Reviews for Jennie Gerhardt

The average rating for Jennie Gerhardt based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-08-29 00:00:00 Taylor Locke Having now received an answer from Audible, I have been informed that the basis for the Blackstone audiobook is the University of Pennsylvania edition published in 1994. This edition, and thus the audiobook too, restores those portions removed from the author�s text with the book's first publication by Harper & Brothers in 1911. The audiobook is thus Dreiser's original text before Harper & Brothers' modifications. Having now read three of Theodore Dreiser's novels, I am struck by the similarity of the books� messages as well as their prose style. Dreiser belongs to the school of American naturalists. They are realists to the core. They look at society with a critical eye. Dreiser writes of the harsh reality of life at the turn of the 19th century. Often, authors of this school are criticized for their emphasis of the darker aspects of life. I would counter this view with the observation that Dreiser�s novels portray protagonists who succeed, despite social restrictions, despite the stumbling blocks put in their paths and despite their so-called lack of moral strength. It is true that events are not drawn in an idealistic fashion. I see real life and people willing to fight against poor odds. One must ask, �Morals according to whom?� The incongruence between true moral strength and the morals dictated by society is the hallmark of Dreiser�s work. Dreiser�s prose style is clear, crisp, exact, spare. These are the adjectives that come to mind. The writing is without melodrama or theatrics. The telling is plot-oriented and with little dialog. Readers watch what happens and find themselves caught up in the moral dilemma lying at the core of the novel. The absence of hysteria is not only refreshing, but also strengthens readers� focus on the central issue. Histrionics, sobs and moans and soppy revelations would only distract. For me, the spare simplicity of the lines gives strength and puts emphasis on what is being said. This novel critiques the institution of marriage, organized religion, social restrictions, wealth and the means by which money is often attained. The essence of love, what love gives and what it demands is a central theme too. The story focuses on Jennie Reinhardt, her five siblings and her mother and father. It opens in 1880, Columbus Ohio. Jennie is eighteen. Life is a struggle against poverty. The story follows her entire life and her moves within the Midwest. What will one do to survive and what is required to succeed are the questions asked. What is necessary to retain one�s integrity and is it possible to remain morally upright? The audiobook is very well narrated by Lloyd James. The narrator never gets between the listener and the story. One listens to the author�s words. The focus is not on the one reading the story. This I very much like. ********************* Here follow my ratings of the books I have read by Dreiser: Jennie Gerhardt 4 stars Sister Carrie 4 stars An American Tragedy 2 stars

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-07 00:00:00 Jeanette Lee My loins were girded. I've read Sister Carrie and books by Frank Norris and William Dean Howells, books and authors of the Realism/Naturalism schools. In other words, authors who show you that life is crap, people are crap and all you can expect is crap. Not that the books are crap - they can be very good. So in this uncharitable (but realistic!) frame of mind I was very surprised by the curve ball Dreiser throws in "Jennie Gerhardt". There is not one ogre in the book nor is it a tale of a spiraling down into degradation (Sister Carrie, Vandover and the Brute). In reality it is a love story where capitalism takes the role of the Montagues and Capulets keeping the star-cross'd lovers apart. Dreiser is the opposite of Henry James. If ever they were in the same room together I imagine a conversation where James is constantly demurring, obliquely not-saying what he's trying to say while Dreiser is constantly interrupting "What? What? Spit it out man!" Dreiser is continually burrowing in to the characters and situations, analyzing and describing to give us complete picture of the "way things are". Jamesian innuendo it is not. The one place where he couldn't be explicit is due to the sexual mores of literature at the time - i.e. he couldn't explicitly say that Jennie and her two sugar-daddies are doing it - he had to drop the hint very strongly. He had to make sure we got the point because the novel would be meaningless without it. In a crude Marxian analysis, Jennie's incredible hotness was her rare material and her labor (so to speak) - however Men had the means of production. Jennie's class and status as mistress made her an outcast, regardless of her beauty. The character of Lester Kane, Jennie's love, is a latter-day Hamlet. He knows what the right thing to do is (marry Jennie), but he cannot do it because that would mean a loss of *something*. At first the loss was his independence, then it would be because he doesn't "love" her (but he did, he just didn't know it - a situation much mined by later Romance novelists I hear), and finally he would lose his inheritance if he stayed with Jennie. Here is where the class struggle struggles into the novel - Dreiser explicitly mentions a number of times in the text that these two were just victims of faceless systems and circumstances, that love ain't got nothin' to do with it. In some ways the purest joys in reading the novel is in the in depth way Dreiser shows us how society was in those days, from the poorest immigrant to the richest capitalist. Every class had their social anxieties and protocols and to violate them was to be an outcast. In particular interest to me was the depiction of the Gerhardt family in their German Lutheran society - where the insular Lutheran flock is ruled by the minister. Luther may have got rid of the bishops and the pope - but he didn't get rid of male authority, not by a long shot!