A Gentle Girlish Enthusiasm
We first meet Jennie as a young woman, of the lower class, working as a part-time cleaning woman at a hotel in Columbus, Ohio. There, she meets Senator George Brander, who grows infatuated with her and takes her as his mistress.
He looked at her and shook his head reflectively. Then they started, and he quickly forgot everything but the great fact that she was at his side. She talked with freedom and with a gentle girlish enthusiasm that he found irresistibly charming.
“Why, Jennie,” he said, when she had called upon him to notice how soft the trees looked, where, outlined dimly against the new rising moon, they were touched with its yellow light, “you’re a great one. I believe you would write poetry if you were schooled a little.”
“Do you suppose I could?” she asked innocently.
“Do I suppose, little girl?” he said, taking her hand. “Do I suppose? Why I know. You’re the dearest little daydreamer in the world. Of course you could write poetry. You live it. You are poetry, my dear. Don’t you worry about writing any.”
This eulogy touched her as nothing else possibly could have done. He was always saying such nice things. No one ever seemed to like or to appreciate her half as much as he did. And how good he was! Everybody said that. Her own father.
This effect that Jennie has on men -- especially upper class men -- is something that is noted again and again throughout the novel. To Brander, she is poetry personified -- speaking with a freedom and a gentle girlish enthusiasm that he finds irresistible.
Later, when Jennie is working as a maid in the home of a prominent family in Cleveland, we get this explanation…
The Bracebridges entertained many masculine guests, and some of them had made unpleasant overtures to her.
“My dear, you’re a very pretty girl,” said one old rake of fifty-odd when she knocked at his door one morning to give him a message from his hostess.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, confusedly, and coloured.
“Indeed, you’re quite sweet. And you needn’t beg my pardon. I’d like to talk to you some time.”
He attempted to chuck her under the chin, but Jennie hurried away. She would have reported the matter to her mistress but a nervous shame deterred her. “Why would men always be doing this?” she thought. Could it be because there was something innately bad about her, and inward corruption that attracted its like?
It is a curious characteristic of the non-defensive disposition that it is like a honey-jar to flies. Nothing is brought to it and much is taken away. Around a soft, yielding, unselfish disposition men swarm naturally. They sense this generosity, this non-protective attitude from afar. A girl like Jennie is like a comfortable fire to the average masculine mind; they gravitate to it, seek its sympathy, yearn to possess it. Hence she was annoyed by many unwelcome attentions.
Note Dreiser’s language. There is something innate in Jennie, something that men are drawn to naturally. It is in the Bracebridge home where Jennie first meets Lester Kane, the unmarried son of a rich industrialist, and the man who would become her next lover. He is so smitten by her that they have the following exchange shortly after their introduction to one another.
Once he came across her in the hall on the second floor searching in a locker for some linen. They were all alone, Mrs. Bracebridge having gone out to do some morning shopping and the other servants being below stairs. On this occasion he made short work of the business. He approached her in a commanding, unhesitating, and thoroughly determined way.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Where do you live?”
“I--- I---” she stammered, and blanched perceptibly. “I live out on Lorrie Street.”
“What number?” he questioned, as though she were compelled to tell him.
She quailed and shook inwardly. “Thirteen fourteen,” she replied mechanically.
He looked into her big, soft-blue eyes with his dark, vigorous brown ones. A flash that was hypnotic, significant, insistent passed between them.
“You belong to me,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you. When can I see you?”
“Oh, you mustn’t,” she said, her fingers going nervously to her lips. “I can’t see you--- I--- I---”
“Oh, I mustn’t, mustn’t I? Look here” --he took her arm and drew her slightly closer-- “you and I might as well understand each other right now. I like you. Do you like me? Say?”
She looked at him, her eyes wide, filled with wonder, with fear, with growing terror.
“I don’t know,” she gasped, her lips dry.
“Do you?” He fixed her grimly, firmly with his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“Look at me,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
He pulled her to him quickly. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, and put his lips masterfully to hers.
She was horrified, stunned, like a bird in the grasp of a cat; but through it all something tremendously vital and insistent was speaking to her. He released her with a short laugh. “We won’t do any more of this here, but, remember, you belong to me,” he said, as he turned and walked nonchalantly down the hall. Jennie, in sheer panic, ran to her mistress’s room and locked the door behind her.
