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

The Trouble with Dreiser: Harper and the Editing of Jennie Gerhardt continues the discussions begun by Albertine and West. My methodology for this study was to examine the thousands of changes made to Dreiser's original manuscript and their effect on character development, unity and coherence of plot, rhetorical style, and thematic concerns already established and those that became clear during the study.

I also examined biographical and autobiographical materials, as well as historical, cultural, and social data, to help establish authorial intent and the external conditions surrounding the novel's creation, editing, and publication. Once the cuts and emendations were placed within these contexts, clear patterns began to emerge. These patterns suggest the Harper editors deliberately approached Dreiser's original manuscript with the intention of softening its social and moral content to make it more agreeable to a conservative, genteel reading public. My study shows the precision of these changes and how they work seamlessly and subtly together to blunt Dreiser's criticism of the wealthy capitalist; society's understanding and treatment of the poor, the working class, and the immigrant; and traditional notions of motherhood, womanhood, relationships, and the American Dream. The patterns of changes affect every major character, their interaction with their environments, and their relationships with others. The overall result was a blunting of the cultural, moral, and social force of the novel as a whole. The discussions presented in this book will show the kind of damage editors can inflict upon a text when they approach it with a social, moral, and financial agenda.

These discussions will, at the same time, show that once Dreiser's original language is restored, the novel can stand alongside such great works as Sister Carrie, The Genius, and even An American Tragedy, and that it can add to and perhaps even define critical discussions on class, gender, morality, ethnicity, and the American ideal in Dreiser's fiction. This is because Jennie Gerhardt, when read in its restored condition, presents the reader with a wider picture of American life than any other Dreiser novel. Unlike the characters in An American Tragedy or