The Novel

One of the first modern writers who continued the trend of the 19^th century realism – naturalism, was Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).

Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Ind. His family was very poor and after a year at Indiana University, he had to work as a newspaperman in Chicago and St. Louis. By 1907, he was a successful editor of a woman's magazine whose sentimentality and superficiality he despised.

Dreiser’s background soon revealed to him a profound difference between the promise and the reality of American life. This realization was a major source of Dreiser's discontent and an important influence on his choice of the philosophy of writing, naturalism -- a pessimistic form of realism. His novels are based on events from real life and his characters are victims of apparently meaningless incidents that result in pressures they can neither control nor understand. In his works Dreiser condemned not his villains, but the repressive, hypocritical society that produced them. He and his characters did not attack the time-honored puritan code, like other naturalists and writers of his period, but simply ignored it.

Such attitude shocked the public when they got acquainted with his first novel, Sister Carrie, partly based on the experiences of one of his sisters. The novelist Frank Norris, editor at Doubleday, Page, and Co., enthusiastically accepted the manuscript for publication. But Nellie Doubleday, wife of the president of the company, was shocked by the manuscript's amorality, and the publisher tried to cancel the contract to publish the book. Dreiser insisted upon publication and Doubleday printed the book in 1900, but did not advertise or distribute it. The novel became generally available in 1912, when it was published by another company.

The novel tells the story of Carrie Meeber, a girl, who leaves the poverty of her country life and moves to Chicago. She is completely honest about her desire for a better life: for her it means clothes, money and social position. Dreiser, who himself lived in poverty, does not criticize her for this, nor does he criticize her many relationships with men. Carrie lives with a traveling salesman and then runs off to New York with George Hurstwood, a prosperous married man. Hurstwood's fortunes decline, and he becomes a bum and commits suicide. Almost by accident Carrie finds success as an actress, but not happiness. In the end she learns that even money and success are not the keys to true happiness.

As in all his novels, Dreiser's real theme in Sister Carrie is the purposelessness of life. While looking at individuals with warm human sympathy, Dreiser also sees the disorder and cruelty of life in general. While one character, Carrie, gains fame and comfort, another character of the novel, Hurstwood, loses his wealth, social position and pride. His tragedy is as accidental, as Carrie's success and Drieser does not try to explain how these things happen.

Before his first novel Sister Carrie won public acclaim, Dreiser published another novel of desire and fate, Jennie Gerhardt (1911). The theme of this novel is the same; one character puts it in the following way: ' The individual does not count much in the situation… We are moved about like chessmen…… we have no control. ' The novel reveals a most terrible truth that ' the purposes of nature have no relation to the purposes of men. ' The success of the character that in romantic novels depends on his inner goodness, in naturalistic novels does not depend on anything. Good characters are punished by life much more often than bad ones. Like Dreiser shows in Jennie Gerhardt, Christian morality creates a false sense of guilt, and so such morality is evil, not the main character.

However, Dreiser’s reputation was firmly assured with the publication of The Financier (1912), the most purely naturalistic of his works. It is the story of an industrial tycoon who claws his way to great power. Dreiser intended the novel as the beginning of a " Trilogy of Desire. " But the second volume, The Titan (1914), was a failure, and the third volume, The Stoic, was not published until two years after his death. The trilogy illustrates a new development of Dreiser's thinking. In his previous novels he had already found life meaningless and morality absurd. Now under Nietzsche's influence, Dreiser stresses human will to power. The trilogy tells the story of F.A. Cowperwood, 'a superman' of the modern business world, and reveals the author’s conviction: the world moves forward only due to an exceptional individual, but even he is a chessman in the hands of fate.

An American Tragedy (1925) is the finest of Dreiser's books that expresses a third stage of his thinking -- social consciousness. The novel concerns a weak young man, Clyde Griffits, the anti-hero, who is executed for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend. Griffits had planned the murder, but then decided not to kill the girl, though still she accidentally dies. The question the author poses to the readers is whether the young man who desired and planned her murder, but did not kill her, is responsible for her death. This is also the main question during an unfair trial on the verdict of which Clyde is executed. Like in Sister Carrie,in An American Tragedy Dreiser again condemns not his villain, but the amoral society that produced and destroyed him.

Despite its sometimes awkward style, An American Tragedy by Dreiser displays crushing authority. Its precise details build up an overwhelming sense of tragic inevitability. This novel was a reflection of the dissatisfaction, envy and despair that affected many poor and working people in America's competitive, success-driven society. The glittering lives of the wealthy contrasted with the drab lives of ordinary farmers and workers. The media fanned unreasonable expectations and rising desires. The novel is a scathing portrait of the American success myth gone sour, but also it is a universal story of the stresses of urbanization, modernization and alienation. It exposes the peril of the romantic and the dangerous fantasies of socially dispossessed Americans.

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