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Wall Street in the American Novel

Westbrook, Wayne W.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250431208

Abstract Details

1972, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, English.
Wall Street is construed to represent the American financial center, La Salle Street in Chicago, State Street in Boston and Third Street in Philadelphia as well as New York's lower Manhattan district. The novels and stories considered are those in which the financial center serves a primary function, either in influencing plot, character or in providing the background and atmosphere for the main action. Both archetypal and textual analysis are applied in seeing the recurrent motifs in the novel of high finance, patterns and themes which are fully articulated and developed in the late nineteenth-century version, yet which are not found to bear an influence on later financial fiction. The reason for this is that the American literary artist has had a prejudicial view of high finance and speculation which is rooted in his cultural heritage of the Puritan opposition to playing or gaming as a way to wealth and success. The writer's attitude, therefore, is largely condemnatory, regarding an individual's involve­ ment with the financial marketplace as a form of personal corruption, profligacy and degeneracy. Further, the idea of the sin and evil of Wall Street has as its probable historical source the volatile course that American finance has traced since the post-Civil War industrial age, in the highly cyclical and repetitive pattern of boom and bust periods. The Christian pattern of the Fall of Man and the theme of salvation and damnation, and the archetypes of Faust, Adam, Satan and the Garden of Eden are the enduring characteristics of the American financial novel. The Adam Faust figure is the innocent and naive businessman who comes to the city from the country, is seduced by the Devil or clever financier into buying securities, and falls as a result of his involvement with the machinery of the marketplace. The themes of death, degeneracy and waste and the pattern of the struggle between Good and Evil are also dominant. The death and evil principle is profoundly at the heart of the American novelist's interpretation of aggression in the financial marketplace, money-making and success and yields a dark and foreboding tone to the novel of high finance.
Alma J. Payne (Advisor)
American Literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Westbrook, W. W. (1972). Wall Street in the American Novel [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250431208

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Westbrook, Wayne. Wall Street in the American Novel. 1972. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250431208.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Westbrook, Wayne. "Wall Street in the American Novel." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 1972. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250431208

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1555931250431208
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