The Professor’s House
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Willa Cather has been criticized for her lack of Native Americans in her novels,
especially in their absence in the Nebraska novels Here they are present, yet absent.
What is the purpose of Mother Eve in this novel? Does “Tom Outland’s Story”
answer or reinforce the criticism of Cather with regard to Native Americans?
2. A domestic novel is defined as one that centers on home life and the attributes of character, rather than on plot. Many 19th & early 20th century domestic novels employ
a certain amount of sentimentality. Is The Professor’s House a domestic novel? Is it a sentimental novel?
3. How might we compare the domestic spaces of the novel: Outland’s cabin, St. Peter’s
old house, St. Peter’s new house, the hotels, Outland?
4. Considering what we know about Tom Outland, how are he and Godfrey St. Peter
alike? How are they different?
5. Talk about the story’s structure: what is the purpose of “Tom Outland’s Story” in the middle of the novel? What would change for you as a reader if the this had been structured differently, or if the narrator had been omniscient, or if it had been told chronologically? Could Godfrey St. Peter have told Tom Outland’s story in a better way?
6. What is Tom Outland’s legacy?
7. There are many cultures at work in this story; is it a story of imperialism? What is the significance of St. Peter’s ongoing work on the Spanish explorers?
8. Scholar Scott Herring calls St. Peter’s boyhood experience of moving away from Kansas “a typical metronormative story,” i.e., he moves from the country to a city, to education, career, and suburban life. Discuss St. Peter’s memories of this to Cather’s own life, especially with regard to homosexuality or gender roles? Is “metronormative” really normal? How does this idea relate to what we in rural America term “brain drain?”
9. There are many examples of foils within this story; discuss some of them:
Scott / Louis Rosie / Kitty Outland / St. Peter
Outland / Louis Augusta / Lillian Old house / new house
10. Security in a room, a place, or a process seems important to St. Peter. Was it important
to Cather? Discuss some of the autobiographical aspects of this novel.
11. People sometimes talk about this book as evidence of a depression from which Cather
suffered. Is that justified? Is introspection the same as depression? If a character is depressed, what can we deduce about the author?
12. What is the function of the garden in this story?
Timeline of Willa Cather (excerpt)
1902 Cather living with the McClung’s on Murray Hill, using the sewing room to write in
1906 Cather begins work on McClure’s magazine
1911 S.S. McClure forced out of the business due to health and finances
Cather takes leave of absence from the magazine and travels to the Southwest
1912 Resigns in late summer from McClure’s
Moves into 5 Bank Street with Edith Lewis
1915 Isabelle McClung announces her impending marriage
Judge McClung died
1921 Cather gives interview stating: “There I was on the Atlantic coast among dear and helpful friends and surrounded by the great masters and teachers with all their tradition of learning and culture and yet I was always being pulled back into Nebraska. Whenever I crossed the Missouri River coming into Nebraska the very smell of the soil tore me to pieces. I could not decide which was the real and which the fake ‘me.’ I almost decided to settle down on a quarter section of land and let my writing go. My deepest affection was not for the other people and the other places I had been writing about. I loved the country where I had been a kid, where they still called me ‘Willie’ Cather. . . . I knew every farm, every tree, every field in the region around my home and they all called out to me. My deepest feelings were rooted in this country because one’s strongest emotions and one’s most vivid mental pictures are acquired before one is fifteen. I had searched for books telling about the beauty of the country I love, its romance, the heroism and the strength and courage of its people that had been plowed into the very furrows of its soil and I did not find them. And so I wrote O Pioneers!”
1923 Cather begins writing The Professor’s House
1925 Publication of The Professor’s House