| The forces of socioeconomic determinism in the 19th century, intensified by expanding commercial factors, were felt most sharply at opposite poles of society---the urban wealthy and the agrarian poor. The effect of these forces on individuals is revealed in major fiction of Edith Wharton and Hamlin Garland, especially Wharton's The House of Mirth and Garland's Main-Travelled Roads and Other Main-Travelled Roads. The richly contrasting settings of the works reveal surprising similarities.; Although Garland and Wharton focus on either agrarian workers or members of the leisure class, similarities revealed in these works include aspects of plot, character, and theme. For example, individuals in both societies are often deprived of experiencing productivity, satisfying relationships, mature love, and culture in general. Women especially, with less power, are denied autonomy and fulfillment. Both authors, revealing a naturalistic bent, thus depict provincial societies that limit humanity and thus morality. Opportunity for social and psychological growth and self-actualization occurs not at the poles of poverty and wealth, but in the middle class, where instinct and reason, nature and civilization, blend.; The materialism of the era was manifested in the idealization of power of corporations, legislatures, speculators, landlords, and even patriarchal husbands. Doctrines, such as the policy of laissez faire, and laws, such as that supporting the right of eminent domain, endorsed business and state power. Poverty was commonly assumed to be the result of laziness. Garland's farmers are deprived of beneficial education, broader experience, and even leisure. Wharton's elite suffer finances to be ingrained in all aspects of life, with relationships, activities, and customs based on a logic of materialism. Thus both Garland and Wharton stress that the extremes of rich and poor were negatively affected by commercial expansion. Only where these societies meet and interact positively in the middle class is it possible to achieve a full humanity. |
