At the beginning of the novel, we learn a lot about Professor Peter St. Peter’s character. He is excitedly preparing for his future, he is strong in his beliefs and ideals and he is oddly attached to his old house in which he is in the process of moving out of. He and his wife are in the process of moving into a new, bigger house with all the modern conveniences awaiting his arrival. His attachment to the old house is so strong he even has a particular order and place for every object in the room which mustn’t be changed. At the conclusion of the story, St. Peter’s personality completely transforms and he is no longer apathetic to his morals and principles he used to hold near and dear to his heart. He abandons everything that made him who he is. This can be seen throughout the story as he drifts away from his family. St. Peter’s loss of identity is a result of his loss of his old home, symbolizing the old and simpler life he used to live.
With the big move on the rise, Peter St. Peter has become detached from his family and apathetic toward his principles. In the new house he and his wife decide to have separate bedrooms and bathrooms. St. Peter depicts his family’s imperfection as being cause for his solitude. But it is St. Peter unwillingness to change and adapt that is the root of his problems. Lillian tells him this when she says, “One must go on living, Godfrey. But it wasn’t the children who came between us” (78). We see St. Peter is truly the cause of their fading relationship because he is uninterested in anyone’s values. This is also seen when the family gets together for a nice dinner out, he is no longer excited to see his family. At dinner he becomes mute and passive, distraught by the family’s new obsession with money and the materialistic world. Before the big move, Lillian was attracted to his vivacious and eager personality, which is the exact opposite of Peter’s new somber attitude. While Lillian notices Peter’s change, Peter can’t help but think about the drastic change of his family members. His daughters were once innocent and untainted from the world now, obsessed with money and his wife who was attracted to his youthful exhilaration which is now expressed onto Marsellus.
For St. Peter, the attachment to the old house becomes, as the novel progresses, and as is evident even from this first chapter, a symbol for St. Peter’s attachment to the past itself and the simpler, modest life they used to life. As a historian, this emotion is perhaps fitting. The Professor is attached not only to the house and its imperfections, but to his work room in the house and to the very dress forms his sewing lady has used to construct dresses for his wife and daughters over the years. At the end of the book, the family takes a trip to France and Peter stays behind. Spending time away from his family and back in the old home, Godfrey realizes how unhappy he is with his "new” life brought on by the new family values and new house. He begins to question how he will survive the change.
When Godfrey lived in old house he is grounded in his beliefs and refused to submit to the social changes along with his family. However, the new house has changed the entire family, Lillian , the daughters and sons-in-law have become much more materialistic and modern while Godfrey is distraught by the new modern life he becomes passive. His new attitude has completely taken over his life, he even passively awaits death as he sits in the study as the room fills with gas. Not only did Godfrey lose his home along with his modest and simple lifestyle, he also lost his identity; his values and principles abandoned along with the abandoned ,empty house.
This is interesting-- do you think that Cather uses this to teach her readers about the effect of materialism on the modern human condition?
ReplyDeleteThat's a very interesting point and I like it. It does make sense to say that Cather is teaching us of the dangers of materialism, we become too attached and without them we simply don't know who we are.
ReplyDeleteThis reading gives the book an ironic twist, that while rebuking everyone around him for being too materialistic he is as well and he is even more materialistic than his family.
While I agree that the idea of Cather somehow rebuking her readers is quite interesting and definitely plausible, I'd like to disagree if only for my own personal enjoyment of the novel. Ilana, I really like your reading of St. Peter's house; to me it is something sweet and relatable rather than a form of rebuke. Additionally, I believe that most people carry special sentiment towards various things due to the emotional attachment we assign it. That is how I see St. Peter's reluctance to move on with his life- to move on would require his leaving behind his old comforts and sources of pride.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely yes, to answer Hannah’s question. I think that the new house into which the St. Peter family moves is symbolic of the materialism that Cather so abhorred in the 20th century social condition. Godfrey insincerely claims to his wife that he would not have rather spent all his Oxford prize money on anything else but her new house with its elegance and modern conveniences, but in it he and his wife Lillian have separate bedrooms and baths and share no mutual pleasure in socializing with family members or guests. As time goes on, he cannot even bear to go into the house and retreats more and more into his old house and its comfort of the past and simpler pleasures and values. The new house dramatically symbolizes the excesses and fragmentation that materialistic life can bring along with it, and in Godfrey’s reaction (almost death) we see Cather’s opinion quite clearly.
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