In Willa Cather's novel The Professor's House, the author portrays Professor St. Peter as a middle-aged man who finds himself isolated from his family through the family's development and at the same time, he finds himself going through a change in life. The family's movement from their small house to their new one fuels the tensions between the relationships of the Professor and his family members, and causes the Professor to distance himself from them, often times, conjuring up old memories in the process. Although the Professor is pushed away from his family through their jealousies and pettiness, it is those old memories he holds onto that makes him better understand his life.
             The only meaning in the Professor's life now lies in the past. The Professor's success is futile and his relationships with his wife and daughters have become sour. It is his relationship with Tom Outland in which the Professor only holds dear now. The Kansas boy is possibly symbolic of Tom Outland because it has been one of the few things the Professor has only been able to feel good about. The Kansas boy, the "unmodified Godfrey St. Peter," was more active than the other and it was this Kansas boy, who spent his holidays with the Thieraults in France, who he valued more than his family and career. It is ironic that the Professor chooses not to spend time with his own family in France and instead, already has done so with another family in the past. The Professor is who he is now because he "had begun to grow strong during adolescence" (Cather 240) and that was what he valued and wanted to hold onto. The Professor only ended up where he was, with his wife and daughters, because it was "shaped by all the penalties and responsibilities of being and having been a lover" (Cather 240).
             The Kansas boy, like Tom Outland, was how the Professor would have liked to lead his life rather than settle for ...