She belongs to him. Kane often professes his love for Jennie -- to her, but not necessarily in front of others. She is of the lower class, and is not a suitable mate for someone like Lester Kane. He possesses her, much like a fine vintage of wine.
“Look here, Jennie,” he said, after a time. “You care for me, don’t you? You don’t think I’d sit here and plead with you if I didn’t care for you? I’m crazy about you, and that’s the literal truth. You’re like wine to me. I want you to come with me. I want you to do it quickly.”
This is later in their relationship, when Kane is trying to convince Jennie to move with him to New York, where they can live free -- not as husband and wife, but as man and mistress.
Moved By Passions Hymeneal
But we’re missing something here. The reason Jennie is in a position to meet Kane and move to New York with him is because her first paramour, Senator Brander, dies unexpectedly, leaving her both pregnant and bereft of the promise of marriage that would have helped sustain her in the society of her birth. In that situation, Jennie is more or less exiled by her family and has to make her way completely on her own. In this section of the novel, Dreiser gets philosophic in ways similar to what we saw in Sister Carrie, decrying both the unnatural restrictions his culture places on natural processes and natural desires…
The incidents of the days that followed, relating as they did peculiarly to Jennie, were of an order which the morality of our day has agreed to taboo.
Certain processes of the all-mother, the great artificing wisdom of the power that works and weaves in silence and in darkness, when viewed in the light of the established opinion of some of the little individuals created by it, are considered very vile. We turn our faces away from the creation of life as if that were the last thing that man should dare to interest himself in, openly.
It is curious that a feeling of this sort should spring up in a world whose very essence is generative, the vast process dual, and where wind, water, soil, and light alike minister to the fruition of that which is all that we are. Although the whole earth, not we alone, is moved by passions hymeneal, and everything terrestrial has come into being by the one common road, yet there is that ridiculous tendency to close the eyes and turn away the head as if there were something unclean in nature itself. “Conceived in iniquity and born in sin,” is the unnatural interpretation put upon the process by the extreme religionist, and the world, by its silence, gives assent to a judgment so marvelously warped.
Surely there is something radically wrong with this attitude. The teachings of philosophy and the deductions of biology should find more practical applications in the daily reasoning of man. No process is vile, no condition is unnatural. The accidental variation from a given social practice does not necessarily entail sin. No poor little earthling, caught in the enormous grip of chance, and so swerved from the established customs of men, could possibly be guilty of that depth of vileness which the attitude of the world would seem to predicate so inevitably.
…and showing Jennie to initially be a creature more or less oblivious to these constructed realities.
Jennie was now to witness the unjust interpretation of that wonder of nature, which, but for Brander’s death, might have been consecrated and hallowed as one of the ideal functions of life. Although herself unable to distinguish the separateness of this from every other normal process of life, yet she was made to feel, by the actions of all about her, that degradation was her portion and sin the foundation as well as the condition of her state. Almost, not quite, it was sought to extinguish the affection, the consideration the care which, afterward, the world would demand of her, for her child. Almost, not quite, was the budding and essential love looked upon as evil. Although her punishment was neither the gibbet nor the jail of a few hundred years before, yet the ignorance and immobility of the human beings about her made it impossible for them to see anything in her present condition, but a vile and premeditated infraction of the social code, the punishment of which was ostracism. All she could do now was to shun the scornful gaze of men, and to bear in silence the great change that was coming upon her. Strangely enough, she felt no useless remorse, no vain regrets. Her heart was pure, and she was conscious that it was filled with peace. Sorrow there was, it is true, but only a mellow phase of it, a vague uncertainty and wonder, which would sometimes cause her eyes to fill with tears.
You have heard the wood-dove calling in the lone stillness of the summertime; you have found the unheeded brooklet singing and babbling where no ear comes to hear. Under dead leaves and snow-banks the delicate arbutus unfolds its simple blossom, answering some heavenly call for colour. So, too, this other flower of womanhood.
Jennie was left alone, but, like the wood-dove, she was a voice of sweetness in the summertime. Going about her household duties, she was content to wait, without a murmur, the fulfillment of that process for which, after all, she was but the sacrificial implement. When her duties were lightest she was content to sit in quiet meditation, the marvel of life holding her as in a trance. When she was hardest pressed to aid her mother, she would sometimes find herself quietly singing, the pleasure of work lifting her out of herself. Always she was content to face the future with a serene and unfaltering courage.
This is Jennie. Like Carrie, she is a free spirit in a rigidly-defined culture. She is incapable of damning herself, regardless of how much the culture around her does.
