GARY STEPHENS
81
admit
CO
all the awkward and difficult moments that occur in real life in
order that his vision will be valid and persuasive, Howells makes us see
much about Silas Lapham that we might not want
to .
Thus, while the Reverend Sewall is holding forth with an account of
Howells's critical notions, Lapham is, unawares, getting drunk. First he
behaves badly, then embarrassingly, then terribly . And if he also behaves
honorably at other times , and if we come
to
have a rich sense of Lapham'S
character, these moments and qualities still seem fastened cogether for ends
beyond the realistic portrayal of Silas Lapham. When all is said and done,
the author is coo far away from this character; he has turned him into an
object in a moral allegory. And in the end , Lapham, who begins the book a
millionaire and "rises" because he remains moral in the face of temptations
associated with the loss of his wealth , has little idea of what happened
to
him , what the point of it all was . When Sewall , who drops by at the
conclusion
to
see how Lapham is doing in his new poverty, asks Lapham
"Do you have any regrets?"Lapham replies,
"About what I done? Well , it don't always seem as if! done it ... Seems
sometimes as if it was a hole opened for me, and
I
crept out of it. ..
1
don't know as
1
should always say it paid ; but if! done it, and the thing
was
to
do over again, right in the same way,
I
guess
1
should have to do
it ."
Thus, with his simplicity, his good will, it seems as if he has been
used.Although Howells did not intend for it to seem this way, Sewall very
simply' condescends to Lapham in this final scene. For instead of visiting
Lapham out of love or care, "Sewall was intensely interested in the
moral
spectacle
which Lapham presented under his changed conditions ." (my
emphasis)
The problem with Howells's realism is that although he was intelli–
gent in his consideration of the problems of society as they can
to
his
attention and the problems of literature as they came across his desk, he had
a preordained notion that chilled life in his art . At the end of his novel , his
exemplary character, Silas Lapham, is in little better shape than Huck . He
is tired, shriven of pride and position, leveled by fate and the forces of new
money . Yet Howells expects the reader
to
focus upon the fact that Lapham
retained an ideal of integrity. This is difficult, even ludicrous - not because
Howells himself remained well-co-do, culturally influential , and safely
established in the neighborhoods from which Lapham was expelled . We
cannot so confuse life and art as
to
ask Howells co live by the model he
