Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser
"Jennie Gerhardt" is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, first published in 1911, that explores the life of its titular character, a young woman navigating the complexities of love, sacrifice, and societal expectations in late 19th-century America. Set against the backdrop of a struggling German immigrant family in Columbus, Ohio, the story follows eighteen-year-old Jennie as she faces financial hardship after her father's illness. Her beauty attracts the attention of Senator Brander, who, after a brief romantic involvement, promises to marry her but dies unexpectedly, leaving Jennie to confront the reality of becoming a single mother.
The narrative delves into Jennie's subsequent relationships, especially with Lester Kane, a wealthy man who becomes her lover but is pressured by family and societal norms to protect his reputation. Themes of illegitimacy, loneliness, and the sacrifices made for family are prevalent as Jennie grapples with her situation, ultimately leading to her separation from Lester. Despite experiencing moments of happiness, Jennie's life is marked by loss, particularly with the tragic death of her daughter, Vesta, from typhoid fever.
Through Jennie's struggles, Dreiser presents a poignant commentary on the forces of circumstance and societal judgment that shape individual lives, highlighting how virtue and love can be overshadowed by economic pressures and moral dilemmas. The novel invites readers to reflect on the realities faced by women in a patriarchal society while depicting the complexities of human relationships and the search for personal agency.
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Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser
First published: 1911
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Last two decades of the nineteenth century
Locale: Chicago; Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, Ohio
Principal characters
Jennie Gerhardt ,William Gerhardt , her fatherMrs. Gerhardt , her motherSebastian Gerhardt , her brotherSenator Brander , Jennie’s first loverVesta , Jennie’s daughterMrs. Bracebridge , Jennie’s employer in ClevelandLester Kane , a carriage manufacturer and Jennie’s second loverRobert Kane , Lester’s brotherMrs. Letty Pace Gerald , a widow, Lester’s childhood sweetheart, and later his wife
The Story:
Jennie Gerhardt, a beautiful and virtuous eighteen-year-old, is one of six children of a poor, hard-working German family in Columbus, Ohio, in 1880. Her father, a glassblower, is ill, and Jennie and her mother are forced to work at a local hotel in order to provide for the younger children in the family. Jennie does the laundry for the kind and handsome Senator Brander (he is fifty-two at the time) and attracts his eye. Senator Brander is kind to Jennie and her family. When he is able to keep Jennie’s brother Sebastian out of jail for stealing some needed coal from the railroad, Jennie, full of gratitude, allows him to sleep with her. Senator Brander, struck by Jennie’s beauty, charm, and goodness, promises to marry her. He dies suddenly, however, while on a trip to Washington.
Left alone, Jennie discovers that she is pregnant. Her father, a stern Lutheran, insists that she leave the house, but her more understanding mother allows her to return when her father, once in better health, leaves to find work in Youngstown. Jennie’s child is a girl, whom she names Vesta. At Sebastian’s suggestion, the family moves to Cleveland to find work. While her mother looks after Vesta, Jennie finds a job as a maid in the home of Mrs. Bracebridge. One of Mrs. Bracebridge’s guests, Lester Kane, the son of a rich carriage manufacturer, finds Jennie temptingly attractive. When he tries to seduce Jennie, the girl, though greatly attracted to him, manages to put off his advances.
Mr. Gerhardt is injured in a glassblowing accident and loses the use of both of his hands. Again, the family needs money badly, and Jennie decides to accept Lester’s offer of aid for her family. The price is that she become his mistress, go on a trip to New York with him, and then allow him to establish her in an apartment in Chicago. Although Jennie loves Lester, she knows that he does not intend to marry her because his family will be horrified at such an alliance, but, once again, she sacrifices her virtue because she feels that her family needs the offered aid. After Jennie becomes Lester’s mistress, he gives her family money for a house. Jennie is afraid, however, to tell Lester about the existence of her daughter Vesta.
Jennie and Lester move to Chicago and live there. Her family begins to suspect that, contrary to what Jennie told them, she and Lester are not married. When Mrs. Gerhardt dies several years later, Jennie moves Vesta to Chicago and boards the child in another woman’s house. One night, Jennie is called because Vesta is seriously ill, and Lester discovers Vesta’s existence. Although upset at first, when Jennie tells him the story, Lester understands and agrees to allow Vesta to live with them. Some time later, while Lester is staying at the apartment to recover from an illness, his sister Louise visits and discovers the relationship, which she reports to the Kane family upon her return to Cincinnati. Lester and Jennie soon move to a house in Hyde Park, a middle-class residential district in Chicago. Mr. Gerhardt, now old and ill and willing to accept the situation between Jennie and Lester, also comes to live with them and to tend the furnace and the lawn.
Although they are constantly aware of the increasing disapproval of Lester’s family, Jennie and Lester live happily for a time. Lester’s father, violently opposed to the relationship with Jennie, whom he never met, threatens to disinherit Lester if he does not leave her. Lester’s brother Robert urges his father on and attempts to persuade Lester to abandon Jennie. Nevertheless, Lester feels that he owes his allegiance as well as his love to her, and he remains with her in spite of the fact that they are snubbed by most of Lester’s society connections.
