The Trouble with Dreiser: Harper and the Editing of Jennie Gerhar ...

exactly how changes made to the original text affect certain thematic concerns. Brennan also notes the absence of editorial criticism, stating that “[s]urprisingly, the collection neither directly defends the Pennsylvania edition nor directly attacks the 1911 edition” (36). He adds that West's contention that the restored version represents the “dialectical novel” is a generalization that is “repeat[ed] by [a]t least five other contributors…[who] offer little or no textual evidence” (37).

To date, only two essays address specific changes made to Dreiser's original text and their effects. The first essay, and the one to which Brennan refers, is Susan Albertine's “Triangulating Desire in Jennie Gerhardt.” In this essay, Albertine examines how editorial cuts alter Dreiser's women characters and the relations between them. Albertine argues that in the original manuscript Dreiser “uses relations between women to confer power on a man” (65). In the Harper edition, “key phrases indicating Jennie's womanly power and her closeness to her mother are dropped from the narrative,” and these deletions obscure Dreiser's point entirely (66). In the latter half of the novel, she states, Dreiser develops a mutual “thoughtfulness” between Letty Pace and Jennie, and he “evidently intended that Letty's and Jennie's self-awareness and mutuality should not create antagonisms” (68). The second essay is West's “Historical Commentary,” published as a part of the Pennsylvania edition of Jennie Gerhardt. This essay examines the effect of more obvious editorial cuts and emendations on the text. Specifically, West points out, the editors cut all profanity and all references to sex, alcohol, and “organized religion.” These cuts, he says, were “an intentional effort by Harper to ‘socialize’ or ‘domesticate’ Dreiser's novel for public consumption” (442–444). According to West, the most glaring problem is in the revised characterization of Jennie, who loses her place as the central character. As a result, “Lester and his point of view come to dominate the novel” (446). West's commentary is rather sweeping, and he only cites a few specific cuts and emendations. However, his intent was not to definitively describe how all the editorial changes affected the novel but to give the reader an idea of how several large scale changes altered Dreiser's manuscript.