Research On Aesthetic Modernity In Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House

Willa Cather is famous in American literature arena for her frontier novels that areset in the Nebraska prairies. For a long time, Cather studies have scored tremendoussuccess. The extant Cather studies have tended to regard Cather as “a nostalgicromanticist,”“a local colorist,” and “a regionalist writer.” However, Cather’srepresentation of the crisis of Enlightenment modernity and aesthetic blueprint forredeeming Enlightenment modernity have not received much attention. The primetime for Cather’s literary creations was at the pinnacle of the development ofmodernist literature in America, and thus her works must have been influenced by theideas of modernist literature. Among Cather’s corpus, The Professor’s House (1925),as one of the brilliant works that embody modernist themes, crystallizes her reflectionon and criticism of Enlightenment modernity and enshrines her aesthetic attempt tomake amendments to the faults of Enlightenment modernity. All these ideas are themarrow of the profound thought of aesthetic modernity in this novel.Modernist literature not only concerns itself with all kinds of problems broughtby the overstretched development of modernity, but also sheds insights into resolvingthese problems through its literary imagination. Thus, it embodies the profoundthought of aesthetic modernity. Similarly, in The Professor’s House, Cather, by takingthe Midwestern cities along the Michigan River as its narrative locale, opens up waysto criticize the radical development of modernity and to present her aestheticaspiration for redeeming it.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to the introduction and theconclusion parts.Chapter One discusses Cather’s criticism of the negative influences ofEnlightenment modernity. In this novel, these influences find expressions in thealienated social reality. Living in an alienated society spawned by instrumentalrationality, the protagonist St. Peter is confined to an administered social institutionwhich leads him to be enmeshed in alienated interpersonal relationship either in termsof his working or everyday life. Professor St. Peter’s experience sounds true to the spiritual depression and disillusionment of human beings under the great crush ofEnlightenment modernity.Chapter Two analyzes Cather’s criticism of Enlightenment modernity thatrepresses humanity. In the novel, Cather depicts collective images of split humanbeings among whom males are stifled either by the bureaucratic social institution orare led to the crucifixion of death by war machine, and among whom females areinundated by the sweeping tides of consumerism and become Eliot’s “Hollow Men.”All these split human images, under the pen of Cather, delineate the eroded and emptyspiritual world of modern men resulted from the extreme encroachment of materialcivilization.Chapter Three points out Cather’s imaginative way towards aesthetic redemptionand proposes that her advocacy of aesthetic disinterest can repel the stiffness andmonotonousness in the iron cage of society and reshape the spiritual land of humanbeings. Cather blazes a broad trail for people to step out their alienated livingenvironment. She appeals for people to liberate nature, release sensibility and dwellpoetically on the earth, so that the harmonious development of sense and sensibilityand the restoration of humanity come into fruition.The Conclusion part summarizes the main points discussed in this thesis andaffirms the modernist themes embodied in The Professor’s House. Besides, it pointsout the realistic significances of aesthetic modernity in this novel. Such significanceslie in that it not only provides important humanistic values for the development ofhuman society, but also admonishes the negative effects of modernity. And they alsoconsist in the advocacy of the concern for the spiritual world of human beings whoneeds both rational progress and aesthetic pursuits. In so doing, people can becomefull human beings and human society can achieve full-fledged development.