Choices, And Who Can Make Them
But she is not the only one. One of the marvels of this novel is the way Dreiser shows the free motivations and constrained actions of multiple characters -- and Lester Kane proves himself to be an fascinating antipode to Jennie Gerhardt. As free, but far more feckless.
Eventually, Kane’s relationship with Jennie is discovered by his family, and it creates a tremendous moral hazard and challenge for Kane’s father, Archibald, who had fully intended to bequeath the wealth of his very large and successful carriage manufacturing business to his youngest son.
Old Archibald quieted himself. In spite of his opposition, he respected his son’s point of view. He sat back in his chair and stared at the floor. “How was he to handle this thing?” he asked himself.
“Are you living in the same place?” he finally inquired.
“No, we’ve moved out to Hyde Park. I’ve taken a house out there.”
“I hear there’s a child. Is that yours?”
“No.”
“Have you any children of your own?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a God’s blessing.”
Lester merely scratched his chin.
“And you insist you will marry her?” Archibald went on.
“I didn’t say that,” replied his son. “I said I might.”
“Might! Might!” exclaimed his father, his anger bubbling again. “What a tragedy! You with your prospects! Your outlook! How do you suppose I can seriously contemplate entrusting any share of my fortune to a man who has so little regard for what the world considers as right and proper? Why, Lester, this carriage business, your family, your personal reputation appear to be as nothing at all to you. I can’t understand what has happened to your pride. It seems like some wild, impossible fancy.”
“It’s pretty hard to explain, father, and I can’t do it very well. I simply know that I’m in this affair, and that I’m bound to see it through. It may come out all right. I may not marry her -- I may. I’m not prepared now to say what I’ll do. You’ll have to wait. I’ll do the best I can.”
Old Archibald merely shook his head disapprovingly.
“You’ve made a bad mess of this, Lester,” he said finally. “Surely you have. But I suppose you are determined to go your way. Nothing that I have said appears to move you.”
“Not now, father. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I warn you, then, that, unless you show some consideration for the dignity of your family and the honour of your position it will make a difference in my will. I can’t go on countenancing this thing, and not be a party to it morally and every other way. I won’t do it. You can leave her, or you can marry her. You certainly ought to do one or the other. If you leave her, everything will be all right. You can make any provision for her you like. I have no objection to that. I’ll gladly pay whatever you agree to. You will share with the rest of the children, just as I had planned. If you marry her it will make a difference. Now do as you please. But don’t blame me. I love you. I’m your father. I’m doing what I think is my bounden duty. Now you think that over and let me know.”
Lester sighed. He saw how hopeless this argument was. He felt that his father probably meant what he said, but how could he leave Jennie, and justify himself to himself? Would his father really cut him off? Surely not. The old gentleman loved him even now -- he could see it. Lester felt troubled and distressed; this attempt at coercion irritated him. The idea -- he, Lester Kane, being made to do such a thing -- to throw Jennie down. He stared at the floor.
Old Archibald saw that he had let fly a telling bullet.
“Well,” said Lester finally, “there’s no use of our discussing it any further now -- that’s certain, isn’t it? I can’t say what I’ll do. I’ll have to take time and think. I can’t decide this offhand.”
The two looked at each other. Lester was sorry for the world’s attitude and for his father’s keen feeling about the affair. Kane senior was sorry for his son, but he was determined to see the thing through. He wasn’t sure whether he had converted Lester or not, but he was hopeful. Maybe he would come around yet.
It is all these intersecting personalities and motivations, I believe, that help create some sense of the transcendence in Jennie Gerhardt. In this section, especially, it seems like theme and plot have seamlessly merged, becoming one as the true and heartfelt interactions between father and son become also representations of two opposing forces in our culture -- that of the individual and that of the larger society.
As for the world at large, what did it matter how much people talked or what they said. He was big enough to stand alone. But was he? People turn so quickly from weakness or the shadow of it. To get away from failure -- even from the mere suspicion of it -- that seems to be a subconscious feeling with the average man and woman; we all avoid non-success as though we fear that it may prove contagious.
And Lester, like Jennie, would soon be made to feel the force of this prejudice. When his father passes away, we learn that the choice Old Archibald had forced upon Lester has now been codified into his will -- with Lester’s inheritance to be held in trust until such time as he ends his relationship with Jennie. It is to be either Jennie Gerhardt or his affluent position in life, and it is a choice that feckless Lester Kane cannot make. He waffles. He floats. And then, together with Jennie, he tries to escape, spending what money he has left on a trip going abroad, where they meet a young widow named Letty Gerald.
