Portraits of Businessmen in The Financier and The Rise of Silas Lapham

Portraits of Businessmen in The Financier and The Rise of Silas Lapham

  This essay is an attempt to read The Financier as Theodore Dreiser"s indirect critique of the nature of the fictive world represented in William Dean Howells"s The Rise of Silas Lapham. By relating Howells"s narrative to Dreiser"s, I examine the ways in which Dreiser presents a more realistic picture of the changing economic and social environments at the turn of the century in America. Howells and Dreiser each portrays a remarkably different businessman, revealing basic differences in the character"s understanding of and reaction to the changing business milieus. In so doing, while Howells tries to portray "the more smiling aspects of life," highlighting Lapham"s moral choice in tough business situations, Dreiser depicts capitalist society as it really is, presenting a young and ruthless financier, Frank Cowperwood, who thrives with his quick intellectual operations, coolness under pressure, and ability to mask his true intentions. The world of The Financier leaves little room for an individual to achieve his personal integrity or social responsibility in the face of harsh social and economic forces. Dreiser faithfully tells the reality of materialism and the illusion of morality without Howellsian moral overtones.