Abstract
In Howells's distinctive vision of the social world, there is something inimitable about upper- bourgeois culture—something that defies the aspirants' attempts to acquire or fake upper-class behaviors. In The Rise of Silas Lapham, he dramatizes for readers what none of his characters can articulate but all of them finally “feel,” namely the “fine yet impassable” differences between classes.
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© 2010 by The New England Quarterly
2010
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