The Tragedy of Desire: Christian Science in Theodore Dreiser’s The “Genius”

In 1918, Upton Sinclair published The Profits of Religion, an impassioned screed against organized religions that he perceived as fleecing the poor and the ignorant. Though virtually every religious group with a presence in the U.S. is placed on notice, the author reserves a special sort of criticism for Christian Science—the mental healing movement led Mary Baker Eddy to argue that the body and therefore all physical infirmities were not real—calling it “the most characteristic of American religious contributions.”¹ Invoking a number of extant stereotypes about the gender, education, and socio-economic condition of Eddy’s followers, Sinclair attributes the movement’s widespread popularity during the early-twentieth century to rank ignorance: “Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is the price we pay for failing to educate our farmer’s daughters.”² A few months following the appearance of Sinclair’s book, Stephen Alison—a Christian Scientist, socialist, and co-editor of the New Orleans Christian Scientist³—published a rebuttal and deputized another famous author, journalist, and social justice advocate into his argument:

I suppose that you do read sometimes the novels of other novelists, and it is by no means unlikely that you have read “The Genius,” by Theodore Dreiser, a great novel which has been ruthlessly suppressed by a tyrannical Mrs. Grundyism that tolerates so much infamous trash; but it is quite obvious that Dreiser’s work was suppressed because he saw so completely through the conventional lies of our civilization and did not bow down to nor adore them. Several chapters toward the end of “The Genius” deal with Eugene Witla’s experiences in connection with the application of Christian Science to the problems of his existence; and Dreiser has at least endeavored to honestly comprehend the message of Christian Science. He does not make the mistake of confusing it with hypnotism or the operation of the “sub-conscious mind.” In case you do not care to read more carefully the volume of “Science and Health” which you purchased,—to get “The Genius” cost me twice as much—if you have Dreiser’s novel or can borrow it from someone who has it, for, of course, it is not to be found in the libraries,—it would be well for you to review the chapters in it dealing with Christian Science. I do not say that they are perfect, but they show a sympathetic and intelligent understanding and he discerns the difference between the spiritual and metaphysical conception of God and Infinite Mind, and the feeble counterfeit belief in the operation of human will-power, as manifested in connection with the human mind. Dreiser may be more of a realist than an artist in words, but he is at least desirous of getting his facts straight and takes pains to do so.⁴

Though Dreiser himself never converted to Christian Science as his sisters and first wife did, Alison had ample reason to believe that he had found in the famous author a fellow traveler or, at the very least, a sympathetic interlocutor between Christian Scientists and the world of skeptical literary and intellectual elites. The final sixty pages of The “Genius”—derisively called “the Christian Science fugue” by Dreiser’s friend Edward H. Smith—contain a thorough exegesis of Eddy’s writings that places her teachings in conversation with the other metaphysical and scientific theories that preoccupied Dreiser at the time. The novel fictionalizes his nervous breakdown amid the fallout of Sister Carrie, the collapse of his marriage to Sarah “Jug” White, and his abortive affair with Thelma Cudlipp. During that final crisis, “Dreiser and Jug had consulted with [Christian Science] practitioners in the manner of contemporary couples visiting a marriage counselor,” according to Richard Lingeman.⁵ The author’s lifelong preoccupation with Christian Science turns up at various points in both his fictional and autobiographical writings but especially in this final section of The “Genius.”

It is difficult to imagine how Dreiser’s naturalism, with...