PURSUIT OF WEALTH AS A QUEST METAPHOR IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL: A STUDY OF DREISER AND SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES

This dissertation examines the work of Theodore Dreiser and some of his contemporaries in order to determine their attitude to the "gospel of wealth."; Chapter I studies the historical shift in attitudes toward wealth in the light of the pioneering studies of Max Weber and R. H. Tawney. Statements of religious and business leaders are examined for their rhetorical implications. The changed attitude to wealth, it is postulated, is brought about through a symbolic shift. What had previously been associated with disease and darkness is now symbolized as a religious quest. Similarly, censorious terms such as greed, rapacity, avarice etc. are replaced by honorific ones like thrift, prudence and diligence. I use Weber's concept of "legitimation" whereby he proposes that the dominant group of a society tends to legitimize its power through appropriating the sacred vocabulary of religion or other important social institutions. It is suggested that the American business leaders transformed their life in the marketplace by clothing it in a religious vocabulary which portrays man's life in the world in metaphors of wayfaring and warfaring. My analysis is indebted to the work of Kenneth Burke and Hugh Dalziel Duncan who consider linguistic symbols to be the key to understanding social order. Burke's concept of "transcendence" is used to show how we create symbolic bridges in order to link our actions to a higher principle. Symbols also join disparate realms. In this particular case, the metaphors of pilgrimage blend with the metaphors of a knightly quest. Borrowing Duncan's concept of a "symbolic environment," I propose that these metaphors painted the world as a hostile wilderness, essential as a backdrop to the knightly jousts or the "trials" of a pilgrim but antithetical to the Jeffersonian ideals of an egalitarian society.; Chapter II deals with Dreiser's response to these metaphors of quest. An analysis of Dawn and A Book About Myself, supplemented by his other prose writings, indicates that Dreiser criticized the businessman's world view and attempted to replace it with one based on a romantic response to the beauty and mystery of the universe.; Chapter III is concerned with the Cowperwood trilogy and proposes that Dreiser, instead of being an unashamed extoller of the Superman of business, satirizes his heroic pretensions. The novels are read as exercises in the mock-heroic mode, taking off from the popular literature about this "epic" hero and depending for their satiric effect on parody.; Chapter IV analyzes Sister Carrie, The "Genius", and An American Tragedy in order to show the overall effect of the "symbolic environment" created by the "heroic" businessman. Whereas the trilogy examines the businessman's heroic pretensions, these novels comment on their impact on lives of ordinary citizens who must perforce live in the jungle world created by his metaphors. The lives of Carrie, Eugene and Clyde are determined by their acceptance of the heroic world view as truth on the one hand and their inability to live up to its demands on the other.; Chapter V compares Dreiser's response to the religious/heroic quest with those of William Dean Howells, George Horace Lorimer, Frank Norris and Robert Herrick. I have analyzed The Rise of Silas Lapham, Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, The Pit and A Life for a Life to give an indication of the prevailing climate of opinion. Howells and Herrick are critical of the businessman's appropriation of an exalted vocabulary while Lorimer and Norris find it quite appropriate and use it in their own novels. Whatever the difference in their attitudes, however, all the novelists employ the prevalent metaphors, whether to mock or to exalt them.