The Rise of Silas Lapham

The Rise of Silas Lapham is an 1885 Realist novel by William Dean Howells. The novel tells the story of Silas Lapham, who rises from poverty but struggles to grasp the social etiquette of elite American society. Howells is credited with establishing Realism as a literary genre in America. Realist novels such as The Rise of Silas Lapham were a response to the time period’s Sentimental novels, which Howells opposed. The novel explores themes of Ambition and Hubris, Social Etiquette and Class, and Familial Responsibility.

This guide uses the 1986 Penguin Classics edition of the text.

Plot Summary

Silas is being interviewed about his newfound wealth by a local journalist named Bartley Hubbard. Bartley is writing an article about rich, powerful men in American society. Silas describes his family background and explains that he comes from a modest family. One day, a storm uncovered a paint mine on the family farm. At the time, Silas’s father was too poor to take advantage of the discovery. After spending several years trying to find his ambition in life, Silas began selling the paint. He met his wife, a schoolteacher named Persis, and together they became rich by selling the mineral paint, which can be used in many different ways. The interview ends and Silas gives Bartley a ride home. Since becoming rich, Silas has moved his family to Boston. Though they are very wealthy, they live in an unfashionable part of town. Silas and Persis have two daughters: the older, bookish Penelope, and the younger, more social Irene. To please his wife, Silas decides to begin building a new house on a plot of land in a more fashionable part of town.

Though Silas now has the money to afford life in Boston for himself and his two daughters, intelligent and fastidious Penelope and beautiful, frivolous young Irene, he does not feel that he fits in with the elite people of the city. He begins to build a home on Beacon Hill because, according to everyone in town, it is the place to build. Immediately, his naïveté is clear to his architect, who tries to convince him to spend all his new money on more fashionable additions to the home. On one trip to the Beacon Hill building site, Persis and Silas run into Silas’s former business partner, Mr. Rogers, who helped Silas start up his business and whom Silas promptly dropped. Mr. Rogers makes it clear that he thinks Silas’s house is being built with blood money and denounces the family. Persis harbors a similar grudge against her husband, though she does not know what to do about it.

At the building site, Silas, Penelope, and Irene meet Tom Corey, a wealthy young man who becomes interested immediately in both of the sisters. Tom, from a blue-blood Boston family, has never had to work. He met the family the previous summer, when Persis helped to nurse his mother, Mrs. Corey, through an unexpected illness. Tom has occasionally sent messages to Irene. After meeting Silas, he tells his father that he would like to go into the paint business. Similarly, Silas is intrigued by Tom’s potential. He believes that he can make a man of Tom.

Persis warns Silas that if he wants Tom to marry either of his daughters, they should not be in business together, but Silas ignores his wife’s warning.

As the house continues to be built, many things start to go wrong. Penelope and Irene both have feelings for Tom, and though it seems initially that Tom is interested in the more beautiful and younger Irene, he eventually confesses that he has feelings for Penelope, who is plain looking but intelligent, witty, and well-read. Penelope is deeply confused by this confession, particularly because she knows that her younger sister is in love with him. She worries about betraying her sister, though she has feelings for Tom as well.

Meanwhile, Silas is forced to shut down his paint factory after he invests in a series of schemes with old business partner Rogers. Silas invests in Rogers’s schemes partly because of his guilt at pushing him out of the paint business. One of the schemes involving some mills proves to be completely worthless. Silas invests in the properties and then is propositioned to sell them at a much higher price to a group of Englishmen who has never seen the land. Rogers encourages Silas to make money off the mills, but Silas’s morality ultimately comes through, and he refuses to trick the Englishmen in order to save himself. Because of this, Rogers tells Silas that he has ruined his entire life.

Another tragedy occurs when Silas accidentally burns down the nearly finished Beacon Hill home in which he has invested an incredible amount of money. Nearly out of money, Silas and his family are forced to return to their family home in Vermont, the current site of the paint mines. The novel ends in relative happiness, despite the tragedies of the family’s short success. Penelope and Tom marry, and they go to Mexico to sell Silas’s high-quality paint, which he managed to keep after the closing of the factory. Silas sells part of his business to a West Virginia company, so his family is now making a comfortable, though not extravagant wage, bolstered by Tom’s family wealth.