A compelling, exhaustive narrative of a young American woman of German origins, trapped between two realities that collide, but never intertwine. Jennie Gerhardt is the kind of story you might grow fond of reading to get acquainted with the era of a rapidly industrializing America, marked by a relatively poor workforce struggling to make ends meet and an ambitious, ascending class that viewed poverty as a sign of incapacity.

Published in 1911, Jennie Gerhardt is Theodore Dreiser’s second novel, after Sister Carrie (1899), whose depiction of a young woman’s unpunished immorality was initially met with reluctance. Having experienced the harsh realities of poverty and the yearning for wealth and success as a young man, the author embraced naturalism in his works, portraying the two dissolute realities of American society: the ostentatious rich and the miserable poor. He tackled topics considered unacceptable at the time, under the watchful eye of Victorian morality.

However controversial Dreiser’s themes were, his novels garnered attention, including  Jennie Gerhardt, the story of a woman who submits to wealthy and powerful men to support her poverty-stricken family. The novel’s plot was later adapted into a 1933 movie starring Sylvia Sidney.

The story begins with a description of Jennie and her mother searching for work at the clerk’s desk of a prominent hotel in Columbus, Ohio. The then eighteen-year-old Jennie, as described by the author, “was a product of the fancy, the feeling, the innate affection of the untutored but poetic mind.” It is here that Jennie first encounters a life of leisure and indulgence, as the narrative unfolds:

“Jennie fell to her task in silence, but the glamor of the great world was having its effect upon her senses. She could not help giving ear to the sounds, the brightness, the buzz of conversation and laughter surrounding her. (…) It touched the heart of the innocent working-girl with hope, for hers were the yearns, and poverty could not yet fill her young mind with cares. She rubbed diligently always, and sometimes forgot the troubled mother at her side, whose kindly eyes were becoming invested with crows’ feet, and whose lips half repeated the hundred cares of the day. She could only think that all of this was very fascinating, and wish that a portion of it might come to her.”

Jennie’s story is one of life’s qualms and misfortunes, of misfits and submission, essentially. The ideas we take away from this novel remain to this day relevant, unaltered by the passage of time.

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