A Woman's Career and Life Contrasted with a Man's
In both (The Song of the Lark( (published in 1915) and (The
Professor's House( (published in 1925), Willa Cather builds the
action of a novel around the career of the protagonist. The form
that the action takes differs markedly in each book. (The Song of the
Lark( chronicles the struggle of Thea Kronborg to become a premiere
opera singer over a period of years, while (The Professor's House(
deals with a renowned scholar historian named Godfrey St. Peter
during the months of a midlife crisis.
The action of (The Song of the Lark( is linear, the narrative
progressing along with the development of Thea's career. The action
of (The Professor's House( is reflective, presented in large measure
as St. Peter's memory (and evaluation) of his life and work. The
character of the two careers and the world of the two novels are
also widely disparate, with (The Song of the Lark( offering a glimpse
into the heady world of show business and musical artistry and (The
Professor's House( showing the staid respectability of professorial
life in a Midwestern college town. More important, (The Song of the
Lark( shows a woman artist who struggles psychically to reach and
finally reaches the peak of her career, while (The Professor's House(
shows a man whose career as a respected scholar has involved very
little material or psychic struggle at all. Whereas Thea Kronborg
finds herself discarding those she meets along the way, divesting
herself of attachments that become unimportant to her life as an
artist, Godfrey St. Peter, at the time of the novel, has experienced
the loss of one person in his life who had been profoundly important
to him, is experiencing the value of another whose importance he has
.he #.
only begun to apprec...