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hor before death and he also rewrote the last but one chapter. Different from the other posthumous work The Stoic, focus on this book is also for it is a novel came out twenty years after Dreiser’s masterpiece An American Tragedy (with novelettes and short stories still getting published within this period of time). Of The Bulwark, Dreiser depicted the experience of three generations in a Quaker family during the transitional period of America. When the whole country experienced the breaking of the traditional values and the mode of production, Dreiser attached the importance to the family which was the medium of traditional values.
The Bulwark arouses a lot of controversies, Sydney Richman commented as one of the more vexing problems in modern American literature, which “in content and tone sits squarely in the transcendental tradition”, and “strikingly opposed to the popular image of Dreiser” (299). However, it cannot be denied that, in The Bulwark, Dreiser left coherent statement of his final beliefs. (Charles C. Walcutt, 1956: 180-221) What has always touched Dreiser’s activities with grandeur was his unceasing concern for the significance of life. His concern for life was presented in his publications such as Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, and especially The Bulwark. Insofar, major studies of Dreiser and his works were concerned with The Bulwark, mainly touched upon Dreiser’s interest in and attitude toward Quakerism. (Robert H. Elias, 1949: 298). In Dreiser’s works, it indeed depicted the dramatic conflict between a cherished type of religion and the socio-economic pressures characteristic of the modern era in the United States, with an indication of both tragedy and adjustment. According to our view, The Bulwark not only shows the feature that distinguish Dreiser from others, namely the proficiency in depicting pursuits and destinies of youth people in the economic wave, but also demonstrates some novel stylistic characteristics of his own. The novel presents the fall of a traditional “family” worshiping moral norms and the ruin of the host of this “family”, the “bulwark” of traditional principles, in the shock of market economy. Tragedy like this is both meaningful in American style and applies to the rest of the world.
The story in this book happens in the first few decades at the turn of 19th century. American economy developed rapidly after the Civil War; its railway, mining industry, manufacturing, business and finance are in prosperity, which is really a wonder in history. Market economy dominates all; consumption economy overrides all. As kings and counts disappeared without trace and the throne of the God was crumbling, relentless accumulation of capital is in full swing. Money took the thrones once held by kings, counts and Gods. Speculation pervades the most furiously in the center of capitalist society - the property market, stock market as well as financial market. Snatching money is everything and tradition tumbled in the shock of market economy. The fall of “bulwark” and “family” not also means the disappearing of its vicious part, but traditional virtues of worshiping moral standards. Theodore Dreiser made another fabulous contribution to American literary circle and even to the world literary world for his perception of the certainty that “bulwark” and “family” like this will fall and then he portrayed this tragic fact realistically.
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