Class Clash in "The Rise of Silas Lapham"

                                                (The Condemning Class Struggle)

            Silas Lapham is a self-made man of wealth who is hesitant to depend on others for help, especially when it comes to his mineral paint business. Persis, his wife, has supported him through the years and Silas has learned to take her opinions into careful consideration. Howells uses Silas so highlight class distinction and struggle of the self-made man in America during the mid 1900's. As the reader follows Silas through the story and feels his pains via Howell's down-to-earth, homespun writing style, the reader is pulled into the struggle of the business world. This is where emotions can be unstable, especially for country-raised people such as the Laphams. Silas is a stubborn and passionate man, and the only thing more important than his business is his wife, though they do not always see eye to eye. Through Silas, the reader sees that sometimes people who are not upper class material can never truly rise to the ranks of the wealthy in regards to the social standing, and this is because the average man cannot be more than average if he strives to become something he is not. The truly middle class man can never stand in the social circles of the upper class, because they are beyond his reach.

          

              Tom Corey comes from a wealthy family that has retained its wealth and social standing for three generations. This man decides to work for Silas because he sees the opportunity to begin making a life for himself, instead of living off of his parents' money for the rest of his life. He is hard-working and sincere, but even though he is a good worker for Silas he ultimately drives a wedge that further makes this class distinction a prominent struggle in the novel. He means well and falls in love with the oldest Lapham girl, Penelope, but he also stresses Silas out because Silas knows the type of family he comes from; not matter what Silas does, he can never be on equal standing with the Corey's. Even though he is in the process of building a lavish house in order to rise to their level. This is impossible because he is carved from a different kind of wood than they are. He is from the country, specifically Vermont, and he grew up as a hard-working country boy who was not built for fitting in with the upper crust of Boston. This becomes painfully obvious at the dinner with the Coreys when he gets unintentionally drunk while telling war stories. When he realizes what happened the following day he becomes mortified in front of Tom Corey and feels unworthy to be Tom's boss. This is truly a breaking point for Silas, because he blew his one chance to attempt fitting in with the Coreys in their social circle.

            Silas has a personality that makes being a true upper class Bostonian impossible. He is sensible and shrewd, but is not the most intelligent businessman. He struggles with the complexities of the business world because he continually, though accidentally, makes foolish investments. He gambles with the stock market, in an effort to make quick money, and it backfires on him because he rushed into said investments. This is just one example of his brash investments. He loses money by investing in his ex-partner, and this investments pushes him past the point of fiscal recovery. His fall from wealth reaches its lowest point when the house he was building catches on fire and is completely destroyed. At this point the reader knows that there is no way for Silas to recover his lost money and save his paint company, which is in the process of being out-competed by another young mineral paint company. This is the fall of Silas, and he cannot climb up from the depths of this plunge into a financial crisis. In the end, he cuts his losses, moves back to Vermont with his wife and youngest daughter, and lets Penelope marry Tom, which will pull her up the social ladder.

            One of the other things that highlights the class struggle in this novel is the pervading sense of aestheticism. Silas is the least aesthetic man in the entire Boston area. His original plans for his huge house are distasteful and unrefined. The architect refines them though and produces plans for a house that will look quite nice. Silas is a romantic though, which is why he believes that enough wealth will bring his family happiness. He originally thinks that Corey is interested in his youngest daughter, who is more beautiful than his oldest, whereas Corey is more attracted to Penelope because she has more common sense and book smarts than her younger, prettier sister. This provides an immediate contrast between the Laphams and the Coreys. The former is romantic and the latter is realistic. Practicality beats beauty in the upper circles of Boston. Silas is not a caveman, but he is much less cultured than the Coreys, which further emphasizes that the upper class is composed of aesthetics who know how to appreciate true beauty. He does not like books, but prefers lectures and only a handful of plays, which he goes to mainly for the sake of culturing his daughters. His wealth is all he has, so when he loses that he no longer has any way of even trying to be one of the elites. Ironically enough though, he gets more peace through the loss of his money than he ever had while he was at his wealthiest. This is because he learns that family is the most important thing and as long as he has just enough money to get by then his family can bring him more happiness than anything else. Silas is at his happiest when he no longer is struggling with trying to become something that he is not. Howells uses him to show the reader that sometimes one cannot win in the class struggle game and that every self-made man must find true happiness in the social position that he already possesses. The ultimate irony of this novel is the title, The Rise of Silas Lapham, because Silas tragically falls in the financial world and through this fall he rises as an individual, from the depths of selfishness and personal worth based on finance, to the heights of newfound personal worth once he can no longer to pretend being an upper crust Bostonian when he is a middle class family man from Vermont at heart.