Jennie Gerhardt; a novel , By Theodore Dreiser (1911) Original Version - Softcover

Dreiser, Theodore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1535329831 ISBN 13: 9781535329835

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

Jennie Gerhardt is a 1911 novel by Theodore Dreiser.Plot summary--Jennie Gerhardt is a destitute young woman. While working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets George Brander, a United State Senator, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her. Jennie, grateful for his benevolence, agrees to sleep with him. He dies before they marry, and Jennie is pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Vesta, and moves to Cleveland with her mother. There she finds work as a lady's maid in a prominent family. In this home, she meets Lester Kane, a prosperous manufacturer's son. Jennie falls in love with him, impressed by his strong will and generosity. She leaves her daughter in Cleveland and travels to New York with Kane. He does not know of her illegitimate daughter and wants to marry Jennie. But because of their difference in class, he anticipates his family's disapproval and decides to take her as his mistress. They live together successfully in the university neighborhood of Hyde Park, Chicago. After three years, Jennie tells him that Vesta is her daughter. Kane does not yield to his family's pressure to leave Jennie. But, after his father's death, he learns that his inheritance of a substantial part of the family business is conditioned on his leaving her. On hearing the will's terms, Jennie demands they separate for his sake.During their trip to Europe, Kane meets Letty Gerald Pace, an affluent widow. Bowing to pressure from Jennie and his family, he decides to marry. After providing financially for Jennie, he marries Letty, resuming his former social status. Jennie loses her daughter to typhoid fever and adopts two orphans. She continues to love Kane.He becomes seriously ill and tells Jennie he still loves her. She tends him until his death, and mourns secretly at his funeral. Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser ( August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency.Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). In 1930 he was nominated to the Nobel Prize in Literature....

About this title

From the Publisher:

James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State University. He is the author of many books, including American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900, an expansion of his 1983 Rosenbach Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and The Making of This Side of Paradise, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. His most recent books are William Styron: A Life (1998) and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005).

From the Back Cover:

Focusing on Jennie Gerhardt, a poor young girl in Columbus, Ohio, Theodore Dreiser's novel depicts her inadvertently defying a host of conventions-of class, gender, family, and religion. Over a quarter of a century she is repeatedly victimized by circumstance, temperament, and most particularly the fact of her sex. Yet the triumph of the book lies in her incorrigibly loving nature. Cast out by society as well as by her family, she none the less fosters a far deeper understanding of relationships than anyone else. It is no surprise that she was her author's favourite heroine.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1535329831
• ISBN 13: 9781535329835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 210