The Rise of Silas Lapham

by William Dean Howells

  Later, Rogers is described by the narrator as possessing a “wicked omniscience” (315) that permits him to know the actions of the Lapham family, and thus to know when to appear and how to attempt his vengeance. And in general Rogers is frequently described as a source of evil and deviltry in both Lapham’s business and personal life. Howells’ contemporary critic Horace Scudder even went so far as to refer to Rogers as “that delicious Mephistopheles,” referencing the devil to whom Faust sold his soul.

  Then there are the Lapham women, each of whom is referred to as a ghost at one time or another in the novel.

  All this is not to suggest that Howells has written a type of simple allegory in which the Coreys are witches, Rogers is a ghost-demon, and the Lapham women are ghosts. In fact, the inconsistencies of having Rogers appear alternately as ghost and as demon or of having all the Lapham women described as ghosts supports the point underscored by Faulkner’s comments that Howells is simply tapping into culturally specific symbols that even Howells acknowledges he cannot entirely avoid. The fact that Howells tried to avoid such symbols may very well explain why they are inconsistently employed. But what I’m interested in doing is tracing out some of the archetypal patterns from the Gothic Romantic tradition that Howells seems incapable of avoiding.

  For starters, let’s go back to Kathleen Brogan and use her criteria for a Gothic story. Brogan lists “the familiar trappings of the Gothic” as “the haunted house, the family secrets, endangered inheritances, imprisonment and escape, the encounter with the unspeakable, and, indeed, ghosts themselves.” Romance, which Howells is more concerned with, is not the same as the Gothic, of course, but the Romance and the Gothic are related. This is because the Romance permits many Gothic elements, such as supernatural phenomena, and certainly in the Romantic works I have mentioned here by Poe, Hawthorne, and James, we can see many Gothic elements. For my purposes, I will treat the Gothic as a subcategory of the Romance.

  So, how well does The Rise of Silas Lapham meet Brogan’s criteria? Quite well, I’d say. Howells opens his novel with an ancestral home and some graves. Like the narrator of “The Custom-House,” who attempts to explain the inexplicable pull Salem has upon him, Lapham explains to the reporter Bartley that “the old house” and “the graves” of his parents made him unable to “clear out” of New England the way his brothers did (5). But in holding onto this impoverished, dying plot of earth, he discovers buried in the ground a figurative gold mine first unearthed by his father and left to him to improve upon and profit by—just as Surveyor Pue, Hawthorne’s “official ancestor,” rewarded Hawthorne’s devotion to the dying town of Salem by providing him with a figuratively buried treasure in the form of an outline of a story that, when fleshed out, would provide him with “profit.”

  In the case of Silas Lapham, this figurative gold mine provides the family fortune that enables the Laphams to rub elbows with the likes of the Coreys, but it also becomes the endangered inheritance, as Lapham overspends and speculates his fortune away. Furthermore, this fortune was enhanced by Lapham’s manipulation and betrayal of Milton Rogers, whom Lapham took on as a partner and then forced out. Mrs. Lapham scolds her husband about his treatment of Rogers, saying, “‘you had better face the truth, Silas. It was no chance at all. You crowded him out. A man that had saved you! No, you had got greedy, Silas. You had made your paint your god, and you couldn’t bear to let anybody else share in its blessings’” (44). This crime of Lapham’s then is the central family secret for which Lapham is haunted by the figurative ghost of the man he wronged.

  Silas Lapham, just like every other story I have mentioned here, also features a haunted house—perhaps several. The Custom-House, the House of Usher, and Bly from The Turn of the Screw are well-known haunted residences, but the haunted house(s) in Silas Lapham are somewhat less obvious. On one hand, the Beacon Street house is described at the end of the novel as being “haunted with . . . memories to each of those who abandoned it” (345). But I’d say that the new house Silas attempts to build in the Back Bay is a better example of a haunted house, in that it is a symbolic representation of the man himself, a stock device of much Gothic Romance in which a building is a body, representative of the psychic states of the protagonist. Whether Howells would admit to symbols or not, the Back Bay home Lapham attempts to build becomes a perfect representation of his psychic states. The most important piece of evidence we need to establish this relationship is that the house is built with blood money earned from Lapham’s betrayal of Rogers. We know this fact from the get-go, not just because Mrs. Lapham says she “shan’t live in it. There’s blood on it!” (45), but because the house is introduced along with the sudden appearance of Rogers himself. It is as if the building of the house has conjured Rogers. The ghost is looking for his attic. This early scene, in and of itself, contains almost all Brogan’s elements—the haunted house, the ghost, the family secrets, and the threatened inheritance.

