
The Professor's House
by Willa Cather
'The Professor's House' Summary
When Professor Godfrey St. Peter and wife move to a new house, he becomes uncomfortable with the route his life is taking. He keeps on his dusty study in the old house in an attempt to hang on to his old life. The marriages of his two daughters have removed them from the home and added two new sons-in-law, precipitating a mid-life crisis that leaves the Professor feeling as though he has lost the will to live because he has nothing to look forward to.
The novel initially addresses the Professor's interactions with his new sons-in-law and his family, while continually alluding to the pain they all feel over the death of Tom Outland in the Great War. Outland was not only the Professor's student and friend, but the fiancé of his elder daughter, who is now living off the wealth created by the "Outland vacuum."
The novel's central section turns to Outland, and recounts in first-person the story of his exploration of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico. The section is a retrospective narrative remembered by the professor.
In the final section, the professor, left alone while his family takes an expensive European tour, narrowly escapes death due to a gas leak in his study; and finds himself strangely willing to die. He is rescued by the old family seamstress, Augusta, who has been his staunch friend throughout. He resolves to go on with his life.
Book Details
Authors

Willa Cather
United States
Willa Sibert Cather was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Pr...
Books by Willa CatherDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books

Angelica by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
The story follows the protagonist, Angelica, as she navigates through a web of lies, deceit, and betrayal to uncover the truth about her husband's dea...

The Begum's Fortune by Jules Verne
The Begum's Fortune also published as The Begum's Millions, is an 1879 novel by Jules Verne, with some utopian elements and other elements that seem c...

The Duel by Anton Chekhov
The Duel is a novella by Anton Chekhov originally published in 1891; it was adapted for the screen by Iosif Kheifits in 1973 (as The Bad Good Man, sta...

The Border Riflemen by Albert W. Aiken
In this dime novel set on the American frontier, we meet a beautiful young girl, Sadie, who is fending off advances from the rough woodsman, known as...

The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
"Everything in life has a price. May be, telling a Secret has the highest. However, not telling may be worse. What will Sarah choose? will she tell th...

The Primrose Path by Bram Stoker
It tells the story of a happy Irish family, the O'Sullivans, who leave their straightforward Dublin life behind to go to London, to follow Jerry O'Sul...

Ophelia, the Rose of Elsinore by Mary Cowden Clarke
This story is from Mary Cowden Clarke's multi-volume work The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, in which she imagined the early lives of characters...

Sorrows of Satan - Or, the Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire by Marie Corelli
In Marie Corelli's *Sorrows of Satan*, Geoffrey Tempest, a struggling writer, finds himself thrust into a life of unimaginable wealth and luxury after...

Fortunata y Jacinta: dos historias de casadas (Primera Parte) by Benito Pérez Galdós
“Fortunata y Jacinta” es una obra maestra del realismo español, que explora las complejidades del amor, el matrimonio y la sociedad en el Madrid del s...

Scalp Hunters by Thomas Mayne Reid
"Unroll the world’s map, and look upon the great northern continent of America. Away to the wild west, away toward the setting sun, away beyond many a...
Reviews for The Professor's House
No reviews posted or approved, yet...