Going back to his roots...

William Dean Howells uses his protagonist Silas Lapham to personify how greed develops simultaneously when an individual is successful in a capitalistic society. The importance though of The Rise of Silas Lapham is that ultimately, his morality does not fail him because he was raised in a good family who valued hard work.

Within the first few pages of the novel, Howell’s stresses the importance of Silas’s childhood on the farm in Vermont. Silas describes his parents in the interview with Bartley, “I don’t know how she got through it. She didn’t seem to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more than my father expected of her. He worked like a horse in doors and out – up at daylight, feeding the stock, and groaning round all day with his rheumatism, but not stopping” (6).  The novel is set up to have a cycle of morality. The Laphams are tempted into a life of riches unlike they’ve known before when their paint business takes off. Silas cuts ties with his partner, against the wishes of his moral wife, because he fears that he will drain money from the company. The importance of Persis as a moral compass is so important because she never forgets how to make the right decision.

Greed is also depicted in the extravagant, new house that the Laphams build in Back Bay, or New Land.  Even though Silas doesn’t even admits that a proper, or societal acceptable, home can only be built with a huge financial investment because he does not have the taste to design the home on his own. Every idea he had of what displayed wealth was rejected by the architect, which further proves how out of place the Laphams were in the upper class Bostonian society. These repetitive hints that the Laphams belonged back at the farm with good, hardworking, family centered people illuminates the moral downfall of Silas. His greed and desire to fit an alternate world blinded him to the destruction he was creating for those around him.

Luckily for Silas, and the reader who has invested in his character, Howells creates a circle story. After the destruction of the paint business, the burning of their new house, the tragedy of their younger daughter’s broken heart, Howells brings the family back to their “roots” (A lovely image that Prof. Harrington pointed out in class). Silas saves his family from financial ruin and he converses with Minister Sewell to right all his misdoings. The ending is a bit unrealistic, but for me, just what I wanted to see happen!