The Rise of Silas Lapham

At the beginning of The Rise of Silas Lapham, the protagonist is horrified to learn that his family home is not located in one of the more fashionable parts of Boston. Talking the matter over with his wife, Silas reveals that he has a plot of land in one of the supposedly fashionable neighborhoods and proposes that he build a lavish new home for the family, right in the heart of elite society. Persis is not convinced this move is a good one, but Silas continues anyway. The house becomes a symbol of Silas’s hubris, of his desire to secure social mobility for his family, regardless of what they actually want.

Silas spends a vast sum of money on the house, led along by an architect who frequently rubbishes Silas’s own preferences for something more fashionable. Silas’s choices are notably out of line with the expectations of the neighborhood and the taste of refined men such as Seymour, the architect. The entire process of building the house is a process of revealing who Silas prefers; he ignores his family when they say that he should not build the house, but he listens to Seymour’s suggestions about how to spend even more money. Silas’s desire to enter into high society is shown through the construction of the house and through whose opinions he treats as credible.

The physical location of the house is a symbol of the distinction between the elite and the non-elite. Since Silas is from a relatively poor background, he never considered the possibility that he might be living in a less-than-fashionable neighborhood. For the members of the elite, such as the Corey family, this is patently obvious. For such people, a geographic barrier separates their social circle from the undesirable lower classes. This demarcation of real estate as an illustration of social class reaffirms the sense that the social etiquette and knowledge is privy only to those that it serves. For most people, the distinction of which neighborhoods should be considered fashionable is irrelevant. For those who can afford to live in the best parts of town, this knowledge is an essential part of preserving class identity. By distinguishing between fashionable and non-fashionable neighborhoods, the elite creates a physical symbol of their separation from the rest of society. They remove themselves and create rules that govern their isolation, only allowing entry to those who can prove their worth in a social or material sense. Silas is permitted to live in the wealthy neighborhood, but he is not truly considered part of the elite, as he does not express the right social etiquette. This problem is never truly explored in the novel, as Silas burns the house down before the other inhabitants of the wealthy neighborhood are made to reckon with his presence.

Silas burns his house down during his fall from grace. While pondering his collapsing business empire, he enters the unfinished house and sets a fire in the fireplace. During this time, a passing police officer enters and tries to arrest Silas. To the officer, he seems alien to the wealthy neighborhood. Silas assures the man that he is actually the owner of the home and then proceeds to smoke a cigar in his unfinished property. This is the closest Silas ever comes to actually living in the home. The fire lingers, burning the house down while Silas is away. Because Silas has allowed the insurance policy to lapse, he retrieves nothing from the destruction of the house and almost ruins the family in the process. The burning down of the house symbolizes the extent to which Silas’s hubris has almost ruined his family. He burns down the house as he burns down the fortune, through arrogance and inattentiveness. Silas is the orchestrator of his own downfall, just as he is the arsonist who burns down his own home.