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.