The professor's house

The complexities of change and memory

Willa Cather

140 pages, parution le 09/11/2023

Ajouter à une liste

Expédié sous 9 jours

Livraison à partir de 0,01€ dès 35€ d'achats
Pour une livraison en France métropolitaine

QUANTITÉ

Résumé

"The Professor's House" by Willa Cather explores the life of Professor Godfrey St. Peter, a historian who finds himself at a crossroads as he navigates personal and professional changes. The narrative begins with St. Peter reflecting on his life in his old house, which he is reluctant to leave despite having a new, more comfortable home. This reluctance symbolizes his resistance to change and his attachment to the past. The story delves into his relationships with his family, particularly his wife Lillian and his daughters, Rosamond and Kathleen, as well as their husbands. The Professor's interactions with his family reveal underlying tensions, especially concerning his son-in-law Louie Marsellus, who has benefited from the legacy of Tom Outland, a brilliant young scientist and St. Peter's former student. Outland's discovery, the Outland vacuum, has brought wealth to Rosamond and Louie, creating a sense of unease for St. Peter, who feels that Outland's memory is being commercialized. The novel also touches on St. Peter's professional life, highlighting his dedication to his work and his struggles with the changing academic environment. Through introspection and encounters with various characters, St. Peter grapples with themes of memory, loss, and the passage of time, ultimately questioning the value of his achievements and the direction of his life.

L'auteur - Willa Cather

Willa Cather (1873 -1947) was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Despite this critical opposition to her work, Cather remained a popular writer whose novels and short story collections continued to sell well. In 1931 Shadows on the Rock was the most widely read novel in the US, and Lucy Gayheart became a bestseller in 1935. Although Cather began her writing career as a journalist, she made a distinction between journalism, which she saw as being primarily informative, and literature, which she saw as an art form. Cather's work is often marked by its nostalgic tone, her subject matter and themes drawn from memories of her early years on the American plains.