Jennie Gerhardt - Softcover

Dreiser, Theodore

4.08

3,402 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140390758 ISBN 13: 9780140390759

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1989

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Jennie Gerhardt is a destitute young woman. While working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets George Brander, a United State Senator, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her. Jennie, grateful for his benevolence, agrees to sleep with him. He dies before they marry, and Jennie is pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Vesta, and moves to Cleveland with her mother. There she finds work as a lady's maid in a prominent family. In this home, she meets Lester Kane, a prosperous manufacturer's son. Jennie falls in love with him, impressed by his strong will and generosity. She leaves her daughter in Cleveland and travels to New York with Kane. He does not know of her illegitimate daughter and wants to marry Jennie. But because of their difference in class, he anticipates his family's disapproval and decides to take her as his mistress. ....

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From the Publisher:

James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State University. He is the author of many books, including American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900, an expansion of his 1983 Rosenbach Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and The Making of This Side of Paradise, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. His most recent books are William Styron: A Life (1998) and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005).

From the Back Cover:

Focusing on Jennie Gerhardt, a poor young girl in Columbus, Ohio, Theodore Dreiser's novel depicts her inadvertently defying a host of conventions-of class, gender, family, and religion. Over a quarter of a century she is repeatedly victimized by circumstance, temperament, and most particularly the fact of her sex. Yet the triumph of the book lies in her incorrigibly loving nature. Cast out by society as well as by her family, she none the less fosters a far deeper understanding of relationships than anyone else. It is no surprise that she was her author's favourite heroine.

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