ZEYNEP TOPKORU

07035509

308 – AMERICAN NOVEL

FALL SEMESTER

LOUIE THE MONEYMAKER

How are we to view Louie – as a person, as what he “represents”, as as

he elicits certain reactions in other Hamiltonians?

JANUARY 2006
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 How are we to view Louie – as a person, as what he “represents”, and he elicits certain

reactions in other Hamiltonians?

LOUIE THE MONEYMAKER

The 1920s of the United States is an era, which was being shaped not only by the World War

I and its economical effects, but also by the change in the minds of people in American

Society. The novel by Willa Cather, The Professor’s House, enlightens those times by

introducing different sorts of characters to reflect the structure of the society. The Professor’s

House serves as a microcosm of American society of those times. Louie is introduced in the

novel as an outsider of the environment that the professor is living with his family. The reader

is led to view Louie as an out of scale ostentatious Jewish person, representative of the

modern world as a moneymaker, and getting reactions from Hamiltonians as “foreigner”, or in

other words as “persona non grata”.

To begin with, the reader is to view Louie as who really he is. He is introduced in the book in

chapter two, in a dinner scene with the professor. He appears as the husband of the elder

daughter of the professor. He is an electrical engineer. Louie explains the reason why he came

to Hamilton in the dinner table: “Towards the close of the war we began to sense the

importance of what Outland had been doing in his laboratory […]. We called in the assistance

of experts and got the idea over from laboratory to the trade” (Cather 30). Louie

commercialized the idea of Tom Outland. He risked all his money and all the money he could

borrow on that engine.

Throughout the novel, Louie occurs as a character who is very positive. He tries to get on well

with everyone. He is moderate. Always the other people do not like him. It is his character
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that he does not think something bad about the others. As it is stated by the speech of Louie,

“the truth is that I like all Scott’s dinners, it is he who doesn’t like mine! He is the intolerant

one. […] And it’s that way about lots of things” (92). Louie holds the idea that people usually

come around if we treat them well (148). He always acts the innocent one and refuses to

believe that people do not like him.

Louie is an ostentatious Jewish person. He likes shopping and he is very fond of stylish

things. He chooses the clothes for Rosamond, like Mr. Bixby in buying the clothes for his

wife in Washington. He earns money and he enjoys it to the highest extend. As the story goes

on, Louie gets more and more associated with the issue of money.

The reader gets to know Louie more as the story moves on since the ideas of the other

characters shape the personality of Louie throughout the novel. Although the novel is written

from the third person’s point of view, the narrator is not an omniscient. In better words, the

reader is not told everything at once, predictions and inferences are left to the reader. For

instance, in the novel it is not mentioned about the history of Louie that much. We only get

few words’ explanation why he came to Hamilton. There is nothing stated directly about the

character of Louie, we only conclude some things from his reactions or from the ideas of

other people about Louie, since their ideas give signals about their own characters as well.

Next, the reader is to view Louie as what he represents - the moneymaker of the modern

world. Louie is the symbol of modernism in this novel and always occurs as the opposite of

other characters. Cather contrasts Tom Outland and Louie in order to display the differences

between the old world and the modern time values. While Louie represents the exuberance

and the excesses of 1920s, Tom Outland represents the purity, perfect maleness, youth and

brilliance for the professor. Using Tom Outland’s death and taking over his profession and his
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position in St. Peter family as an excuse to raise his wealth, Louie says, “We feel it’s our first

duty in life to use that as he would have wished – we’ve endowed scholarships in his own

university here […]. But our house we want to have as a sort of memorial to him” (31). The

ancient little city of stone that Tom and his friends discovered in Blue Mesa is described as

“pale little houses of stone nestling close to one another, perched on top of each other […] in

the middle of the group, a round tower” (180). This simple beauty of Tom Outland’s dwelling

highly contrasts with the extravagant Spanish style house that a Norwegian architect who

trained in Paris built up in Hamilton for Louie and his wife, Rosamond (28). Louie is the

opposite of classics. Tom Outland is always associated with classics. He was reading Aeneid

in Blue Mesa – an ideal classic in a classical world. Father Duchene made connection

between the Blue Mesa and the island Crete. Crete is a small Greek island in Aegean Sea. It is

ancient, classical. It has an unchanging origin. All these qualities were attributed to the Blue

Mesa. Classical aesthetic is not overly ornamented. Classics in architecture and sculpture are

composed of geometry and form. There are emotional restrains. The classics are simple,

serious, and free from excessive emotions. Louie stands against them all. As stated before, he

is the opposite of classical world. He is the representative of the modern world. He is excited

and emotional. Louie is out of scale.

