her pregnancy when she catches Witla with another woman. But what she
had hoped would prove her “trump card” does not win her the hand; her
husband moves out of the house (567).
The “Genius” climaxes with Eugene’s confrontation with the awesome
power that Angela represents and that his own puny efforts cannot with-
stand. The grueling scene of her labor confirms the considerable influence
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she has not only on Witla but also on the trajectory of Dreiser’s novel. The
language of Jennie Gerhardt resurfaces here: “Those wonderful processes of the all-mother, which bind the coming life in a cradle of muscles and
ligaments” (712). In apotheosizing motherhood, Dreiser does not spare the
descriptive details: a harrowing account of the birth comprises a full chap-
ter. His detailing of gynecological instruments and procedures compares fa-
vorably with Frank Norris’s Vandover and the Brute (1914), which invests the same motifs with a voyeuristic, almost pornographic quality. As Witla
witnesses Angela in labor, he realizes that she “was no baby like himself,
whimpering over every little ill, but a representative of some great creative
force which gave her power at once to suffer greatly and to endure greatly”
(715). Like the husband in Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp,” Witla can
barely stand even watching the pain his wife must experience. More sig-
nificantly, Witla is transformed by what he witnesses: “never again [would
he] be the maundering sentimentalist and enthusiast, imagining perfection
in every beautiful woman that he saw” (724). Simply put, Witla adopts the
tough guy persona so familiar in naturalistic novels in direct response to
Angela’s death from childbirth complications. Moreover, in a very material
way, Angela will always remain with him. At the moment of her death,
Eugene wonders,
Who would take care of – of –
“Angela” came the name to his mind. Yes, he would call her “Angela.”
(724)
Thus at novel’s end, Eugene finally becomes the domesticated figure of his
wife’s fondest hopes. Angela attempts throughout the novel with limited
success to establish her agency, but even in her death, Dreiser illustrates that the so-called weaker sex is frequently stronger than her male counterpart.
In Dreiser’s most complex novel, An American Tragedy, which explores
the monumental implications of pregnancy, the powers of women are espe-
cially palpable. H. L. Mencken astutely observed that “[t]he conflict [in the
novel] naturally assumes the form of girls.”17 However, since women’s pow-
ers are refracted through the consciousness of the male protagonist, they have
been largely unacknowledged. It is important to distinguish between Clyde
Griffiths’s perspectives of women’s influence – sometimes accurate and some-
times not – and the female characters themselves. Clyde’s desire for sexual
pleasure and for social advancement, both tied up with women, propel him
to act foolishly and even criminally. The women he most desires are typically
those least sympathetic to readers, while those he most fears (his mother and
Roberta) are more appealing, partly because they form the only links he has
to a conscience. Clyde is variously influenced – practically determined – by
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women: on one hand, the power of sexually desirable women, on the other
hand, the power of women with consciences.
In one of his autobiographies, Dreiser remarks that woman’s body
“appears not only to control but compel desire in the male.”18 Control and
compulsion, of course, mean acting in a way that one cannot help, which
seems to be Clyde’s speciality. In contrast to his own compulsive behavior,
Clyde even as a boy marvels at the apparent “self-sufficiency” of girls (23).
The opposite sex appears to him to possess an agency that he lacks. Thus as
he anticipates sexual initiation with a Kansas City prostitute, the realization that he will be expected to act – to perform sexually – produces anxiety:
“And he would be expected – could he – would he?” (58). In fact, Clyde lets
the prostitute seduce him: “he allowed himself to be led up” the stairs (67).
