| Chapter 1: | Motivation: Why Dreiser Accepted the Changes and Why Harper Made Them |
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alone its possible literary significance. As a result, sales were dismal and Dreiser netted barely sixty-eight dollars in royalties (Lingeman, Dreiser 165–166). Although Dreiser had succeeded in producing one of the greatest works in literary realism that “this fair land has ever produced,” he saw himself as a failure (Mencken, Dreiser-Mencken I 64). He had hoped that the publication of Sister Carrie would introduce him into the literary community, and early reviews had suggested that despite the novel's suppression it would be recognized as a great work of art. Dreiser was learning, however, that it was not enough to write a great novel. To achieve success, he had to be sensitive to the desires of a public that had not yet reconciled itself to the realities of its existence. He had this public clearly in mind during the publication of Jennie. In a letter written in 1911, he states that “I sometimes think my desire is for expression that is entirely too frank for this time—hence that I must pay the price for being unpalatable” (Dreiser-Mencken I 65).
Although Dreiser remained committed to the essential realities portrayed in Carrie, its critical and commercial failure haunted Dreiser through to the publication of Jennie. Riggio explains that the experience “took on excessive symbolic meaning in the young novelist's mind” (American 4). Dreiser believed that the failure of the novel branded him a “literary pariah” and that his literary vision would forever remain unacceptable to the reading public (5). In order to be successful, he would either have to find new material to write about or change his material to make it palatable to the reading public.
With this concern in mind, Dreiser began work on Jennie Gerhardt, originally entitled The Transgressor, a novel that he hoped would make up for the financial and literary failure of Carrie and salvage his career: “I can…write a [book],” he wrote to Page, “important enough in its nature to make its own conditions and be approved of for itself alone…” (Letters I 61). His plan for Jennie, then, was much more ambitious than Carrie because now he had to prove to the literary community that he was capable of writing a novel both important and successful.
Dreiser's original plan was to finish the novel within nine months. He wrote quickly, and in just over four months had finished some forty