Louie, the representative of making money in this novel, occurs as the opposite of Tom again.

Tom, saying, “did you ever think I was digging those things up for what I could sell them

for?” (220) shows his reaction of making money from the things he dug up in the Blue Mesa.

However, Louie came to Hamilton to make money. He does not behave like Midwestern

protestant. He sensed the importance of the Outland engine and came to Hamilton as a

stranger to put the Edison power plant. Because Rosamond had all the legal rights of that

engine, Louie got engaged with her. In other words, following great strategy, Louie used
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Rosamond as a step on the way of making money. By this engagement, he took over all the

Outland engine papers. Louie came to Hamilton, saw Rosamond and conquered the Outland

engine. Professor St. Peter resembled Louie to Saladin taking the Jerusalem back from the

Crusaders in page 59. Just as Saladin conquered Jerusalem, Louie came to Hamilton ad

conquered the Outland engine.

Finally, Louie should be viewed according to the reactions he gets as a foreigner in Hamilton.

It can be inferred from the story that in Hamilton, many people do not like Louie. This

antipathy towards Louie is not because of who he is, but because what he is. First of all, he is

Jewish. Hamiltonian people have stereotypes and prejudices against Jewish people. Apart

from this, he is an outsider. Although Tom is called “Outland”, he is from inland, but Louie is

outsider. People like Rosamond not for who she is but for what she is. Rosamond is from

Hamilton and she is the daughter of the professor.

The money causes more problems. When Augusta lost her money in a wrong investment,

Rosamond refused to help her from her wealth. Kitty says that Rosamond has “become

Louie” (71). She accuses Louie and his money for ruining Rosamond. It is visible that she

almost hates Louie. She rebukes his father for letting the Outland engine lie in the laboratory

for “this Marsellus to come along and exploit, until he almost thinks it’s his own idea” (71).

Kitty finds his father guilty for not having done something and cannot forgive her sister for

forgetting Tom so quickly. She does not like Louie not only because he is Jewish, but also

because he replaced Tom Outland. In fact, this is the general opinion of Hamiltonian people

about Louie. Mrs. Crane accuses the professor for bringing Louie into his house and

introducing him (116). While the professor was trying to defend Louie for his ability to
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commercialize the Outland engine, Mrs. Crane scolds Louie for having “a salesman’s ability”

(118). She calls him adventurer nastily.

Scott is just one of the characters in this novel who does not like Louie. He blackballs him in

the election of Arts and Letters thinking, “a secret ballot is the only way he can ever get

[Louie] where it wouldn’t hurt Mrs. St. Peter (66). Louie is aware that Scott does not like him

as he stated in the dinner table in the second chapter of the first book. But he is moderate, he

does not react in a destructive way. He states that he “can understand [Scott]. He was the first

son of the family, and he was the whole thing. Then [he] came along, a stranger, and carried

off Rosie” (148). It is his character to accept people as they are, even if they love him or not.

He came to Hamilton from somewhere else, and in order to be accepted in this new

environment, he tries to get on well with the people. The reactions that Louie gets reveal his

character. He thinks that Scott and the others “will come around in the end; people usually do,

if you treat them well” (148-49).

In conclusion, the 1920s, distinguished from other periods of American history by its changes

both in economy and in the people’s way of life, is discussed in The Professor’s House by the

analysis of Louie as the representative of the modern world’s moneymaker. Although

depicted as the opposite of many of the characters of the novel, Louie is a prominent

reflection of the modern world as who he really is and as what he represents. The reactions he

gets from the Hamiltonians as a foreigner also reveals both the character of Louie and the

reacting ones.
 Works Cited

Cather, Willa. The Professor’s House. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.