The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

New money/old money romance with unrealistic realism

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was once nicknamed “the Dean of American Letters,” but despite his esteemed reputation his novels don’t seem to be widely read these days. The Rise of Silas Lapham, published in 1885, is likely his best known work. It was originally published in serialized form in The Century Magazine. Howells is considered by many literary critics to be the father of American literary realism, and many of the writers he favored in that genre would go on to become more recognizable names than himself, among them Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Hamlin Garland. During his lifetime, romantically inclined writers would criticize Howells for his concentration on the more mundane details of life. For readers of today who enjoy realist and naturalist literature, however, The Rise of Silas Lapham really isn’t realistic enough, and feels a bit too tethered to the sentimental conventions of an earlier age.

Silas Lapham grew up on a farm in Vermont. His family lived a modest rural lifestyle until one day his father discovers a mother lode of ore on the family land. This ore is high in peroxide of iron, a key ingredient in the making of mineral paint. After his father’s death, Silas Lapham establishes a mine and develops a successful paint business that makes him a millionaire. Despite its emphasis in the novel’s title, the trajectory of this “Rise” is mostly summarized in the book’s first chapter.

As the novel opens, Lapham now runs his paint empire from an office in Boston, where he lives with his wife and two grown daughters. The Lapham family lives a comfortably upper-class life, but Lapham still very much has the manners and personality of a no-nonsense Vermont farm boy. He couldn’t care less about fitting in to Boston society until he considers the prospects of his daughters and their finding a suitable match. When Tom Corey, the son of a blue-blooded old-money family of Boston aristocrats, shows an interest in one of Lapham’s daughters and in his paint business, Lapham and his family take the leap into society, trying to live up to the snooty Coreys, who look down on the Laphams as if they were hopeless hillbillies.

The romance that ensues between young Mr. Corey and Miss Lapham reads like something out of an old Victorian novel. As in any romance, an obstacle must be put in the way of the lovers’ happiness, and the one that Howells employs here is a bit ridiculous, a mole hill that’s made into a mountain. Another plot thread concerns Lapham’s business. Earlier in his career, Lapham bought out his business partner in a way that Mrs. Lapham considers unethical, and she insists that her husband atone for it. This dilemma also seems overblown because the business decision that Mrs. Lapham finds so egregious really doesn’t seem that bad. Her meddling leads to financial trouble for the paint business and the family. Unfortunately, Howells does not write about business with the perspicacity of Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. Whereas either of those realist writers would have outlined the problem in minute detail, making the reader fell involved, Howells settles for vague references to “troubles” and “ruin.”

The Rise of Silas Lapham feels pretty contrived and formulaic compared to the groundbreaking works of realism written by Norris, Crane, and other of Howells’s protégés. The one commendable aspect of this work is that Howells doesn’t settle for an easy conclusion that panders to a popular audience. In that sense, this novel is a move forward from much of earlier romantic fiction, but the story here is still too firmly rooted in Victorian conventions to feel authentic.
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