The World of Chance

The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

Shelley Ray, displaced from the Midland *Echo* after its purchase by the Hanks Brothers, leaves Midland for New York with savings, a commission to write weekly letters for the *Echo*, and the manuscript of his novel. Flattered by a farewell dinner and confident that literature will bring him fame, he imagines himself free of obligations and prepared to risk failure before returning to journalism. Yet his confidence repeatedly gives way to thrift, homesickness, vanity, and dread of rejection. On the train into New York, Ray sees a young mother lose her pocket-book, containing all her money, when one of her babies throws it from the window into the water. He anonymously gives the women a dollar for their fares. Arriving in the city, he is exhilarated by its crowded ugliness and possibility, but his cheap hotel, an embarrassing mistake over his supper bill, and the solitude of his room quickly humble him. He begins his New York letter for the *Echo*, treating the city’s harsh contrasts as literary material. Ray finds more pleasure in a French restaurant and takes a room there, though its cost exceeds his intended budget. He carries his manuscript to Chapley & Co., Publishers, armed with an introduction from Midland. There he meets Mr. Kane, an elderly, witty author whose dry book, *Hard Sayings*, scarcely sells. Ray also meets Mr. Chapley and the younger partner, Percy Brandreth. Brandreth, cheerful over the birth of his son and eager to revive the firm’s publishing prominence, listens to Ray’s account of his tragic psychological romance, *A Modern Romeo*. The story concerns lovers from feuding families, a secret marriage, violence against the heroine’s cousin, hypnotism, apparent death, and a final double death. Though distracted by memories of amateur performances of *Romeo and Juliet*, Brandreth agrees to submit the manuscript to readers. As Ray waits, he visits publishers as a journalist, gathering trade gossip and free books for his letters. He learns that publishing is governed by uncertain commercial chance: respected books fail, inferior ones sometimes fail or succeed unpredictably, and no one can confidently identify a popular book. Meanwhile, he grows lonely, misses Midland society, and is too proud to accept an invitation to join Kane and several literary men at dinner. Kane later befriends Ray more directly and takes him to see David Hughes, an old reformer and former communitarian. Hughes, poor, sick, fervently hopeful, and hostile to artistic selfishness, believes society can be redeemed politically through collective control of economic life. Ray meets Hughes’s family: Denton, Hughes’s gloomy son-in-law; Jenny Denton; and Jenny’s sister Peace Hughes. He discovers that Jenny and Peace are the two women he aided on the train. Peace works at Chapley & Co. and had recognized him there. The sisters try to return his dollar; Ray refuses it, urging Peace to give it to someone in need. Drawn to Peace’s beauty, seriousness, intelligence, and innocence, Ray finds his loneliness relieved, though he is uneasy about the family’s unconventional background and reforming circle. Hughes’s household gathers political idealists, social reformers, and advocates of various schemes. Hughes argues against competition and private enterprise, condemns communities despite his own history in them, and calls for a great social family that will gradually supersede individual and corporate ownership. When asked for his view, Ray admits that he has never considered such issues. He privately dismisses the group as cranks and resents being pressed into their discussion, while Kane gently challenges Ray’s complacent faith that the world offers everyone a fair chance. Ray’s chief concern remains his novel. Brandreth tells him that the readers’ reports have arrived and that Peace is preparing them for him. Ray visits the Brandreths, enduring Brandreth’s raptures over his infant son and meeting Mrs. Brandreth and Mrs. Chapley, before hurrying to the Hughes apartment. There Hughes denounces Ray’s love story and hypnotic motive as frivolous amid poverty and social crisis, while Peace gives Ray the manuscript and reports. She admits that she has read the novel and liked parts of it, but refuses to offer a fuller judgment. The readers’ opinions devastate Ray. Each finds some vague merit, but together they condemn every aspect: crude provincial realism, youthful romanticism, improbable plot, clumsy use of hypnotism, imitation of Hawthorne, and imitation of Thackeray without equivalent material. Ray feels humiliated, though he remains convinced that the story contains a living truth drawn from his own experience. Kane finds him in despair, recalls having suffered similar rejections, and urges him not to regard the reports as final. He listens kindly as Ray summarizes and reads from the novel, then suggests that other publishers may yet consider it. Brandreth ultimately returns the manuscript. His kindness leads him to see some merit in the reports, but business prevents him from accepting the book against the readers’ judgment. He invites Ray to revise it according to their suggestions and submit it again. Ray has tried mentally to recast the story, but on receiving it back recognizes that it remains fixed in its original form and cannot be essentially altered.

By William Dean Howells · First published 1893 · Genre: Realist fiction, Social novel, Novel of manners · 45 chapters · 130,764 words

First lines

From the club where the farewell dinner was given him, Ray went to the / depot of the East & West Railroad with a friend of his own age, and they / walked up and down the platform talking of their lives and their loves, / as young men do, till they both at once found themselves suddenly very / drowsy. They each pretended not to be so; his friend made a show of not / meaning to leave him till the through express should come along at two / o'clock and pick up the sleeping-car waiting for it on the side track; / and Ray feigned that he had no desire to turn in, but would much rather / keep walking and talking.

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The World of Chance is listed on Textopian as a novel by William Dean Howells, dated 1893 CE.

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Genres

Tags

American realism · social satire · late nineteenth century · urban life · Boston society · marriage · divorce · gender roles · class differences · financial insecurity · chance and fate · moral ambiguity

Contents

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