Dreiser and Sexual Freedom

Abstract

When the novelist appeals to Nature as the norm, he is in effect trying to lift a heavy burden of guilt (“original sin”) from the shoulders of the descendants of Adam. Shaped by heredity, instinct, and the pressure of the social environment, man, as Theodore Dreiser portrays him, is no longer responsible for his actions and therefore the question of innocence or guilt, good or evil, does not arise. Moreover, the naturalistic writer of fiction aims ambitiously to report the whole truth of life, from the lowest reaches to the highest. He seeks to picture conditions as they actually exist and refrains as far as possible from passing moral judgment on human behavior. Though his object is not to shock, unless the truth itself proves shocking, his outspokenness on matters hitherto considered taboo often produces precisely that effect on the reading public. In his efforts to delineate people as they are, not as they ought to be, he directs attention to those biological passions which in many temperaments are the determinants of fate. He is aware that society has the power to punish those who gratify their sexual instinct in ways that are not legally permitted or morally approved – that is, if they are caught. Nevertheless, the negative injunction, “Thou shalt not,” is repeatedly violated, regardless of consequences.