The Professor's House Research Paper

In The Professor’s House, understanding character, a person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, will better help understand the relationship between Tom and the Professor. Understanding the characters Tom and the Professor will help show how their relationship is a little different than most other relationships in the book. With that, it will help show that Tom and the Professor’s relationship can be viewed as somewhat queer. To start off, Tom was not fully heterosexual. Based off of Tom’s diary, the following passage shows what Mrs. St. Peter gained from the diary about Tom, “Of course Mrs. St. Peter had insisted that he was not altogether straightforward; but that was merely because he was not altogether consistent.” (Cather 60).

Even though the Professor is married to a female, he does not spend much time with her. Instead, he spends most of his time in his workspace and Cather makes it seem as if he is hiding something personal about him. One reason that the Professor may be avoiding his wife could be because he is homosexual and does not like his wife. A part of the story that shows the Professor may be homosexual is the part where he dreams of him on an island of only men after a shipwreck, “…his wife was not in it…nobody was in it but himself, and a weather-dried little sea captain from the Hautes-Pyrenees, half a dozen spry seamen…” (Cather 31). If the Professor was 100% heterosexual, then he might have dreamt of some females, or even his wife, on the island as well. Because it was only men on the island, one can assume that the Professor is either bisexual, or homosexual. That could be a reason why the Professor does not spend much time with his wife, and could mean there is another guy that the Professor likes. This “secretive” personality that Cather gives the Professor, along with the dream, can help the reader see the queer side of the