Playing the Market in Amer ican Fiction
Date Issued
2002-07-31
Date
2002-07-31
Author(s)
DOI
902411H002052
Abstract
The volatility of the stock market
provides novelists with a convenient and
realistic means of depicting the dramatic rise
and fall of a character’s fortune. In W. D.
Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham, famed
as the first business novel in American
literature, the title character loses his newly
accumulated wealth for a great part because
he speculated in the stock market and took
“wild-cat stocks” as security for a bad loan.
The author implies that speculation in stocks
is a deviation from the Protestant work ethic,
which values hard, honest work and expects
proportionate, just earnings. Mrs. Lapham,
the voice of moral consciousness and
practical sense in the first half of the novel,
further denounces it as “gambling,” and the
author uses it to characterize the paint
merchant’s excessiveness and pompousness
and later metes out proper punishment. On
3
the other hand, the Brahmins of the novel
abhor the fluctuations of the market as proof
of the transient value of all things bourgeois.
Edith Wharton likewise finds self-made
money vulgar and the stock market
dangerous in The House of Mirth. The
refined heroine, Lily Barth, who has “the
gambling passion,” unwittingly accepts
money from a married male friend under the
misunderstanding that he was investing her
allowance in stocks. The financial blunder
results in moral lapses and social errors,
until she descends into economic and
spiritual despair. The winners of the stock
market, on the other hand, are vulgarians
with no moral scruples and dubious business
ethics. Yet fashionable society must pay
homage to people who have inside
information on Wall Street, as the unpopular
social climber Simon Rosedale trades his
“tips” for invitations to parties and
receptions. Furthermore, the speculative
nature of stock investments echoes the same
nature of the marriage market, in which a
calculating girl must gather informative
“points” as she lies in wait of her target
young man, and Rosedale, with his
“stock-taking eyes,” will choose his bride
after a shrewd estimation of her social value
and potential.
The project investigates the economic
activities of the latter half of the 19th century
in the United States to first place the novels
in a historical context, to understand
19th-century scandals of speculative frenzies
and stock manipulation, and changes in
business practices, business ethics and the
way wealth is made and preserved. Next I
examine the references to the stock
exchange and the commodity market in the
three novels, paying special attention in my
study of Silas Lapham to the conflicts
between the Puritan work ethic and the
industrialist economy, and between
middle-class values and patrician
convictions. The reading of The House of
Mirth, while expanding on the earlier
discussions, will further look into the
imagery of stocks, investment and
speculation as metaphors of society life and
marriage. Together, the two novels provide
a glimpse of the moral, social and cultural
impact of speculation on American society
as it enters the modern age.
Subjects
American fiction
business novel
William Dean Howells
The Rise of Silas Lapham
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth
stock market
Publisher
臺北市：國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所
Type
report
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
902411H002052.pdf
Size
206.04 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):53e785ab9efa66a95354a8caf780f74f