The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
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| The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today | |
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| Author | Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 1873 |
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner satirizing greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. The term gilded age, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding a lily, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive and wasteful, characteristics of the age Twain and Warner wrote about in their novel. Another interpretation of the title, of course, is the contrast between an ideal "Golden Age," and a less worthy "Gilded Age," as gilding is only a thin layer of gold over baser metal, so the title now takes on a pejorative meaning as to the novel's time, events and people.
Although not one of Twain's more well-known works, it has appeared in more than 100 editions since its original publication in 1873. Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with illustrations by Thomas Nast. The book is remarkable for two reasons–-it is the only novel Twain wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life.
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[edit] History of the collaboration
Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and editor, was a neighbor and good friend of Mark Twain's in Hartford, Connecticut. According to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, their wives challenged Twain and Warner at dinner to write a better novel than what they were used to reading. Twain wrote the first eleven chapters, followed by twelve chapters written by Warner. Most of the remaining chapters were also written by only one of them, but the concluding chapters were attributed to joint authorship. The entire novel was completed between February and April of 1873.
Contemporary critics, while praising its humor and satire, did not consider the collaboration a success because the independent stories written by each author did not mesh well. A review published in 1874 compared the novel to a badly-mixed salad dressing, in which 'the ingredients are capital, the use of them faulty."
[edit] Plot summary
The novel mainly deals with the efforts of a poor Tennessee family to get rich by finding the right time to sell the 75,000 acres (300 km²) of unimproved land acquired by their patriarch, Silas “Si” Hawkins. After several adventures in Tennessee, the family fails to sell the land and Si Hawkins dies. The rest of the Hawkins story line focuses on the beautiful adopted daughter, Laura. In the early 1870s, she travels to Washington, D.C. to become a lobbyist. With a Senator's help, she enters Society and attempts to persuade Congressmen to require the federal government to purchase the land.
A parallel story written by Warner concerns two young upper-class men, Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly, who seek their fortunes in land a different way. They join a trip to survey land in Tennessee in order to acquire it for speculation. Philip is a good-natured but rather plodding fellow. He is in love with Ruth Bolton, a feminist and aspiring doctor. Henry is a natural lobbyist and salesman, charming but superficial.
The theme of the novel is that the hope of getting rich through land speculation pervades society: this includes the Hawkinses, Philip and Henry, and Ruth's educated, wealthy father (who cannot turn down his acquaintances' money-making schemes).
The Hawkins sections were written by Twain; these include several humorous sketches. Examples are the steamboat race that leads to a wreck (Chapter IV) and Laura’s toying with a clerk in a Washington bookstore (Chapter XXXVI). Notable is the comic presence throughout the book of the eternally optimistic and eternally broke Micawber-like character, Colonel Beriah Sellers. (The character was called Escol Sellers in the first edition and changed when George Escol Sellers of Philadelphia objected. A real Beriah Sellers also turned up causing Twain to use the name Mulberry Sellers when writing The American Claimant.)
The main action of the story takes place in Washington, D.C., and satirizes the greed and corruption of the governing class. Twain also satirizes the social pretensions of the newly rich. Laura's Washington visitors include "Mrs. Patrique Oreille (pronounced O-relay)," the wife of "a wealthy Frenchman from Cork." The book does not touch on other themes now associated with the "Gilded Age” period and its literature, such as industrialization, corporations, and urban political machines. This may be because this book was written at the very beginning of the period.
Laura fails to secure enough votes to pass a Congressional bill requiring federal purchase of the Hawkins land. She kills her married lover, and conveniently dies in jail. Washington Hawkins, the eldest son, who has drifted through life on his father’s early promise that he would be “one of the richest men in the world,” finally gives up the family's ownership of the still unimproved land when he cannot afford to pay the tax bill of $180. He appears to be ready to give up his passivity: "The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!" Philip, using his diligently acquired engineering skills, finds coal on land purchased by Ruth's father, seems to have won Ruth's heart, and seems headed for a prosperous and conventionally happy domestic life. Henry and Sellers, presumably, will continue to live gaily by their wits while others pay their bills.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Although 130 years have passed since its publication, the satirical observations of political and social life in Washington, D.C., remain contemporary.
Democracy: An American Novel, available at Project Gutenberg. by Henry Adams, deals with social life among the political class in Washington, D.C., during the 1870s in much greater detail.
The playwright and screenwriter David Mamet recently used The Gilded Age as a metaphor for Hollywood. On a recent NPR interview he drew comparisons between the Hawkins family's 40-year quest in Washington to get funding to build a dam in their hometown to the plight of the young filmmaker trying to sell a script in the unforgiving studio system.
[edit] External links
- Full text of the story
- The Gilded Age, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Works by Albert Bigelow Paine at Project Gutenberg
