Paul's Case
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Paul's Case is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in McClure's Magazine in 1905[1]
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[edit] Plot introduction
Paul, a suspended high school student in Pittsburgh is bored with his humdrum life and decides on a trip to New York City.
[edit] Explanation of the title
'Paul's case' is the way teachers and his father refer to Paul concerning his disinterest in school.
It has been suggested that it enables Willa Cather to '[impersonate] the voice of medical authority'[2].
[edit] Plot summary
Paul meets with the Principal and his teachers from Pittsburgh High School after he has been suspended for a week. They complain of his agitation in class, and of his apparent repulsion of other people's bodies. He then goes to work at Carnegie Hall but he is early, so he loiters in the picture gallery. He then proceeds to usher the audience in; one of them is his English teacher. After the concert he follows some of the singers and marvels at their glamour. He then walks back to his house but decides to sneak into the basement and spend the night there so he doesn't have to explain to his father why he is late. Paul despises the 'burghers' and is unimpressed by a young man who works for an iron company and is married with four children, although his father would like to use him as a role model for his son. Instead, Paul decides to visit Charley Edwards, a young actor who works at Carnegie Hall. Sometime later, as Paul made it clear to one of his teachers that his job there was more important than his lessons, his father prevents him from continuing to work there.
Sometime later, Paul takes a train to New York City. He now works for Denny & Carson's and has stolen $1,000 for his trip. He goes to The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, walks around the city, and meets a young San Franciscan who shows him around the nightlife until morning. On the eighth day, however, Paul reads in the Pittsburgh newspapers that the theft has been made public, and that his father has returned the money and is now on his way to New York City to fetch his son. Paul decides to take a train and a cab in Pennsylvania, and kills himself by jumping in front of a train.
[edit] Characters
- Paul, the eponymous protagonist. He is tall and thin, something of a dandy. He was born in Colorado and his mother died a few months later. He is an agitated pupil at school, but passionate about music, especially the opera. He dreads his humdrum life and longs for luxury.
- Paul's father
- The Principal of Pittsburgh High School.
- The English teacher, a woman.
- The Drawing master
- The guard in the picture gallery of the Carnegie Hall.
- The soloist in the opera at Carnegie Hall.
- Paul's sisters
- The College Boy who spends a weekend with Paul in New York
[edit] Allusions to other works
- The operas mentioned are Faust, Martha, Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, Pagliacci. The waltz The Blue Danube is also mentioned.
- The visual arts mentioned are Jean-Francois Raffelli and Venus de Milo.
[edit] Allusions to actual history
- Paul's father's house has portraits of George Washington and John Calvin.
[edit] Literary criticism and significance
The story has been called a 'gay suicide'.[3]
It has been argued that the story revolves around the trope of opera queendom, often commingled with a suicidal sense of self-loss[2].
Moreover, it has been suggested that the "horrible yellow wallpaper" in Paul's room from his hometown recalls Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper[2].
It has also been propounded that this might be a portrait of Willa Cather's 'own desire for aesthetic fulfillment and sexual nonconformity'[2].
[edit] References
- ^ Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, University of Nebraska Press; Rev Ed edition, 1 Nov 1970, page 261
- ^ a b c d Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire, Gay Men's Press, 1994, page 28-29
- ^ Eric Haralson, Henry James and Queer Modernity, Cambridge University Press, 2003, page 137
