 First edition cover | |
| Author | Theodore Dreiser |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
Publication date | 1911 |
| Publication place | United States |
Jennie Gerhardt is a 1911 novel by Theodore Dreiser.
| First edition cover | |
| Author | Theodore Dreiser |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
Publication date | 1911 |
| Publication place | United States |
Jennie Gerhardt is a 1911 novel by Theodore Dreiser.
Jennie Gerhardt is a destitute young woman. While working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets George Brander, a United States Senator, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her. Jennie, grateful for his benevolence, agrees to sleep with him. He dies before they marry, and Jennie is pregnant.
She gives birth to a daughter, Vesta, and moves to Cleveland with her mother. There she finds work as a lady's maid in a prominent family. In this home, she meets Lester Kane, a prosperous manufacturer's son. Jennie falls in love with him, impressed by his strong will and generosity. She leaves her daughter in Cleveland and travels to New York with Kane. He does not know of her illegitimate daughter and wants to marry Jennie. But because of their difference in class, he anticipates his family's disapproval and decides to take her as his mistress.
They live together successfully in the university neighborhood of Hyde Park, Chicago. After three years, Jennie tells him that Vesta is her daughter. Kane does not yield to his family's pressure to leave Jennie. But, after his father's death, he learns that his inheritance of a substantial part of the family business is conditioned on his leaving her. On hearing the will's terms, Jennie demands they separate for his sake.
During their trip to Europe, Kane meets Letty Gerald Pace, an affluent widow. Bowing to pressure from Jennie and his family, he decides to marry. After providing financially for Jennie, he marries Letty, resuming his former social status. Jennie loses her daughter to typhoid fever and adopts two orphans. She continues to love Kane.
He becomes seriously ill and tells Jennie he still loves her. She tends him until his death, and mourns secretly at his funeral.
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Dreiser likens Jennie and Lester's relationship to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Chapter 41. At Sandwood, Jennie is said to read Washington Irving's Sketch Book , Charles Lamb's Elia , and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales , classics of the nineteenth century.
Dreiser first entitled his novel The Transgressor, before abandoning it in 1903, because of a nervous breakdown. [1] He took it up again in 1910 [1] He is believed to have based his character of Jennie on elements of his sisters Mame and Sylvia. [2]
Years later in an interview with Claude Bowers, Dreiser said that he did not really like this novel. [3]
H.L. Mencken wrote to Dreiser of his thought that Jennie was informed by the eponymous character in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles ; Dreiser confirmed his insight. [4]
Based on discovered material that had been removed to avoid censorship, a new edition of Jennie Gerhardt, including restored text, was published in the 1990s. This stimulated new critical writing about the novel. Critic Susan Albertine compared Letty Pace to Nettie McCormick. [5] Arthur D. Casciato wrote about Dreiser's representation of German culture. He also suggested that this novel anticipated Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers (1925), in showing the transition of a young woman away from a traditional immigrant culture. [6]
The novel was made into a film directed by Marion Gering in 1933. [7]
The novel is referenced by Harvey Pekar in the film American Splendor . The novel is mentioned as one of "several excellent American novels" mentioned by "a critic named Mencken" in the novel This Side of Paradise (1920) by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose style.
Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) about a young woman who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream. She first becomes a mistress to men that she perceives as superior, but later becomes a famous actress. It has been called the "greatest of all American urban novels".
An American Tragedy is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of her lover, Chester Gillette. In 1923 Dreiser returned to the project, and with the help of his future wife Helen and two editor-secretaries, Louise Campbell and Sally Kusell, he completed the massive novel in 1925. The book entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2021.
In Defense of Women is H. L. Mencken's 1918 book on women and the relationship between the sexes. Some laud the book as progressive while others brand it as reactionary. While Mencken did not champion women's rights, he described women as wiser in many novel and observable ways, while demeaning average men.
The Song of the Lark is a novel by American author Willa Cather, written in 1915. It is her third novel to be published.
The Titan is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, completed in 1914 as a sequel to his 1912 novel The Financier. Both books were originally a single manuscript, but the narrative's length required splitting it into two separate novels. Dreiser's manuscript of The Titan was rejected by Harper & Brothers, publisher of The Financier, due to its uncompromising realism; John Lane published the book in 1914. The Titan is the second part of Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire, a saga of ruthless businessman Frank Cowperwood. The third part of the trilogy, The Stoic, was Dreiser's final novel, published in 1947 after his death.
The Smart Set was an American monthly literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, The Smart Set offered many up-and-coming authors their start and gave them access to a relatively large audience.
The Delineator was an American women's magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1869 under the name The Metropolitan Monthly. Its name was changed in 1875. The magazine was published on a monthly basis in New York City. In November 1926, under the editorship of Mrs. William Brown Meloney, it absorbed The Designer, founded in 1887 and published by the Standard Fashion Company, a Butterick subsidiary.
The Financier is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, based on real-life streetcar tycoon Charles Yerkes. Dreiser started writing his manuscript in 1911, and the following year published the first part of his lengthy work as The Financier. The second part appeared in 1914 as The Titan; the third volume of his Trilogy of Desire was also Dreiser's final novel, The Stoic (1947).
Daniel Carson Goodman was an American screenwriter and licensed physician.
Beauty for Sale is a 1933 American pre-Code film about the romantic entanglements of three beauty salon employees. Based on the 1933 novel Beauty by Faith Baldwin, it stars Madge Evans, Alice Brady, Otto Kruger and Una Merkel.
Ripley Hitchcock was a prominent American editor. He edited the works of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Zane Grey, Joel Chandler Harris, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.
The Bulwark is a 1946 (posthumous) novel by Theodore Dreiser.
Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life is a collection of twenty essays by Theodore Dreiser.
The "Genius" is a semi-autobiographical novel by Theodore Dreiser, first published in 1915. The story concerns Eugene Witla, a talented painter of strong sexual desires who grapples with his commitment to his art and the force of his erotic needs. The book sold 8,000 copies in the months immediately following publication but encountered legal difficulties when it was declared potentially obscene. Dreiser's publisher was nervous about continuing publication and recalled the book from bookstores, and the novel did not receive broad distribution until 1923. When The "Genius" was reissued by a different publisher, the firm of Horace Liveright, it immediately sold more than 40,000 copies.
An American Tragedy (1931) is an American pre-Code drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy and its 1926 stage adaptation, which were inspired by the historic 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in upstate New York. Dreiser's novel would again be adapted by Paramount as the 1951 film A Place in the Sun.
Chickie is a 1925 American silent drama film produced and released by First National Pictures. Based on the novel of the same name by Elenore Meherin, the film was directed by John Francis Dillon and starred Dorothy Mackaill. Chickie is now considered lost.
Jennie Gerhardt is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Marion Gering for Paramount Pictures. It stars Sylvia Sidney, Mary Astor, and Edward Arnold. The film is based on the 1911 novel Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser.
Walter Walker was an American actor of the stage and screen during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in New York City on March 13, 1864, Walker would have a career in theater prior to entering the film industry. By 1915 he was appearing in Broadway productions, his first being Sinners, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Owen Davis. His film debut was in a leading role in 1917's American – That's All. He had a lengthy career, in both film and on stage, appearing in numerous plays and over 80 films. Walker died on December 4, 1947, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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