industrial manhood,” a fragility which inspired strenuous assertions of male
power.30 There was a burgeoning respect for men’s animal inheritance –
bolstered by Darwinian thinking – that intertwined with the rise of orga-
nized competitive sports at this time. It also combined with a new military
ideal which held that “human life is not a playground but a battlefield”
where the goal is to dominate.31 William James wrote in 1902 that “what
we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war.”
No surprise, then, that the term “sissy” came into wide use at this time to
describe “effeminacy, cowardice, and lack of aggression.” Sissies, wrote one
magazine commentator, cause “moral nausea.”32
The definition of male heroism shifted during this period, privileging per-
sonal power rather than contribution to the social welfare. Though muck-
rakers mounted class-motivated attacks on super-rich models of self-reliant
individuality during the Progressive era, the result did not redefine masculine ideals so much as introduce notions of social justice to the new competitive
models of achievement. The captain of industry simply gave way to an-
other dominator: the captain of reform.33 Even Jesus Christ was reconceived
as a he-man, as he became the center of a new “Muscular Christianity”
movement.34
For men at this time, says Rotundo, “competition became an obsession.”35
Accordingly, “Every primary union between the sexes” in An American
Tragedy is a “contest” (306) in which women are not only prizes but also contestants. The language of sexual competition – for both sexes – is of resistance and possession, of constraint and conquest, of victory and defeat.
Clyde struggles for his manhood in this battle of the sexes, but he doesn’t fight by the rules assigned to his position. His method of courtship (and of living
in general) fudges gender boundaries and thereby fails to meet conventional
expectations. He compromises his male aggression with vulnerability and
passiveness, and this leaves him at a disadvantage in the contest not only
for women, but also for money, power, and position. Given the standard
equation of weakness, submissiveness, and vulnerability with femininity, it
is especially telling that Clyde’s Efrit – the apparition in his mind’s eye that 206
Dreiser and crime
persuades him to commit murder – comes from his “weakest side” (483).
His failure as a criminal stems directly from his failure as a man.
Dreiser signals Clyde’s gender trouble, and much more, by his use of differ-
ent forms of the verb “to yield.” For Dreiser, “yielding” is at once sexual and social – and it happens at the most crucial moments in An American Tragedy.
To yield is to surrender a fight. It’s also to give yourself up to someone else, and to give away your individual initiative – and even your individual identity. In a national culture with a long history of coding individuality as a
predominantly masculine trait, yielding becomes a very dangerous thing for
a man to do.36
Dreiser first uses the word to describe Clyde’s first sexual experience. Filled with anxiety in the presence of an experienced prostitute, Clyde retreats
before his “deep and urgent curiosity and desire . . . caused him to yield” to
her (67). Dreiser depicts Clyde here in fairly obvious feminine terms – for it is of course the woman who is traditionally expected to “yield” in this context.
Even the “smart, tricky” and aggressive Hortense Briggs understands that
her ultimate play is for “herself to yield” (101) when she engages in sexual
gamesmanship with Clyde.
As Clyde gains confidence and experience, he learns some sexual signals –
and he consequently finds himself able to assume his expected male role. His
first dalliance in Lycurgus, with Rita Dickerman, ends when he feels “the
yielding of her warm body so close to him” (211) and he realizes that he has
to escape her if he is to remain unattached and socially unencumbered. It is
the same savvy that enables him to draw Roberta to him and overwhelm her
reservations about having sex with him. He catches her “warm and quite
yielding glance” and realizes that she is “hopelessly and helplessly drawn to
him” (272). Propelled by his new confidence, Clyde dominates Roberta, and
makes her yield to him (“she resisted . . . and suddenly he felt her relax”
[283]). He, not she, subsequently dictates the course of their relationship.
Only with Roberta is Clyde “hard” (435) because she is one of the few
people in his orbit who is weaker than he is.
Clyde’s frightened passivity with the prostitute thus tells us a lot about
him. Though he knows what is expected of him as a man, he conceals an
insecurity that allows him easily to be displaced from the man’s position.
