Class Conflict in William Dean Howells' The Rise of Silas Lapham

Abstract

William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham stands as a novel unfolding the socio-economic situation of the late nineteenth century in the American society. This work basically focuses on the pathetic condition of oppressed class people in the America. It reflects the tussle between the upper class and lower class people in their attempt to raise their socio-economic status. The Central Characters Silas Lapham and his family are working as labourers under capitalist mode of society. However they cannot be free from the claws of bourgeois that make their life deplorable. The whole situation of human degradation has been portrayed as an inevitable consequence of private accumulation of society between poor and rich. They present cruel behaviour with the workers in their form and factory or other such places. Silas Lapham moves one place to other place to get job for the hope of getting a respectable social economic status.