The Rise of Silas Lapham. Modern Library #277

I liked this book. I appreciated the author, William Dean Howells, for blurring the distinction between good characters and bad, between the good guys and the bad guys. It was this aspect of the novel that saved it from becoming a mere melodrama in my eyes. Although there were no dastardly parents threatening to disown the young man who chose a woman they saw as beneath his station, I was reminded of many a Jane Austen novel in which the disapproval ultimately acceded to the demands of good manners. Although separated by 100 years and a wide ocean, both novelists understood the social strictures that governed membership in "society," and both were able to provide the reader with an accurate--and entertaining--snapshot of its pitfalls and pettiness. As I eagerly read through this book, I felt at home with the Laphams, an admiration for the way they handled their moral dilemmas, and a softening of my distaste for the likes of the snobbish Coreys.