  From this scene onward, the rest of the novel concerns itself with Lapham’s haunting. He must come to moral terms with his betrayal of Rogers and the mischief caused by this sin and Rogers’ resultant pursuit of vengeance. Lapham must simultaneously escape from the prison of circumstance he has erected around himself and exorcise his demon, which he does in the end when he resists Rogers’ temptation to commit another financial sin. The final escape and exorcism are symbolized by the accidental fire Lapham sets, which incinerates the Back Bay home and forces him to sell the house on Beacon Street and retreat to the family estate in Vermont. The narrator even tells us that “to go [to Vermont] was less exile than escape” (345). Rogers disappears from the novel about this time, and we know the exorcism is complete. In the final confrontation between Lapham and Rogers, Lapham even cites scripture at Rogers, as if he were the devil. It is the only time in the novel Lapham does this.

  Critics and readers have regularly noted that the parallel plot of the nearly botched romance between Tom Corey and first Irene and then Penelope Lapham functions to reinforce the main plot of Silas’ financial fall and moral rise. This love plot also maps onto the ghost story. In short, Penelope Lapham is given an opportunity in love that is similar to her father’s opportunity in business. She can “profit” romantically by marrying Tom Corey, but to do so she would have to betray her sister. If Pen were to betray her sister, Irene could figuratively die and return as a ghost to haunt Penelope, just as Rogers haunted her father. Several elements reinforce this reading.

  In chapter XVII, Penelope confides in her mother that Tom Corey has professed his love to her, and that he never loved Irene. Penelope is fraught with guilt over a possible crime on her part, because she feels that she may be at fault for luring Corey to her. “‘I must have done something,’” she cries (222). She also fears that her actions could end Irene’s life. Pen says, “‘She’s got her whole life set on him’” (222). Underscoring Penelope’s symbolic murder of Irene are several allusions to death made throughout this scene, culminating when Mrs. Lapham leaves Penelope’s room and goes to Irene’s to speak with her and presumably tell her about the affair. The first words out of Irene’s mouth are “‘Please don’t talk! I’m almost dead with sleep!’” (225). Two chapters later, when Mrs. Lapham finally informs Irene of the situation, Irene suffers a figurative death that made “the delicate rose-light of her complexion [go] out and left her colorless” (237). By chapter XX, Penelope is seeing ghosts (253).

  As I mentioned previously, each of the Lapham women is described as a ghost at least once, but the scene that gives primacy to Irene’s ghostliness may be when Rogers is mistaken for Irene. In this scene, Lapham is walking home from work, contemplating Rogers’ latest attempt “to commit . . . rascality,” when he sees a carriage before his house. Howells writes, “It came into [Lapham’s] head that Irene had got back unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it harder for him; . . . but when he opened the door he saw, with a certain absence of surprise, th
at it was Rogers” (320). This scene establishes a link between Rogers and Irene that helps to establish Irene’s relationship to her sister as being similar to Rogers’ relationship to Lapham.

  Fortunately for Penelope, Irene, and Tom Corey, Irene never becomes a ghost. Instead, Irene subjects herself to a period of exile, from which she emerges having experienced a rebirth. When she initially reappears, she frightens her mother so strongly that Howells describes her as an “apparition” (336). But Irene is no ghost now. She in fact has been improved by adversity, and in her matured state, she grants permission to Penelope and Tom to marry, and thus Penelope is able to avoid betrayal and the haunting it would engender.

  As Howells approaches the resolution of these intertwined plots, he aligns himself with the Gothic tradition of Hawthorne, more so than that of Poe or, later, James. Like Hawthorne, Howells suggests that sin is an inevitable part of the human condition that, by its nature, offers humans an opportunity for salvation, and, in a millennialist twist, that future generations can be saved by the redeemed sins of the current generation. Silas Lapham, like Arthur Dimmesdale, is raised up morally by the torment of his pursuer (though Howells, unlike Hawthorne, lets his penitent live), and through the example of his actions offers the second generation characters a better future. Irene, Penelope, and Tom Corey, like Hester and Dimmesdale’s daughter, Pearl, benefit from the sins of their ancestors, and thereby avoid a similar fate.

  In the concluding chapters, Howells meditates increasingly upon the subjects of evil and sin. In the final chapter, Lapham and the minister Sewell discuss “‘the operation of evil in the physical world’” (357). Sewell believes that evil exists in the world but does not pretend to understand its moral purpose. Lapham falters in his initial response, but then concludes that his fate was unavoidable and that he’d likely commit the same acts again, suggesting that evil has an inevitable centrality in the moral rise of men and women in the physical world. Perhaps Lapham’s conclusion mirrors the concerns of his creator here. Perhaps the operation of the Gothic Romance was unavoidable in the fictional world, and, try as he might, Howells was bound to repeat the sins of his ancestors, if only for the benefit of future novelists.

  —Jason Courtmanche

  WORKS CITED

  Brogan, Kathleen. Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

  Gwynn, Frederick L., and Joseph Blotner, eds. Faulkner in the University. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

  Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Signet Classics, 2009.

  Howells, William Dean. “Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading: An Impersonal Explanation.” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 62 (1958): pp.15–34.

  ——. The Rise of Silas Lapham. New York: Signet Classics, 2014.

  Howells, William Dean and Frank Norris. Criticism and Fiction: The Responsibilities of the Novelist. Cambridge, MA: Walker de Berry, 1962.