At least until the moment of intercourse, he feels “afraid of her – himself –
everything, really” (67). Later with another female sexual aggressor, Clyde
fears “disappointment or failure on the part of both,” and also that “he had
not risen to her expectations” (212–213). Rising, of course, has sexual as
well as socioeconomic connotations.19
Dreiser brilliantly weaves together the sexual and the socioeconomic
in the early chapters about the dominatrix Hortense Briggs, who inflicts
“torture, . . . sweet . . . torture” on Clyde (83). He proves a handy pawn
in her all-consuming quest for a particular coat; because she “sens[es] her
mastery over him,” Hortense believes she can barter her charms for the nec-
essary money (136). Or, as the narrator more bluntly puts it, she “realiz[es]
her power over [Clyde] and how easy it was to bring him around” (129).
Hortense is not a likeable character, but she deftly exercises her power by
manipulating Clyde’s sexual desire, capitalizing on her sex appeal to get what
she wants.
Because women like Hortense with their “sex lure” (13) are so powerful,
successful men in An American Tragedy circumscribe their feminine con-
tact. Clyde glimpses this self-imposed ban while working at the Chicago
hotel where he encounters his wealthy uncle. The swank Union League al-
lows “no faintest trace of that sex element which had characterized most
of the phases of life . . . at the Green-Davidson [hotel in Kansas City] . . .
here was no sex – no trace of it. No women were admitted to this club”
(171). Clyde gleans that the “ultra successful” male is “unaware of, or at
least unaffected by, that element of passion, which, . . . had seemed to pro-
pel and disarrange so many things in those lesser worlds of which up to
now he had been identified” (171). According to the gender and power
dynamics of the novel, when men submit to “sex lure,” they lose self-
control, and in consequence remain in the “lesser world” that Clyde longs to
escape.
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Despite this clear lesson about social advancement, Clyde remains en-
slaved by his other desire, for sexual pleasure, and consequently will lose
his agency even as he tries hardest to assert it. The Roberta–Clyde–Sondra
triangle compels attention because it fuses these two different powers, social
and erotic. Along with Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, published the same year, An American Tragedy explores the constraining force of social class on individual freedom, while investing in women the combined power of
sexual appeal and social position. Roberta’s class position represents much
that Clyde is seeking to flee, while Sondra’s represents all that he hopes to
attain. In An American Tragedy, women form both channels and obstacles
to the social power that Clyde craves.
Sondra Finchley positively radiates social power. Eager to exert “the
destroying power of her charm” (332), she likes Clyde because she finds
him “beautiful and alluring,” but more important, because she finds him
“malleable” (380, 227). When they kiss, Sondra “sens[es] his submissive-
ness, that of the slave for the master” (380). The annoying baby talk through
which they express their love is revealing, especially as this infantile babbling first appears in the novel when Hortense addresses the coveted coat.20 Clyde
is to Sondra what the coat is to Hortense: an accessory to enhance her attrac-
tiveness. Clyde is in effect the “toy,” the “plaything” for Sondra that Carrie
refused to be for Drouet. As for Clyde’s interest in Sondra, it is anomalously
ethereal – “without lust, just the desire to constrain and fondle a perfect
object” (378).
Roberta Alden is a more substantial character than Sondra, her power over
Clyde more deeply rooted. And as Dreiser breaks from the “fallen woman”
plot in Sister Carrie, so in An American Tragedy does he depart from the conventional tale of rich seducer of poor working girl, unfolding instead
a plot of mutual desire. Roberta’s deliberate affirmation of her sexuality
makes her a modern and appealing character. Introduced as an attractive
country girl “afraid of men,” Roberta is, like Carrie in Chicago, repulsed
by the “ogling of the prettier girls by a certain type of factory man” in
Lycurgus (252, 255). But from the time she glimpses Clyde, Roberta likes
“the beauty of his face and hands – the blackness of his hair, the darkness
and melancholy and lure of his eyes. He was attractive . . . Beautiful . . . to her” (260). Roberta is soon torn by “her very urgent desires.” Approaching
Clyde at work, she knows, would “give him the opportunity he was seeking.
But, more terrifying, it was giving her the opportunity she was seeking.”
As the narrator sums up her state of mind, “In a weak, frightened, and yet
love-driven way, she was courting him” (276). In pursuing what she yearns