High Moral Values of The Heroine in Theodore Dreiser’s Novel “Jennie Gerhardt”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51699/cajlpc.v7i2.1455Keywords:
Theodore Dreiser, American realism, naturalism, moral values, female character, social criticism, feminist readingAbstract
This piece explores the moral integrity and spiritual resilience of Jennie Gerhardt, the protagonist of Theodore Dreiser’s novel Jennie Gerhardt. The study approaches Jennie’s empathy, self-sacrifice, maternal devotion and moral endurance through the lenses of realism, naturalism and feminist literary criticism. Despite the social condemnation and economic hardship they suffer, Jennie manages to be both ethically strong-willed and emotionally sincere. According to this article, Dreiser secures a morally ascendant image of Jennie as the inwardly noble heroine who reveals the hypocrisy of early twentieth-century American society.
References
T. Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt. New York, NY, USA: Modern Library, 2001 (original work published 1911).
C. V. Eby, Dreiser’s Women: A Study of Feminine Identity in the Novels of Theodore Dreiser. Columbus, OH, USA: Ohio University Press, 1998.
R. H. Elias, Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature. Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell University Press, 1949.
W. B. Michaels, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 1987.
D. Pizer, The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1976.
D. Pizer, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
D. Pizer, American Naturalism and the Modern Novel. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press, 1985.
J. L. McElrath Jr., J. C. Lovell, and R. C. Lehan, Eds., Theodore Dreiser: Interviews. Urbana, IL, USA: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
R. C. Lehan, Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition. Madison, WI, USA: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
E. Sundquist, American Realism: New Essays. Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
J. W. Tuttleton, The Novel of Manners in America. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.
G. J. Becker, Ed., Documents of Modern Literary Realism. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 1963.
H. L. Mencken, A Book of Prefaces. New York, NY, USA: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.
R. Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City, NY, USA: Doubleday, 1957.
A. Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. New York, NY, USA: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1942.
