Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall

This strong novel about the real life of women and turn-of-the-century social and economic conditions in the United States was the posthumous work of a highly successful muckraking journalist and “problem novelist.” As Elizabeth Janeway notes in her new Afterword to this edition, Susan Lenox,written when the first feminist wave in this country was beginning to make itself felt, gives us “a striking, indeed an unforgettable, view of the past [that] merges im­perceptibly with the present,” and does so, she adds, “with a clarity of vision and an objectivity about women’s real existence which is rare even now.”

It is a picaresque story of a heroine born a “love child” in a rural setting and raised in comfort and seeming affec­tion, graced with good looks, intelli­gence, and an innate nobility, who is thrown out on an uncaring society to sink or swim. Her fall before her rise is into prostitution. Her rise as a Broad­way star, by means of her will, pride and determination, and trust in herself, causes her to reject dependence on any man. Along with the documented op­pression of women, readers will find clear statements of feminist ideas rang­ing from the economic to the personal.

A permanently valuable study and a classic of social realism, Susan Lenox richly deserves a new reading today for its contribution to an understanding of the life of women in our society.

David Graham Phillips (1867–1911) was murdered by a lunatic who thought that his family had been defamed in one of Phillips’ novels.

Elizabeth Janeway resides in New York City. Among her recent books is Man’s World, Woman’s Place.