Keepin' it Classy

The discussion held on the first day of class concerning America and the middle class did not make sense until now.  The aristocratic world of the Coreys is threatened by the rising nouveau riche of the Laphams and ambitious Americans who would inevitably come after them.  As a nation of middle class: America praises the ones who rise from the bottom, she revels in the story of the self-made man who must to overcome obstacles and social constructs.  Those like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, to name but a few, thrill America because they have access into a life the common folk only dream of achieving. The term “American dream” is not simply a phrase; it means something to those like Gates and Zuckerberg, as it once did to Mr. Jobs.  For them, the dream is hardware, software, and social media, all part of the new frontier; for Lapham, the dream is a gift from the land—but the results are the same. 

Perhaps one could rename the Laphams, the Zuckerbergs; and the Coreys, the Kennedys.  Years down the road, say some Kennedy boy was to fall for a Zuckerberg girl.  Then, their world becomes clearer to outsiders.  The Coreys, like the Kennedys, are a society all their own, contained in tradition and ancestry that enforces noblesse oblige.  Their formalities and etiquette require them to acknowledge the Laphams with a grace that springs from duty, regardless of their sentiments and feelings toward them as people.  Such is evident in the Coreys’ more than generous efforts to extend welcome to the Laphams, in spite of their self-made station in society.  Of course this goes well beyond and is hardly limited to the simple matter of marriage.

Howells’ personal voice seems very much present in several of characters, at least from what is understood of his opinions in the Harper’s articles “False and Truthful Fiction” and “Standards and Taste in Fiction”—most especially in Mr. Sewell:

“The novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been are altogether noxious” (197). 

Sentimentality, romance, and the “Slop, Silly Slop” kind of self-sacrifice are not welcome in Howells’ world of fiction, and frankly it is difficult to disagree with the man on this point.