Given his underlying fears, it’s not surprising that his passivity returns when he first takes up with Sondra. Much has been made by critics of the doublings
of Clyde and Gilbert and of Hortense and Sondra in An American Tragedy, but Clyde and Roberta are perhaps more fundamentally similar than any of
them.37 Both are “yielding” characters in a book where yielding is perhaps
the most important symbol. It’s also a fatal one. People who yield directly
and easily and openly in An American Tragedy wind up dying for it.
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l e o n a r d c as s u to
Dreiser’s last two uses of “yielding” in An American Tragedy make a direct connection to death. The first of these comes at Roberta’s drowning. Out
on the lake with her and still uncertain about his plan, Clyde vibrates with
the “static between a powerful compulsion to do and yet not to do.” When
Roberta reaches out to him, this gesture makes the difference, and he strikes
out at her, “yielding to a tide of submerged hate.” The blow, Dreiser makes
clear, is “accidentally and all but unconsciously administered” (514). Just as
Hurstwood only steals the money in Sister Carrie when the safe accidentally closes and leaves him holding the cash, Clyde only strikes Roberta when
she reaches for him first. His action is anything but decisive: he’s “yielding”
rather than acting. Trying to behave like a hardened criminal, Clyde instead
flounders, equivocates, and blunders. Even his decision to abandon Roberta
in the water – more an act of murder than his random blow – is moti-
vated not by crafty calculation but at least partly by self-preservation (you
“may bring about your own death” if you try to save her, whispers the
Efrit [514]). In contrast to his selfless and daring rescue work at the scene
of the car crash in Book One, his murder is an act of desperate and fearful
flight.
The final “yielding” comes right before Clyde’s execution. “Tortured” by
his need for support, he finds himself “yielding” to the “friendship and in-
fluence” and the “sweet voice” of the Reverend McMillan and undergoing a
deathbed religious conversion (826, 825). This final yielding completes a fas-
cinating pattern, as Dreiser’s careful diction ties religious feeling to courtship and sexual attraction – and also to murder.
First of all, Dreiser describes McMillan’s religious seduction as a sexual
conquest. McMillan is “arresting” and “attractive” with a romantic smile,
and Clyde – figured always as a receptive female – is “charmed” by him
(820, 823). Using these attributes, along with his “beautiful voice” (826),
McMillan effectively seduces Clyde in the same way Clyde seduced Roberta,
with Clyde giving in because he wants to keep seeing McMillan – which is
exactly why Roberta had “yielded” to him earlier. The moment of “triumph”
for McMillan comes when Clyde finishes his written statement of religious
belief. It turns into a kind of sexual climax, as McMillan gathers Clyde in a
hug and kisses him (on his hands) (850). McMillan has generally been viewed
by critics as a father figure to Clyde, but he’s actually more of a seductive
lover to him.
Second, Dreiser compares Clyde’s yielding to religion to his yielding to
murder. Not only do both events involve a “yielding” at the point of decision,
but both also result from “all but unconscious” impulses. In a long sentence
describing Clyde’s search for a “superhuman or supernatural personality or
power” to help him face death, the narrator says that Clyde is looking for
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Dreiser and crime
succor “in an indirect and involute and all but unconscious way” (826). Thus,
Dreiser uses two of the same distinctive phrases to describe both Clyde’s
conversion process and his murder of Roberta. Each is a “yielding” rather
than an action, and each draws on “all but unconscious” motivation.
In American sentimental fiction, you yield and you win. At the climax
of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, Stowe’s hero yields to a fatal beating and cries triumphantly, “I got the victory!”38 (The loser is the hard-boiled
Simon Legree, a slaveowner who treats people as disposable commodities.)
But yielding doesn’t lead to victory for Clyde or anyone else in An American Tragedy. It can’t anymore. Instead, yielding becomes the key to a complex overturning of sentimental authority in the novel. Clyde is driven to crime