  James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York: Penguin, 2011.

  Poe, Edgar Allan. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Penguin, 2006.

  Scudder, Horace. “Recent American Fiction.” The Atlantic Monthly 56 (October 1885): pp. 554–56.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Works by William Dean Howells

  Venetian Life, 1866 Travel

  Italian Journeys, 1867 Travel

  Their Wedding Journey, 1872 Novel

  A Foregone Conclusion, 1875 Novel

  A Modern Instance, 1882 Novel

  The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885 Novel

  Indian Summer, 1886 Novel

  The Minister’s Charge, 1887 Novel

  April Hopes, 1888 Novel

  A Hazard of New Fortunes, 1890 Novel

  A Boy’s Town, 1890 Autobiography

  Criticism and Fiction, 1891 Criticism

  The Quality of Mercy, 1892 Novel

  A Traveler from Altruria, 1894 Novel

  The Landlord at Lion’s Head, 1897 Novel

  Their Silver Wedding Journey, 1899 Novel

  Literary Friends and Acquaintances, 1900 Criticism

  My Mark Twain, 1910 Reminiscences

  Years of My Youth, 1916 Autobiography

  The Leatherwood God, 1916 Novel

  The Vacation of the Kelwyns, 1920 Novel

  Biography and Criticism

  Alexander, William. William Dean Howells: The Realist as Humanist. New York: Burt Franklin, 1981.

  Alkana, Joseph. The Social Self: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

  Bassett, John E. “A Heart of Ideality in My Realism” and Other Essays on Howells and Twain. West Cornwell, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1991.

  Bennett, George N. The Realism of William Dean Howells, 1889–1920. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1973.

  ——. William Dean Howells: The Development of a Novelist. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.

  Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884–1919. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

  Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

  Brooks, Van Wyck. Howells: His Life and World. New York: Dutton, 1959.

  Cady, Edwin H., and Louis J. Budd, eds. On Howells. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.

  ——. The Realist at War: The Mature Years, 1885–1920, of William Dean Howells. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1958.

  ——. The Road to Realism: The Early Years, 1837–1885, of William Dean Howells. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1956.

  Cady, Edwin H., and David L. Frazier, eds. The War of the Critics over William Dean Howells. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1962.

  Carrington, George C., Jr. The Immense Complex Drama: The World and Art of the Howells Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966.

  Cawelti, John G. Apostles of the Self-Made Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

  Cook, Don L. William Dean Howells: The Kittery Years. Kittery Point, ME: William Dean Howells Memorial Committee, 1991.

  Crowley, John W. The Black Heart’s Truth: The Early Career of W. D. Howells. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

  Eble, Kenneth E., ed. Howells: A Century of Criticism. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1962.

  ——. William Dean Howells. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982.

  Eschholz, Paul A., ed. Critics on William Dean Howells. Readings in Literary Criticism, 23. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1975.

  Fryckstedt, Olov W. In Quest of America: A Study of Howells’ Early Development as a Novelist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

  Gibson, William M. William D. Howells. Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, 63. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967.

  Hough, Robert L. The Quiet Rebel: William Dean Howells as a Social Commentator. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959.

  Howells, Mildred, ed. Life in Letters of William Dean Howells. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, Doran; London: Heinemann, 1928.

  Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

  Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1942.

  Kirk, Clara M., and Rudolf Kirk. William Dean Howells. United States Author Series, 16. New York: Twayne, 1962.

  Lynn, Kenneth S. William Dean Howells: An American Life. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.

  McMurray, William J. The Literary Realism of William Dean Howells. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967.

  Mielke, Robert. The Riddle of the Painful Earth: Suffe
ring and Society in W. D. Howells’ Major Writings of the Early 1890s. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1994.

  Nettels, Elsa. Language and Gender in American Fiction: Howells, James, Wharton, and Cather. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Macmillan, 1997.

  Olsen, Rodney D. Dancing in Chains: The Youth of William Dean Howells. New York & London: New York University Press, 1991.

  Pease, Donald E., ed. New Essays on The Rise of Silas Lapham. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

  Prioleau, Elizabeth Stevens. The Circle of Eros: Sexuality in the Work of William Dean Howells. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983.

  Smith, Henry Nash. “William Dean Howells: The Theology of Realism.” In his Democracy and the Novel: Popular Resistance to Classic American Writers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 75–103.

  Spindler, Michael. American Literature and Social Change: William Dean Howells to Arthur Miller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Architecture of The Rise of Silas Lapham.” American Literature, 37 (January 1966), pp. 430–57.

  Trilling, Lionel. “William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste.” Partisan Review, 18 (September–October 1951), pp. 516–36. Rpt. in his The Opposing Self. New York: Viking, 1955, pp. 76–103.

  Vanderbilt, Kermit. The Achievement of William Dean Howells: A Reinterpretation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.

  Van Doren, Carl. The American Novel: 1789–1939. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1940.

  Wagenknecht, Edward. William Dean Howells: The Friendly Eye. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

  Woodress, James L. Howells and Italy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1952.