Dreiser's Bulwark and Philadelphia Quakerism

DREISER'S BULWARK AND PHILADELPHIA QUAKERISM By Carroll T. Brown FRIENDS WILL READ this book with strong to violent disapproval. I propose in this review to suggest some of the reasons for this feeling and at the end to deprecate this negative attitude and to advise Friends to read the book seriously, taking it for what it primarily is and not for what it is only secondarily, a picture of a special phase of Philadelphia Quakerism "late in the nineteenth century." This novel tells the story of Solon Barnes, the son of a Maine Quaker couple, Rufus and Hannah Barnes. By quite natural devices Dreiser moves his shrewd, devout farm-storekeeping New Englanders to the neighborhood of Philadelphia, to a place called Dukla (Uwchlan), twenty-five miles from Philadelphia and six from Trenton, in Pennsylvania. They take up their residence, with their two children, Cynthia and Solon, the hero of the story, in a very large house, quite dilapidated and long unused, surrounded by immense lawns and gardens all in a state of melancholy decay. It is around this estate of Thornbrough that the story centers. What is this novel about? For one thing it is a picture of the break-up of a Quaker family under the Stress of money and changing times and customs. Another theme, common to Dreiser, is the rebellion of the younger generation against their misunderstanding elders. To a lesser degree it is a satirical picture of the crooked and near crooked dealings of financial magnates, another favorite Dreiserian motive. But it is safe to say that the central theme, for Dreiser, was a religious theme. In his later years, like so many modern writers, he became interested in mysticism. After a long series of naturalistic novels, he found himself caught up in the contemporary trend toward mysticism. Aldous Huxley is the most read and most talked of writer in this field. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is an example of another naturalist turning remuneratively to the current fad, if fad it is. It is an interesting fact that Dreiser was born a Roman Catholic and reacted violently against his father's faith. Vol. 35, Autumn 194652 DREISER'S QUAKER NOVEL53 Yet, as so often happens, his early religious training made its impression on his deepest self, and at the end of his life he returned, not to be sure to Catholicism, but to some of the spiritual elements in his faith. And however unsatisfactory Friends may find the book as a picture of Quakerism, I think a careful reader will find the religious element far more convincing than the corresponding element in The Razor's Edge, which to this reviewer seemed actually absurd in its artificial and carefully boned up orientalism. And it would be painful to imagine the other famous naturalist, Sinclair Lewis, even attempting a sympathetic portrayal of inner spiritual religion. The central theme, therefore, is a religious theme. The novel tells the story of Solon Barnes, a deeply religious Quaker who conscientiously tries to open his heart to the intimations of the Inner Light, who marries happily, who becomes rich but not worldly, and who has the tragic experience of seeing his family of five children in their different ways desert the ancestral religion. Isobel, plain, self-conscious, frustrated, neglected, the living image of girls we all know, goes to Llewellyn College (Bryn Mawr) and finally finds peace as the assistant to the professor of psychology there. Orville grows up a proper, shallow , conventional youth, marries money and settles into a formal, comfortable routine. The only detail missing is that we are not told that he became an Episcopalian, as his prototypes did in real life. Dorothea, a charming, lively girl, not exactly rebellious but eager to branch out into the luxurious life about her, goes to Bryn Mawr but finally escapes into a world of well-bred fashion and culture. Etta who next to Isobel is the realist of the children leaves Bryn Mawr for the University of Wisconsin, finally goes to New York City, to the inevitable Greenwich Village, meets the inevitable artist, undertakes the inevitable posing, and enters upon the inevitable irregular connection with him, and...