Note 29 — Chapter V · Theodore Dreiser and the American Tragedy

This theory of conscience can prepare the reader for Dreiser’s views on crime and the criminal in “An American Tragedy.” It took bio-chemistry a long time to become a substitute for the Puritan doctrine of responsibility in the American novel. The first step in this direction after that of Hawthorne was taken by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the sixteenth chapter of “Elsie Venner.” There, good Dr. Holmes mobilized a college professor to demonstrate “the limitations of human responsibilities” from a scientific standpoint and present the criminal as a sick person not to be hanged or electrocuted, but preached to and cured, if possible, if not pensioned.