The Rise of Silas Lapham
1885
Silas Lapham made his fortune in paint. Mineral paint, to be precise, dug from Vermont earth and refined into something valuable. Now he's moved his family to Boston, rented a house on Beacon Street, and believes that money has finally bought him entry into Brahmin society. It hasn't. The Coreys know exactly what he is: a vulgar man with fresh cash and no manners. What follows is William Dean Howells' merciless, often very funny dissection of American ambition and the lie of meritocracy. Silas wants respect more than anything, but respect, as he learns, is the one thing wealth cannot purchase. The novel's real power lies in its complicated sympathy for this struggling man while simultaneously exposing the cruelty of a social order that rewards old money and pretends merit matters. Howells, the father of American realism, refuses the sentimental happy ending; instead, he gives us something harder and more honest: a man who loses his fortune but keeps his integrity, and a society that remains exactly as closed as it always was.
