Howells creates a world in The Rise of Silas Lapham that not only illustrates the change in his
characters’ lives, but also instructs the reader about Howells’s own philosophy
toward life and literature. Howells himself believed that literature and
lifestyle should reflect a realistic, non-fabricated world.
What do I mean by non-fabricated? Non-Romantic. He wanted a world that was authentic. He wanted a world that was not propelled by the emotional highs and lows placed on objects and occasions before they were ever experienced.
Romantics excelled at obscuring the world in favor of their emotions. They often would replace the actual world with a fabricated world that would propel them into ecstasy. Unfortunately for Silas, he and all of the company he pursued also believed that the world was made to find pleasure. At one time, he and his family worked not to please others and not to follow others’ ideas of happiness. After his success, Silas replaced his own values with an ideal that could never be reached. He participated in the race to pleasure through money and social status.
What do I mean by non-fabricated? Non-Romantic. He wanted a world that was authentic. He wanted a world that was not propelled by the emotional highs and lows placed on objects and occasions before they were ever experienced.
Romantics excelled at obscuring the world in favor of their emotions. They often would replace the actual world with a fabricated world that would propel them into ecstasy. Unfortunately for Silas, he and all of the company he pursued also believed that the world was made to find pleasure. At one time, he and his family worked not to please others and not to follow others’ ideas of happiness. After his success, Silas replaced his own values with an ideal that could never be reached. He participated in the race to pleasure through money and social status.
Persis, his wife, represents the problem of the higher
social order when they attempt to mix the pursuit of emotional highs with the
life of the lower class. Both are trying to decipher where in life they should
be, but Persis imposes her own mixed morality onto him. With Silas’s paint
success, she believes that they have the opportunity to return to the higher
social order in which she began. Doing so propels her family back to a Romantic
ideal that promotes emotion above their relationships with the world and with
one another. Silas shows how Persis influences him when he proceeds to purchase
horrific paintings and horrid houses and later allows everyone to influence his
choices.
The danger lies not in the objects themselves, but in the obscuring of the objects with emotional highs. Howells knew this and wanted to return to a world in which people were not provoking unnecessary emotions in places where they did not exist, or searching for emotions in places where they could not be found.
The danger lies not in the objects themselves, but in the obscuring of the objects with emotional highs. Howells knew this and wanted to return to a world in which people were not provoking unnecessary emotions in places where they did not exist, or searching for emotions in places where they could not be found.
Will
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