The Professor's House

Willa Cather
The Professor's House - $4.65
Published in 1925

Willa Cather was a Pulitzer Prize winning American writer. She was a very confident writer, working for years on novels to produce a very specific voice. She did not fit in with other women writers of her time and is said to have “regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental and mawkish.” She is now recognized as a major American writer and the foremost woman writer.

In undergrad, I had the pleasure of taking a Willa Cather course with a renowned Cather Scholar Dr. Margaret Doane. Dr. Doane has published over 60 articles and papers dealing with many themes in various Cather novels. We read several novels by Willa Cather and The Professor’s House was the one that made the most impact on me.

The novel is split into three parts. The first concerns the family of Professor Godfrey St. Peter and the midlife crisis he is experiencing after winning an award for his life’s work. He has lost his lust for life after publishing his life’s work and still having a life to live after. He has become estranged with his family and is mourning the death of a brilliant pupil, Tom Outland. The second part is the story of Tom Outland that the Professor is editing from Tom’s journals. The last part concerns the Professor trying to hang on to his old life while his family is away on a trip in Europe.

The novel, like most great novels, has inspired a wide array of readings. A common reading of the novel is that it’s a “story about the moral decline of a money driven society.” This was a popular reading of the novel for many years until the novel and Willa Cather began to be studied more widely. Dr. Doane was the first to do a feminist reading of The Professor’s House. Willa Cather was a woman writing a man’s view of women. Generally, the views of the male characters were viewed as her views. It wasn't until doing a feminist reading of the novel that you can see that “the Professor strongly feels women, particularly those in his family, are destructive and petty.” The Professor is always amazed with women even though he finds fault with them. Professor “St. Peter and other males’ --thoughts about women shows a perspective which is both prejudiced and insensitive.”

The readings of the novel range from societal critique to feminist readings and more recently homosexual readings. Whichever reading you choose to use, The Professor’s House is a novel worth reading. This is not her most famous novel or the one she won awards for, but it is the one that defines Willa Cather for me. Download a sample and check out the foremost American woman writer.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Free
Published 1876

Mark Twain was a humorist and satirist who achieved worldwide acclaim while still alive. For more on Mark Twain see my post on his Biography and Autobiography.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of Mark Twain's most famous novels. The book follows Tom Sawyer and his friends growing up in a town next to the Mississippi river and all the adventures they experience. The characters are loosely based on Mark Twain’s childhood and his friends. Tom Sawyer was written as a children’s novel and Mark Twain uses this as a means to express his social commentary. Using a child’s innocence and simplicity he is able to point out the sometimes childish and irrational norms of society.

“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”

Seeing the world through a child's worldview, Twain is able to point out that society does not always operate on logical and wise principles.

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

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Even while pointing out a flaw of society, Twain manages to insert humor into his book. Mark Twain was appealing to the child in his readers and what better way than to remind us of the fun we had as children. We never laugh as much as we did when we were young.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a tribute to childhood. Mark Twain uses the book to introduce characters and themes that he will explore further in the sequel to Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain was a great American writer who added depths of meaning to a great American novel. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer can be enjoyed by children and adults alike.





Check out our Facebook Page and “Like” us to keep up to date on the latest Kindle Literature news. You can share this post or any others on your social media of choice and bookmark the site for future post. You can also grab the RSS feed or try a free 2 week trial* on your Kindle to have the posts delivered directly to your Kindle. Follow me on twitter @seframos. Happy Reading.