroyed, McTeague’s prison becomes are reality.

The Outside World in McTeague

The beginning paragraphs of chapter 20 mark a significant change in the tone of McTeague.  Norris draws a parallel in this first paragraph to the previous scene by focusing on the senses.  His fixation on the smells of the desert and the mountains is supposed to be a pleasant replacement for the smell of the corpse at the end of the previous chapter.  It makes the reader not only transition more easily, but it also makes the reader feel more positively toward this new space than the previous one.  Thus far in the text, Norris has been focused on specific individuals, and the way that those individuals interact with capitalism.  However, McTeague’s story has only been a microcosm of what is happening in the west as a whole.  On page 208, Norris zooms out and we see the West as its own entity with “tremendous, immeasurable Life” (Norris 208).  This passage personifies elements of the landscapes to empower nature, for example, the mountains raise themselves.  In contrast to the housewife that is nature in the east, Norris talks about the west saying, “she is a vast, unconquered brute of the Pliocene epoch, savage, sullen, and magnificently indifferent to men” (208-209).  Not only does this again personify and empower the west as a space, but it brings the complicated question of gender into play.   Interestingly, here it is a female who is considered a ‘brute’ whereas in the earlier text, this word was used to describe McTeague.  The crowning glory of this female is her indifference to men, so perhaps we are supposed to understand that if Trina had been more of a brute, and more like the west, she would not have been killed by McTeague.  However, despite being indifferent, Norris’ western, powerful female space is being destroyed.  His next paragraph describes how men are the parasites on the “mammoth” that is the west (209).  These parasites use machinery to kill and maim the west, which is a not so subtle critique of industrialization.  However, this also connects to mining and once again draws us back to McTeague.  Somehow he is profiting off of destroying the west.  Overall this introduction into the final pages of the novel is supposed to provide the reader with a context for McTeague’s life as a way to broaden Norris’ commentary to encompass the west as a whole and not just Polk Street.