57 pages • 1 hour read
William Dean HowellsThe Rise of Silas Lapham
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1885A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Ambition and Hubris
The Rise of Silas Lapham is a story about ambition and hubris. Silas Lapham rises from humble origins to become a very wealthy and significant man in Boston, driven by his determination to make a name for himself. His money is not enough, however, as he desires the social status that is afforded to the other Boston elites, many of whom cannot match him in terms of raw wealth. Silas covets social acceptance, though he suspects that he will never be truly accepted. His ambition, instead, is to achieve this status for his daughters and his descendants. He wishes to create a dynasty, forcing the traditionally wealthy families of Boston to reckon with the importance of the Lapham family name. He pursues this ambition through ruthless business practices (in which he betrays Rogers, his business partner), risky gambles (playing on the stock market, even though Persis has told him not to), conspicuous spending (moving the family to a fashionable neighborhood, even though they do not want to leave their home), and by marrying his daughter to a famous old family (regardless of which daughter). Each effort moves the Laphams closer to the center of Boston high society but moves Silas further away from his humble, moral roots. Silas’s hubris comes from his arrogant belief that he can manage these moral infractions to his benefit, achieving his ambitions without paying the required cost.
Silas does not succeed. His risky investments backfire, his business deal with Rogers turns sour, his daughter’s potential marriage becomes mired in interpersonal issues, and his lavish new home burns down.
The burning of the house most explicitly symbolizes the drama of Silas’s ambition and hubris. The fashionable neighborhood represented the elite status that Silas sought to achieve for the family, while the increasing costs were analogous to the rising moral demands placed on Silas by his unbound ambitions. He did not have insurance on the house, just as he had no protection from his own arrogance. Silas burns the house down, a symbolic demonstration of the true cost of his ambition. He burns down his house as he burns down his dreams, no longer able to walk the narrow tightrope between ambition and success. This downfall is partly driven by Silas’s own need for atonement. The more he ventures in his rise to power, the more he is made aware of his own failings. Persis reminds Silas of the way in which he betrayed Rogers, prompting him to go into business with Rogers once again as a way to atone for his earlier infraction. Similarly, he refuses to compromise his morals by selling the mills at an inflated cost, thereby insuring his own downfall and the collapse of Rogers’s deal. At this point, as his downfall seems imminent, Silas has reckoned with the reality of his hubris and he has tried to balance his atonement with his ambition, to devastating effect. Silas loses everything, but he is ultimately happier for the loss.
The theme of ambition and hubris is echoed in the subplot featuring Irene, Penelope, and Tom. Irene subconsciously elevates herself above her sister, considering herself more refined and more attractive. She views herself as the natural choice for Tom, so she is chastened when he reveals that he love Penelope. At this point, Irene mirrors her father’s hubris. She was already viewing herself as a Corey rather than a Lapham. She arrogantly ranked herself above her sister and reality hits her in a devastating fashion. Like Silas, she must atone for her hubris, so she sends herself into rural seclusion, denying herself the urban social morays that she coveted so much. Irene dreams of love as a form of ambition, and she is chastened for her hubris.
Social Etiquette and Class
The Laphams’ experiences of the social elite in Boston involve a fear of and adherence to an established set of rules and behaviors. These rules seem natural to the Corey family and alien to the Lapham family. Though the United States is distinguished from Europe by the society’s lack of a traditional aristocracy, wealthy families such as the Coreys have formed a de facto, informal aristocracy that is similarly governed by systems of tradition and social etiquette. The Lapham family may be wealthy, the Coreys note, but they lack the refinement and the manners that are expected of the “real” social elite. The Coreys look down on the humble roots of Persis and Silas, who in turn fret about their manners. Persis worries about the correct etiquette for responding to a dinner invitation while Silas drives himself into an anxious frenzy over whether he should wear gloves to a social event. The Lapham family is never made to feel comfortable in the Coreys’ company because social class dictates that they are not the same. Silas and Persis have internalized this difference. They accept that they will never be part of the elite, no matter how many books on etiquette they read, no matter how much wealth they have. The United States may have been free of their English rulers for nearly a century at the time of the novel, but the adherence to a fixed social class system suggests that American society looks toward the European colonial past as much as it does toward a newly independent and egalitarian future.