Lester and Letty strolled away. They made a striking pair -- Mrs. Gerald in dark wine-coloured silk, covered with glistening black beads, her shapely arms and neck bare, and a flashing diamond of great size set just above her forehead in her dark hair. Her lips were red, and she had an engaging smile, showing an even row of white teeth between wide, full, friendly lips. Lester’s strong, vigorous figure was well set off by his evening clothes, he looked distinguished.
“That is the woman he should have married,” said Jennie to herself as he disappeared. She fell into a reverie, going over the steps of her past life. Sometimes it seemed to her now as if she had been living in a dream. At other times she felt as though she were in that dream yet. Life sounded in her ears much as this night did. She heard its cries. She knew its large-mass features. But back of it were subtleties that shaded and changed one into the other like the shifting of dreams. Why had she been so attractive to men? Why had Lester been so eager to follow her? Could she have prevented him? She thought of her life in Columbus, when she carried coal; to-night she was in Egypt, at this great hotel, the chatelaine of a suite of rooms, surrounded by every luxury, Lester still devoted to her. He had endured so many things for her! Why? Was she so wonderful? Brander had said so. Lester had told her so. Still she felt humble, out of place, holding handfuls of jewels that did not belong to her. Again she experienced that peculiar feeling which had come over her the first time she went to New York with Lester -- namely, that this fairy existence could not endure. Her life was fated. Something would happen. She would go back to simple things, to a side street, a poor cottage, to old clothes.
And then as she thought of her home in Chicago, and the attitude of her friends, she knew it must be so. She would never be received, even if he married her. And she could understand why. She could look into the charming, smiling face of this woman who was now with Lester, and see that she considered her very nice, perhaps, but not of Lester’s class. She was saying to herself now no doubt as she danced with Lester that he needed some one like her. He needed some one who had been raised in the atmosphere of the thing to which he had been accustomed. He couldn’t very well expect to find in her, Jennie, the familiarity with, the appreciation of the niceties to, which he had always been accustomed. She understood what they were. Her mind had awakened rapidly to details of furniture, clothing, arrangement, decorations, manner, forms, customs, but -- she was not to the manner born.
If she went away Lester would return to his old world, the world of the attractive, well-bred, clever woman who now hung upon his arm. The tears came into Jennie’s eyes; she wished, for the moment, that she might die. It would be better so.
And ultimately, as it must be, it is Jennie, not Lester, who makes this decision, who decides what Lester will do, and what roles each of them must play. Jennie is the one now more finely attuned to constraints of the society that they live in -- so much more than Lester, who always seems to think he is independent of them, that he can skirt and dance across their surface without fear and repercussion. He says as much when he must explain his relationship with Jennie to Letty before they can marry.
“Well, anyhow, I lost my head. I thought she was the most perfect thing under the sun, even if she was a little out of my world. This is a democratic country. I thought that I could just take her, and then -- well, you know. That is where I made my mistake. I didn’t think that would prove as serious as it did. I never cared for any other woman but you before and -- I’ll be frank -- I didn’t know whether I wanted to marry you. I thought I didn’t want to marry any woman. I said to myself that I could just take Jennie, and then, after a while, when things had quieted down some, we could separate. She would be well provided for. I wouldn’t care very much. She wouldn’t care. You understand.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied his confessor.
“Well, you see, Letty, it hasn’t worked out that way. She’s a woman of a curious temperament. She possesses a world of feeling and emotion. She’s not educated in the sense in which we understand that word, but she has natural refinement and tact. She’s a good housekeeper. She’s an ideal mother. She’s the most affectionate creature under the sun. Her devotion to her mother and father was beyond words. Her love for her daughter -- she’s hers, not mine -- is perfect. She hadn’t any of the graces of the smart society woman. She isn’t quick at repartee. She can’t join in any rapid-fire conversation. She thinks rather slowly, I imagine. Some of her big thoughts never come to the surface at all, but you can feel that she is thinking and that she is feeling.”
That’s true -- both of Jennie Gerhardt the character and of Jennie Gerhardt the novel. It has big thoughts, most never coming fully to the surface, but the reader can feel the novel thinking, and feel the novel -- or more precisely, I suppose, the novelist -- feeling.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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