Howells's Rhetoric of Realism: The Economy of Pain(t) and Social Complicity in The Rise of Silas Lapham and The Minister's Charge

HOWELLS'S RHETORIC OF REALISM: THE ECONOMY OF PAIN(T) AND SOCIAL COMPLICITY IN THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM AND THE MINISTER'S CHARGE John Cyril Barton University of California, Irvine In what a host of critics has identified as the "central statement" of William Dean Howells's The Rise ofSilas Lapham,1 the Reverend Sewell answers his own question—even though that question is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Lapham and ostensibly concerns the triangular love affair in which their two daughters are ensnarled. When Mrs. Lapham "falterfs]" and then "pause[s]" in her response to Sewell's hypothetical question, "Ifsome one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this perplexity, what would you have thought?,"2 the minister goes on to complete her "thought" for her: "One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested Sewell. "That's sense, and that's justice. It's the economy of pain which naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the shallowest sentimentality." (241) As the Laphams stand in confused silence, Sewell answers his question with yet another question—albeit an apparentlyrhetorical one. In fact, Sewell's answer-in-the-guise-of-a-question is not only a question to which no answer seems to be expected, but one which operates according to a rhetoric of self-assertion. Rather than reaching a solution dialectically with the party whom it concerns (as he comes closer to doing when advising a strikingly similarcase inThe Minister 's Charge3), Sewell lets the question answer itself and bluntly appeals to "sense" and "justice," two words which reverberate equivocallythroughoutThe Rise ofSilas Lapham and which the Laphams repeat to one another as if to assure themselves of Sewell's good counsel. "He talked sense, Persis," Lapham says to his wife as they leave Sewell's home. "Yes, he talked sense," Mrs. Lapham replies. "I guess ifhe had ittocfo/ . . . It's sense; and yes, it's justice" (243). Sewell's articulation of "the economy of pain" and the Laphams' apparent acceptance of it raise two fundamental questions that critics 160John Cyril Barton of The Rise ofSilas Lapham have seemingly overlooked: has Sewell indeed "talked sense," and what position does "the minister" occupy in Howells's fiction? For a number ofprominent critics, Sewell occupies the authorially endorsed role of "spokesman," and his "economy of pain" governs the logic ofThe Rise ofSilas Lapham and, by extension, the logic ofAmerican literary realism more generally. This essay interrogates that conclusion through an analysis of Howells's fiction that centers on the minister's function in the two novels in which he figures prominently: The Rise ofSilas Lapham and The Minister's Charge. Although Sewell's "economy ofpain" inThe Rise ofSilasLapham and his sermon on "Complicity" inTheMinister's Charge play crucial roles in their respective narratives as well as in Howells's work as a whole, Sewell cannot be singled out as the "spokesman," or privileged synecdoche , by virtue ofwhich "Howellsian realism" or the author's world view can be authoritatively decoded, revealed or spoken for. Indeed, the reading I offer of The Rise ofSilas Lapham and The Minister's Charge warns against attributing such centrality to Sewell's character. For realism in Howells's fiction is not monologic, that is, stated by a single character (like Sewell) and in a single voice. On the contrary, it is essentially dialogic insofar as it produces discursive realities through the endless interaction and negotiation ofits characters, narrators, and— of course—readers.4 In direct opposition to critics who interpret Sewell's "economy of pain" as the paradigm of Howellsian realism, I shall argue that The Rise ofSilas Lapham dialogizes disparate voices and visions ofreality, thereby constituting a collective but unincorporated social reality. This line ofargument comes to a climax later in this paper when I intertwine certain threads of this discursive reality to form a rhetorical strategy that I shall call an "economy of paint": a symbolic economy of language organized around the ubiquitous trope of "paint" in the novel. As a heuristic model for negotiating Howells's realism, the polyphonic and heterogeneous tableau created by this 'economy...