This class conflict is always explored in the contrast between Penelope and Irene. As the daughter of wealthy but lower-class people, Irene is perfectly placed to ascend into the social elite because she adheres to all the rules, having learned them throughout her life until they have become second nature. She knows what to say and when to say it, in marked contrast to her mother and father. She enjoys the rituals and formalities of this social etiquette system, imagining herself in the future as someone who perpetuates this social class system. She sees herself attending parties and dinners at Tom’s side, having become a part of a social elite that never considers her parents to be members. By contrast, Penelope is disinterested in the dinners and parties that fascinate her sister. While her sister can make small talk and adhere to the rules, Penelope is too witty and introspective. She cannot help but make sarcastic comments and jokes—often subtle critiques of social expectations—that differentiate her from the wealthy elite of Boston society. The irony of this contrast is that Penelope marries Tom while Irene is forced to leave Boston (at least temporarily) after she mistook Tom’s polite manners for an interest in her. Irene’s faux pas is a social sin, a massive failure that nearly ostracizes her permanently from the upper class while Penelope reluctantly enjoys the life that Irene once coveted.
The idea of class that emerges from The Rise of Silas Lapham is one that is distinguished from wealth. Silas may be richer than most of the characters in the novel, but his wealth lacks permanence. By contrast, Bromfield has never held a job, and he is worth a fraction of the Lapham family. Because Bromfield knows the rules and expectations of the elite, however, he is considered to be among the makeshift aristocracy of post–Civil War American society while Silas is considered—at most—a fortunate man who has temporarily escaped his supposed natural state of poverty. Silas does indeed lose everything, while the Corey family remains part of the elite. Rather than wealth, ancestry, which includes a tradition of style and personality, provides the only means of social mobility. One generation is not enough to ascend into the upper class, a move made possible only by breeding and refinement.
Familial Responsibility
Silas Lapham feels responsible for his family. While he is proud of the money he has made and the success he has achieved, his true ambition is to elevate his family to a higher social class. He feels a responsibility to his daughters, to give them opportunities that were previously denied to them. To achieve this, he is willing to disobey their direct requests. When he learns that the family lives in an unfashionable part of town, for example, he makes the decision to build a new house in a fashionable area at a massive expense, without consulting his family. When this house burns down, Silas is nearly ruined. His feeling of responsibility prompts him to risk everything in a misguided attempt to achieve something for his daughters that he could never achieve for himself. As such, the growth of Silas’s character comes when he is able to clarify this responsibility to his wife and daughters. His responsibility to them is one-sided, guided by what he wanted for them rather than what they wanted for themselves. Only when he accepts their opinions and perspectives is he able to achieve happiness for all the family. He reworks his sense of responsibility, putting aside his vaulting ambition in favor of something more practical, more honest, and more in line with what his family actually wants. Silas felt responsible to an idea of success that was never in harmony with his loved ones’ ideas. By reevaluating these ideas, he is able to achieve a more lasting and more profound success.
The Corey family’s feeling of responsibility centers around their class identity. They recognize themselves as belonging to the social elite, but Mr. and Mrs. Corey begin to fear that their son might marry someone from the Lapham family. They feel torn between a responsibility to their son’s happiness and a responsibility to their own class interests. This is a careful balancing act, in which they must limit their exposure to the Lapham family. They make fleeting overtures to their prospective relatives, inviting them to a dinner that will only be attended by carefully selected guests who will not impugn the Corey family’s reputation among the social elite. When she discusses her son’s potential marriage, Mrs. Corey is distressed then resigned. She feels responsible to Tom’s emotions, accepting that he must do what he wants to be happy, but also feels despondent that she will be required to mingle with the unfashionable, uncouth Laphams. They do not belong to her social class, she feels, so she is betraying her elevated status by allowing them into her world. Her husband Bromfield feels the same way, but he takes a more practical solution, accepting his responsibility to Tom over everything else. Fortunately for the Corey family, Tom’s marriage to Penelope is accompanied by an almost immediate move to Mexico. The Corey family is able to retain their social status and do what they must for Tom by feigning politeness to Penelope when she is in their presence. They act out their responsibilities to both their family member and their social class.
Silas also has a secondary familial responsibility. He served in the American Civil War, wherein a man named Jim Millon took a bullet for him. Jim died, and Silas feels responsible for the man’s family. He has made regular payments to Jim’s widow, and he has employed Jim’s daughter, Zerrilla. Silas keeps these responsibilities to himself. He does not broadcast his benevolence to the world, at least on this occasion. Persis has advised Silas that he no longer has any responsibilities, but he disagrees. He can never thank Jim for saving his life, so he seeks to pay this debt by caring for Jim’s family. Silas receives no reward for this. In fact, he is constantly harassed by Jim’s widow, and his employment of Zerrilla leads to many scurrilous rumors that threaten his reputation. Nevertheless, Silas does what he believes is his responsibility despite the social ramifications for his morals, indicating that communal responsibility takes precedence over social appearances.
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By William Dean Howells
