Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser
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removal of realistic detail and the excision of Jennie’s thinking—might simply have been done to move the plot along. Dreiser’s method throughout his career was to saturate his narratives with realistic detail and meditative digression; as a consequence he had to contend all of his professional life with trade editors who wished to cut social data and philosophical speculation from his manuscripts. Perhaps this is all that Hitchcock meant to do; Jennie’s diminished status in the novel might simply have been an adventitious result of routine cutting to increase narrative pace. On the other hand, Hitchcock and his assistants might deliberately have set out to weaken Jennie’s role. Perhaps she seemed a threatening figure, with her endurance, resilience, and quiet female strength. From the evidence that survives one can only speculate, but certainly it is possible to suspect Hitchcock and his helpers of a less than enlightened attitude toward the mental capacities and inner resources of women like Jennie.
We do know from the surviving correspondence that Dreiser was unhappy with the editorial work done at Harpers. So thorough was the revising and cutting that Hitchcock tried not to let Dreiser see his original typescript; he attempted instead to show the author a freshly typed copy of the revised and shortened text. Dreiser balked, though, and insisted on examining his ribbon typescript, the document on which Hitchcock and his assistants had done their work. This typescript, to judge from later textual collations, must perforce have been covered with cuts and revisions numbering literally into the thousands. Dreiser protested about the heavy revision and persuaded Hitchcock to restore some of what had been removed, but the text, when finally published in October 1911, was still some 16,000 words shorter than Dreiser’s original. Dreiser fretted about the editing in letters to Mencken, who was upset as well. “Such ruthless slashing is alarming,” Mencken wrote.
At the same time Dreiser must have been happy over his reviews once the book came out. Most of the New York notices were favorable: Edwin Markham, writing in the American, called Dreiser the “master of a pen that etches with power the dark side of poverty”; the anonymous Herald reviewer praised the “inexorable simplicity and reality” of the story. The review in the Globe and Commercial Advertiser was mixed but still called Jennie Gerhardt a “remarkable story”; the notice in the Times Book Review emphasized the blunt force and courage of Dreiser’s writing. A long review by Calvin Winter in the Bookman, an influential journal, was full of praise. The Chicago reviews, headed by Floyd Dell’s positive notice in the Evening Post, were favorable; and reviews in other big-city newspapers were mostly good. Mencken weighed in with an admiring notice in his own journal, the Smart Set, though when reading the review today one must keep in mind that it was based on Dreiser’s uncut typescript, not the published Harpers edition.
These notices must have pleased Dreiser. Sales were not bad either: Jennie Gerhardt sold around 14,000 copies in its first trade run and earned Dreiser something over $2,500 in royalties, a substantial amount in 1911. Harpers had surely hoped for a much stronger sale but was satisfied enough with this showing to reissue Sister Carrie in 1912 and to begin helping Dreiser put his next novel, The Financier, in shape for publication. Could the editing done at Harpers have been responsible in part for this good reception from the reviewers and booksellers? Certainly the text of Jennie Gerhardt, as originally submitted to Harper & Brothers, would have been dangerous to publish in 1911. Very likely the uncut version would have been attacked; possibly the book would have been banned in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. Such developments would have damaged the reputation of Harper & Brothers and might have dealt a death blow to Dreiser’s career as a novelist.
The 1911 edition of Jennie Gerhardt can therefore be seen as a text that was socialized and domesticated by cultural forces of its time. Its language and treatment of religion were brought into line by the Harpers editors; possibly the behavior of its heroine was shaped to fit conventional notions as well. The 1911 edition is a classic example of a collaborative, negotiated text—a product of conflicting aims and intentions on the part of author and publisher.
Dreiser never tried to have an uncut text of Jennie Gerhardt published in his lifetime. As a practical matter this would have been quite difficult. Dreiser was not a good commercial prospect until late in his career, and then only briefly. He never had strong leverage with publishers and sometimes even had trouble finding houses willing to issue his new works. He was always on bad terms with his publishers, often accusing them of timidity and underhanded dealings. He moved from firm to firm after 1914, each time trying to extricate his various copyrights from his former publishers. There was never a chance to issue uncut versions of his old works. Dreiser was usually moving forward in any case, focusing his energies on the next project and not lingering on the shortcomings of his earlier books. But he did save, very carefully, the uncut manuscripts and typescripts of his books against the day when scholars would use them to reclaim his original texts.
Fortunately Dreiser preserved a great deal of material from the making of Jennie Gerhardt: drafts and holographs and typescripts that survive today at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia. The text of Jennie Gerhardt presented in this Penguin edition is based on these documents. This edition seeks to recover the version that Dreiser would ideally have wanted to publish in 1911. Slang and profanity have been restored; the original sexual frankness of the narrative has been reinstated; Dreiser’s blunt, unadorned style has been recovered; his criticisms of institutionalized religion are present. Detail about the Kane and Gerhardt families is as Dreiser originally wrote it. Most important, Jennie’s original role has been restored, and she now functions effectively as a counterweight to Lester. Her sensitivity and mysticism work strongly against his pragmatic determinism, and the novel is put back into its original balance.
Jennie does not emerge as a proto-feminist in this restored text. She is still fearful and vulnerable, and her deprived upbringing and poor education prevent her from exercising much control over what happens to her. She can, however, be seen as a participant in the womanly tradition of nurturing and endurance, instinct and emotion, generosity and love. Almost alone among the characters in Dreiser’s fiction, she is psychologically whole and emotionally stable. Her head is not turned by money, status, or material possessions. Instead she values things that are natural and spiritual. Without being able to articulate it, she sees a wholeness and mystical purpose behind the arrangement of the universe that Lester cannot perceive. She also sees, or senses, the presence of an oversoul or organizing spirit that is hidden from him. Critics have often seen Lester, with his defiant skepticism, as Dreiser’s mouthpiece in Jennie Gerhardt—an understandable reading of the truncated 1911 text. Now, in this restored text of Jennie Gerhardt, one can see that Dreiser’s sympathies lie at least as much with his heroine. Jennie emerges as a daughter of labor who endures her lot bravely. She is a woman of large spirit and great stoicism whose life is tragically compromised by her birth and upbringing, but who survives and remains strong, setting an example by her generosity of spirit and her capacity for love.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Editions
Dreiser, Theodore. American Diaries, 1902-1926. ed. Thomas P. Riggio, James L. W. West III, and Neda M. Westlake. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Eight diaries, plus fragments and annotations.
_______. An Amateur Laborer. ed. Richard W. Dowell, James L. W. West III, and Neda M. Westlake. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Dreiser’s account of his battle with neurasthenia, unpublished during his lifetime.
_______. Jennie Gerhardt. The Pennsylvania Edition. ed. James L. W. West III. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. A scholarly edition, with notes, apparatus, illustrations, and appendices.
_______. Letters of Theodore Dreiser: A Selection. ed. Robert H. Elias. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. 3 vols. The standard edition of Dreiser’s correspondence.
Books
Boyer, Paul S. Purity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in America. New York: Scribners, 1968. The popular reaction to books like Sister Carrie.
Elias,