When Lester’s father dies, still believing that his son’s relationship with Jennie demonstrates irresponsibility, he leaves Lester’s share of the estate in trust with Robert. Lester is given three alternatives: He can leave Jennie and receive all his money; he can marry Jennie and receive only ten thousand dollars a year for life; or he can continue his present arrangement with the knowledge that if he does not either abandon or marry Jennie within three years, he will lose his share of the money. Characteristically, Lester hesitates. He resigns from his managerial position in the family business and takes Jennie to Europe, where they meet Mrs. Letty Pace Gerald, a beautiful and accomplished widow who was Lester’s childhood sweetheart and who is still fond of him. In the meantime, Robert expands the carriage business into a monopoly and eases Lester into a subordinate position. When Lester returns to Chicago, he decides to attempt to make an independent future for himself and Jennie. He puts a good deal of money into a real estate deal and loses it. Mrs. Gerald also moves to Chicago in pursuit of Lester.
After old Mr. Gerhardt dies, Jennie finds herself in a difficult situation. Lester, out of the family business because of her, is finding it more difficult to earn a living. Mrs. Gerald and Robert’s lawyers keep pressing her to release him, claiming this suggestion is for his own economic and social good. Jennie, always altruistic, begins to influence Lester to leave her. Before long, both are convinced that separation is the only solution so that Lester can return to the family business. Finally, Lester leaves Jennie, setting up a house and an income for her and Vesta in a cottage an hour or so from the center of Chicago.
Once more established in the family business, Lester marries Mrs. Gerald. Six months after Lester leaves Jennie, Vesta, a fourteen-year-old girl already showing a good deal of sensitivity and talent, dies of typhoid fever.
Jennie, calling herself Mrs. Stover, moves to the city and adopts two orphan children. Five years pass. Jennie, although still in love with Lester, accepts her quiet life. At last, she is able to cope with experience in whatever terms it presents itself to her, even though she is never able to impose her will on experience in any meaningful way. One night while in Chicago on business, Lester is stricken by severe cardiovascular illness and sends for Jennie; his wife is in Europe and cannot reach Chicago for three weeks. Jennie tends Lester throughout his last illness. One day he confesses that he always loved her and that he made a mistake by permitting the forces of business and family pressure to make him leave her. Jennie feels that his final confession, his statement that he should never have left her, indicates a kind of spiritual union and leaves her with something that she can value for the rest of her life. Lester dies. Jennie realizes that she will now be forced to live through many years that can promise no salvation, no new excitement—that will simply impose themselves upon her as have the years in the past. She is resolved to accept her loneliness because she knows there is nothing else for her to do.
Jennie goes to see Lester’s coffin loaded on the train. She realizes then, even more clearly, that the individual is simply a figure, moved about by circumstance. Virtue, beauty, moral worth cannot save anyone, nor can evil or degeneracy. One simply yields and manages the best one can under the circumstances of one’s nature, one’s society, and one’s economic situation.
Bibliography
Cassuto, Leonard, and Clare Virginia Eby, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. A collection of twelve essays focusing on the novelist’s examination of American conflicts between materialistic longings and traditional values. Includes essays on Dreiser’s style, Dreiser and women, and Dreiser and the ideology of upward mobility. The references to Jennie Gerhardt are listed in the index.
Dreiser, Theodore. Jennie Gerhardt. Edited by James L. W. West III. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. This restored version reclaims Dreiser’s original intentions for the novel. Includes informative introduction, explanatory notes, a map, illustrations of pages from Dreiser’s manuscript, and other useful materials.
Gogol, Miriam, ed. Theodore Dreiser: Beyond Naturalism. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Ten essays interpret Dreiser from the perspectives of new historicism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and other points of view. Gogol’s introduction advances the argument that Dreiser was much more than a naturalist and deserves to be treated as a major author.
Juras, Uwe. Pleasing to the “I”: The Culture of Personality and Its Representations in Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Juras examines how the two authors depicted the newly emerging concept of personality, defined as the outward presentation of self, in their work. Includes a discussion of Jennie Gerhardt.
Lingeman, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, 1871-1907. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908-1945. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990. The standard biography offers information on the writing and biographical context of Jennie Gerhardt in volume 1 and information on its revision, publication, and critical reception in volume 2.
Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. This engrossing survey of the author’s life and work is a welcome addition to Dreiser scholarship. Focuses on Dreiser’s work, including his journalism, discussing the writers who influenced him and his place within American literature.
Pizer, Donald. The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976. The section on Jennie Gerhardt establishes information about the novel’s sources and composition. Gives biographical details suggesting that Jennie was modeled after Dreiser’s sister Mame. Valuable discussion of structure, characterization, and themes.
West, James L. W., III, ed. Dreiser’s “Jennie Gerhardt”: New Essays on the Restored Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. A collection giving historical background and new interpretations of the novel in its restored version.