Wealth, Change, Tom . . .?

“If Outland were here tonight, he might say with Mark Anthony, My fortunes have corrupted honest men.”

This is the passage I chose that someone could maybe write a paper about. It deals with the recurring idea of wealth and lack of wealth that is important in the novel, The Professor’s House.

The Professor’s old house is the house of a comfortable, but not wealthy, family. The Professor doesn’t seem to adjust to wealth well. He doesn’t want to leave his study in the old house and pays for rent for the whole house for the mere use of its study. Ironically, it’s his wealth that lets him remain in the house of his just-getting-by days. Maybe the professor looks at wealth negatively because it takes away and changes everything he cares about. He throws a mini fit when Augusta tries to take her forms to the new house and he says to her, “Go and buy some new ones for your airy atelier, as many as you wish—I’m said to be rich now, am I not?—Go buy, but you can’t have my women. That’s final.” It’s almost as if he doesn’t like wealth because it buys new things and he is perfectly content with the old, familiar things. He just wants things to be how they were, and wealth doesn’t support that desire.

Plus, he notices a change in his wife and his eldest daughter, Rosamond, that he doesn’t like (“Since Rosamond’s marriage to Marsellus, both she and her mother had changed bewilderingly in some respects—changed and hardened”). I really think that is what it is—the professor has a negative view of wealth because it brings change and he does not like change. He is a “writer of histories” for a reason. But back to his wife and daughter, he sees them hardening towards people and in general. Kitty comes to her father and tells him that Rosamond refuses to help Augusta when she loses money investing in a stock that Rosamond’s husband, Louie, suggested she invest in. He has a really hard time believing that his Rosie could be so cold and unwilling to help someone in need. Also, St Peter seems to be annoyed by the fact that the things that used to be good enough for his wife are no longer good enough for her anymore.

He noticed a negative change in his colleague Doctor Crane who once fought against commercialism in the college with St Peter but now is threatening to fight for a share of Outland’s patent in court. The professor noted that Crane used to be the kind of professor who gets pleasure out of simply helping a student reach their potential and succeed and doesn’t try to take credit for his success. But now Crane is demanding that he be compensated for his work helping a student because of a desire for wealth.

Actually, exploring this idea of the corruption of wealth revealed how much more prominent the professor’s issue with change is. He is a middle-aged man who is having a hard time letting the past go. His wife lectures him about treating his sons-in-law better, but the reason he keeps them at arm’s length is probably because he misses his daughters and misses being the most important man in their lives. He has a new house but wants to stay in the old one. He misses Tom and all Tom represents. When his wife questions his unhappiness and his weird behavior he replies, “It’s the feeling that I’ve got a great deal behind me, where I can’t go back to it again—and I don’t really wish to go back.” If he doesn’t want to go back and he doesn’t want to move forward even though everything is changing around him, what is he going to do? The professor is in crisis, and it has to do with wealth, change, and memories.

“Fellows like Outland don’t carry much luggage, yet one of the things you know them by is their sumptuous generosity—and when they are gone, all you can say of them is that they departed leaving princely gifts.”
(Haha, this is just to bring it back to wealth. This blog post is all over the place. I feel like this quote shows the professor’s fondness for Tom and for people like him who don’t have much but leave gifts that some of the wealthiest people aren’t capable of giving. He admired Tom because he didn’t care about wealth as much as people like Louie did.)