A Hazard of Fortunes
The gist in Lapham seems to be a realism and representationism, a mimesis, but a mimesis of things that cannot be seen or heard or smelt. Howells appears overwhelmingly certain of his Categories. The effect seems unconsciously idealistic. The following statement of aesthetic comes from the mouths of his characters. One really feels that Howells hopes to "get at" the "good citizen" by an by.
"We non-combatants were notoriously reluctant to give up fighting," said Mr. Sewell, the minister; "but I incline to think Colonel Lapham and Mr. Bellingham may be right. I dare say we shall have the heroism again if we have the occasion. Till it comes, we must content ourselves with the every-day generosities and sacrifices. They make up in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps." "They're not so picturesque," said Bromfield Corey. "You can paint a man dying for his country, but you can't express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties of a good citizen." "Perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by," suggested Charles Bellingham. "If I were one of these fellows, I shouldn't propose to myself anything short of that." "What? the commonplace?" asked his cousin. "Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial essence which they've never got into their confounded books yet. The novelist who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his tongue."
There have been also considerable reflections that have to do with the novel as a form, previously. Howells seems to consider it to be still in considerable doubt as haute couture. His very conservative Bahston society argues on about its validity in general.
Howells does excercise worldly observation of various socioeconomic classes. His people function primarily as vectors of class interest. He instantiates their character, but these remain clearly instantiations. In both novels, the comparison of the mores engendered by class interest carries most interest. The Rise of Silas Lapham gently pits 1800's yankee capitalism against euro-centered aristocracy, favoring the former, but not without nuance. The aristocrats' disapproval of "vulgar" Silas comes across as unexplained and fairly inexplicable; one wonders whether Howells didn't know better. The class-based aspirations of both are treated somehow as completely understandable, no matter how immaterial and vapid. But a failure to properly criticize his independent New Englanders appears in A Hazard of Fortunes as well. March's daughter Alma Leigh treats Beaton badly, yet Howells shows nothing but respect for her wisdom. Likewise, editor and papa March is presented as straightforwardly idealistic and, to use a terrible anachronism, "politically correct."
The most painful point in Howell's overappraisal of March comes with March's dismissal of the Lindau's radical politics before March's son. Howells gives Lindau enough text to show that Howells has some familiarity with Marx and Bakunin and so forth, but Lindau only gets to sputter and pontificate, although what POV he does express reads as far more logical than March's homilies. March's son appears in no other function throughout the novel, since he cannot function as a romantic interest for the male principals, as do everyone's daughters, and since he does little except join with March in an outwardly humane condemnation of Lindau, the left, and the working class.
March (and Howells) stand somewhat in protest to Dreyfoos' hiring Pinkerton's to kill strikers, but not much. March appears noble for standing up for Lindau, whereas Lindau only appears daft or wounded or tragic for standing up for himself. The policeman who kills him for speaking barely rates a couple lines; he's seen as doing his duty impassionately. Howells' use of the southern plantation owner is similar. We get reference that such ideas exist, the comparison with wage-slavery is in the air, but nowhere does the Colonel get to vie seriously with Dreyfoos or with Fulkerson or March, for that matter. Everyone's polite, but the old slave-owner is politely dismissed, patronized even by his daughter.
Altogether, Howells seems a petit-bourgeois New England boy, and he prefers folks of his own class. Dreyfoos is a rich idiot who has mysteriously put money ahead of his family, although he doesn't seem to know how he's earned the money. Silas Lapham is by far a more interesting and realistic character. The fairy-tale ending, with Dreyfoos inexplicably giving away his interest in the magazine, rings moralistic and false in part because his struggles against his children have been so hollow. This is a critical kind of error. We don't get the struggle within Dreyfoos when he drives her beloved Beaton away, ostensibly for her own good, or when he begs Beaton back, also misguidedly. The scene wherein he strikes his child needs a Dostoyevsky to handle, and Howell isn't up to it. Dreyfoos barely speaks, saying nothing of interest while the entire error of his life confronts him. Howells does not seem so much unaware of what the old man's inner struggle must have been (he repeats that it exists over an over again, but without giving it detail), but just uninterested in it. For Howells, it may be there to excuse poverty and the Pinkertons.
In this novel, with its persons who barely seem to work, and drift from drawing room to drawing room discussing an performing issues of politeness, poverty may be referred to, but does not even appear, even in the person of Lindau, who's a gentleman pauper at worst.
Howells employs a gentle humor throughout, and has a worldly touch with social classes and situations, including some apt observations. He provides an interesting picture of the times, not the least for what he cannot or would not show.
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