Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

By David Graham Phillips

Book Overview

This strong novel about the real life of women and turn-of-the-century social and economic conditions in the United States was the posthumous work of a highly successful muckraking journalist and "problem novelist." As Elizabeth Janeway notes in her new Afterword to this edition, Susan Lenox, written when the first feminist wave in this country was beginning to make itself felt, gives us "a striking, indeed an unforgettable, view of the past that] merges im­perceptibly with the present," and does so, she adds, "with a clarity of vision and an objectivity about women's real existence which is rare even now."

It is a picaresque story of a heroine born a "love child" in a rural setting and raised in comfort and seeming affec­tion, graced with good looks, intelli­gence, and an innate nobility, who is thrown out on an uncaring society to sink or swim. Her fall before her rise is into prostitution. Her rise as a Broad­way star, by means of her will, pride and determination, and trust in herself, causes her to reject dependence on any man. Along with the documented op­pression of women, readers will find clear statements of feminist ideas rang­ing from the economic to the personal.

A permanently valuable study and a classic of social realism, Susan Lenox richly deserves a new reading today for its contribution to an understanding of the life of women in our society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809307731
• ISBN13: 9780809307739
• Release Date: March 1977
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Length: 520 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 5.1" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

View the Victorians without the rose-colored glasses

I read this book at least five years ago, if not longer, and the impression is still with me. We meet Susan as a young lady in a small, closed minded town in the "Western" state of Ohio, just past the turn of the century. (the last century.) She believes a young man that he has fallen in love with her and will run away with her to marry. This was viewed as a terrible scandal by the petty members of the community, "forcing" her guardians to find a farmer for her to marry; a dreadful creature. This is the beginning of her fall, and she falls and falls for some number of years following. She ecapes to a city- was in New York? and makes her way as a well brought up young woman forced to do so in a man's world. Men were essential to women for their livlihood, and a woman without reputation and introduction were cast adrift with dreadful housing, horrible food, terrible job prospects, if they can even be called a job. The gap between rich and poor was tremendous even then, and literally pennies were all that were needed to improve the lot of the "working poor", just as is the case now. The lot of the workers was easily improved, and it was tragic to see how callous the manufacturers were to the needs of their laborors. Susan, luckily, "rises" but has a talent and ability to develop it that so few have. That she had the opportunity at all was mere chance.