Jennie Gerhardt

Theodore Dreiser built his second novel around a poor German-American woman whose warmth keeps drawing her into lives that will not fully claim her. Jennie’s family lives close to hunger, and her kindness leads first to a senator who means to marry her but dies too soon, leaving her with a child, then to Lester Kane, heir to a carriage fortune whose family cannot accept her. Dreiser refuses to punish or moralize. He watches money, class, and respectability shape every choice while Jennie keeps giving more than she receives. Quieter and more tender than Sister Carrie, the book remains one of American naturalism’s most humane portraits of a woman living outside the rules society sets for her. Free to read in PDF and EPUB.