The Professor's House and Le Mannequin d'Osier: A Note on Willa Cather's Narrative Technique

Abstract

THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE AND LE MANNEQUIN D'OSIER: A NOTE ON WILLA CATHER'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE Alice Bell Salo University of Minnesota In The Professor's House Willa Cather borrows from Anatole France's Le Mannequin d'Osier the idea of a dressmaker's form in a professor's study. Scholars have noted that Cather employs two dress forms in place of France's single wicker-work mannequin,1 but no one has commented on her rhetorical use of the borrowed concept. Cather's manipulation of this material demonstrates how she constructs "the novel démeublé" which she described in an essay with that title: Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.2 In a single sentence in the first chapter of The Professor's House, Cather identifies France's novel as a literary source and calls attention to her adaptation of its content. Reassuring his wife's sewing woman that the presence of the two forms does not disturb him, Professor St. Peter often remarks, "if they were good enough for Monsieur Bergeret, they are certainly good enough for me."3 But Godfrey St. Peter, like every other reader of France's novel, would know that M. Bergeret, a professor of Latin at a provincial French university, emphatically objects to sharing his cramped study with "Ie mannequin d'osier, image conjugale."4 His wife customarily leaves the form in front of the bookcase, ignoring his complaints that each time he wants to take a book from the shelves he has to embrace the wicker-work woman and carry her off. Moreover, the contrivance sets his teeth on edge because it reminds him of a farmer's hen coop, of the idol of woven cane in which ancient Phoenicians were said to have burned their children, and, above all, of Madame Bergeret herself. When M. Bergeret discovers his wife embracing his favorite student on the sofa in the drawing room, he vents his anger on the wickerwork woman. Flinging himself upon it, he clasps the mannequin in his arms and makes its wicker breast crack under his fingers as though the cartilage of ribs were breaking. Overturning the form, he stamps on it 230Notes and then throws it, groaning and mutilated, out the window into the yard below. After wreaking physical vengeance on the wicker-work mannequin , M. Bergeret punishes his wife without overt violence; he avoids her presence and he ignores her existence. Finally, Madame Bergeret, devastated by being shut out of her husband's life, announces that she is returning to the home of her aged mother. M. Bergeret secretly rejoices that she has arrived at the goal toward which he has been guiding her. In The Professor's House, this reference to France's novel serves two narrative purposes: In the opening pages of the book, Cather shows the reader that Godfrey St. Peter's statements should not be accepted at face value. His utterances must be weighed and assessed, then constantly reevaluated in the light of additional evidence. On some matters, such as his wife's attitude toward his favorite student, Tom Outland, St. Peter's own view changes from chapter to chapter. By prompting the reader to recall similarities between conjugal relationships in the two novels, Cather creates what can best be described, in her own words, as an "overtone, which is too fine for the printing press."5 She does not write that St. Peter is deliberately excluding his wife from his attention and affection after a favorite student has come between them, but several statements and incidents throughout the novel suggest this. On the following page Cather conveys the same message by a different method. In the first dialogue in the novel, St. Peter says to Augusta, the sewing woman, "I'm not moving just yet—don't want...