FICTION CHRONICLE
not question the specific meaning of these particular affairs. Psycholog–
ically Cowperwood is, if not depraved, certainly close to the perverse;
and he is all the more startling and interesting because, as often happens,
the author has fallen into step with his hero and moves so quickly and
easily along with him that he forgets to censor his imagination. Dreiser
knows he is dealing with an extraordinary man whose passions may force
him outside conventional patterns. As it works out, Cowperwood seems
not above the laws of society but forced below them by his compulsive
attraction for taboo situations which even his intense romanticism cannot
fully explain.
Most of all this great man has a passion for little, blue-eyed girls,
preferably the daughters of business associates, and his boldness in
snatching these girls away from their fathers is astounding. Child-wo!'Ilen
are his primary compulsion, but at times he is obliged to take a sub–
stitute-the unawakened wives of his friends. The wives, because of their
tame husbands, are also children, a fact Cowperwood quickly recognizes
and alters with unconscionable energy.
In
The Financier
he falls in love with a woman older than he, the
phlegmatic wife of a phlegmatic friend. But as soon as he marries this
emotionally virginal woman he seems to realize that he does not want
symbolic childhood; he must have the real thing, the daughter of his
business associate, Mr. Butler. This relationship with Aileen Butler is very
close to an act of incest, because Cowperwood has been accepted in the
Butler home as an adult, a married man, absolutely taboo as a lover.
In a hair-raising and heart-breaking scene, Mr. Butler hires a detective
(the first of a long series of morbid and significant spyings in these books)
and discovers his beloved child and his friend in an assignation house.
His horror is boundless. Dreiser sympathizes with the father's anguish–
the Butlers are Catholic and the daughter can marry Cowperwood only
by leaving the church-but he does not seem to realize that he has
written a scene in which the horror runs much deeper. The father, as
docs another in Chicago, experiences a primitive revulsion for this un–
thinkable union, and both men feel the offender has proved himself
unfit for society. In all of these embarrassing events Cowperwood re–
mains calm, showing the neurotic fearlessness and aggression that amount
to exhibitionism.
Cowperwood divorces his wife and marries Aileen, but Aileen
cannot satisfy him. In
The Titan
countless other affairs follow, more
detectives are employed to trail the characters around, discover meeting
places, get the "dirt," supply keys to secret apartments. How is one to
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