nes, is undergoing a series of irrevocable changes that effectively dissolve the family unit: the sale of its assets, the death, disappearance, or putting away of one family member after another, the decline of its good name in the community of Jefferson. In The_Professor's_House, too, sea changes occur in the life of the family. On the surface, there is the fact that Professor and Mrs. St. Peter are moving to a new house something the Professor dislikes because it means giving up what has become for him a comfortable study and scholarly retreat from day to day household cares. But other undercurrents are at work as well, as the Professor recalls his years of professional and family life with increasing clarity and watches the dynamics of the current family life with decreasing fondness. Time and circumstance are overtaking his way of life, and much of the novel, including his near asphyxiation, deals with his recognition that time is running out for him and a feeling that in the life he chose and the family he created he has squandered the time he has had. Although the St. Peter family is largely free of the kind of tension that is fundamental to the Compson household in The_Sound_and_the_Fury, its members are growing away from one another the daughters Rosamond and Kitty in a sibling rivalry based on Rosamond's wealth and Kitty's lack of it, the Professor's wife Lillian, whose interests lie not with him but with her daughters' younger, more attentive husbands, and the Professor from all of them. He recalls with fondness only Tom Outland, the student protege whose death left an emotional void in his life. A scholar of some repute, St. Peter recognizes he nevertheless lacks enthusiasm for his distinguished place in the world and emotional ties to those closest to him, retaining affection only for his study, which is about to be taken away from him by the fine new house. This crisis of connection and alienation incites a wish for withd...