nne Porter, best known for her short stories and the novel Ship of Fools (1962), Eudora Welty , and Truman Capote.writers began to look at the complexity of life more as men did. Edith Wharton (1862-1937) approached the problem through the novel of manners. The House of Mirth (1905) and The Custom of the Country (1913) are successful examples of her dissections of the upper classes. Her Ethan Frame (1911), a grim tragedy of the Berkshires, is less typical. Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945), whose first novel appeared in 1897, contrasted the agrarian way of life with the emergent Southern industrialism. She was no sentimentalist. What the South needs is blood and irony , she said. Willa Cather (1873-1947), the finest stylist among the women writers, and a master of tonal effect, developed the same troubled response to her age. In such early novels as O Pioneers! (1913) and My Antonia (1918) she had dealt with the robust creativity of women who lived close to the Nebraskan farmlands and to life. But A Lost Lady (1923), a portrait of moral dependency, began her criticism of a country she felt had lost its pioneering strength.
Theodore Dreiser
1871-1945Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. His family was poor, and his childhood was blighted by misery and humiliation. His father was a religious bigot. The family moved constantly from town to town but Theodore Dreiser spent most of his childhood in Warshaw, Indiana, where he attended public school. Later his teacher enabled him to go for one year (1888-1889) to the Indiana University, which he had to leave because of money difficulties. He moved to Chicago, where he supported himself by doing odd jobs. Working in an estate office, in a laundry and as a rent collector for a wholesale furniture company, he had the possibility to store up impressions which later appeared in his novels.1892 Dreiser turned to journalism working as a newspaper reporter and editor in Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburg. Then he moved to New York, where he attained work as a magazine editor.first significant work by Dreiser was his novel Sister Carrie (1900). This novel is a study of Carrie Meeber, an innocent Wisconsin girl, who comes to Chicago to find work and falls into an intricate network of temptation. The book, being realistic and true, mercilessly exposed bourgeois society. Hardly had the book appeared when it was pronounced immoral and withdrawn. Dreiser started his long fight against censorship and for the right of the novelist to present life as he saw it.ten years later, in 1911, Dreiser s second novel Jennie Gerhardt was published. Like Sister Carrie this novel was a challenge to the moral claims of the American bourgeoisie. The publishing of Jennie Gerhardt roused further storm of criticism from readers and publishers who declared it immoral.Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914) together with The Stoic (published posthumously in 1947) form The Trilogy of Desire, a complete life story of an American capitalist, showing the unscrupulousness of the big capitalists. These three novels are the most highly documented and detailed of Dreiser s works; they are also interesting as a panoramic picture of the industrial triumph at the end of the XIX century in America.Genius (1915) was banned soon after, like Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt. It is the tragic story of a young painter Eugene Witla, who breaks down under the cruel injustice of the capitalist system. In Eugene Witla we can easily recognize the author himself, with the difference that Eugene finally broke down, while Theodore Dreiser continued his struggle to the last days of his life.American Tragedy (1925) is Dreiser s best known novel. It is the story of a young American who is gradually corrupted by the morals and manners of American capitalist society and the lust of gain which reigns in the USA until he becomes a criminal and murderer. The significance of the novel is in the exposure of the American way of life with its contrast of poverty and wealth, corrupt bourgeois morals and political system.1928, after visiting the Soviet Union he published a book entitled Dreiser Looks at Russia.economic crisis of 1929-1932 in America was justly considered by Dreiser as a sign of the inevitable doom of American capitalism and he set forth his view in Tragic America (1931), a masterly description of the gross injustice of society. Exposure of the moral, political and economic criteria of his native land animated all of his notable novels. In them devastating influence and the inhumanity of American capitalism upon the life of the people is laid bare.years preceding World War I and those that followed it were marked by a crisis of his ideology and the dominant ...
