Susan Lenox: Her Rise And Fall

By David Graham Phillips

Book Overview

Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall is a novel written by David Graham Phillips. The book tells the story of Susan Lenox, a young woman who was born into poverty and suffers a traumatic childhood. She is forced to leave her hometown and move to New York City, where she becomes a waitress and catches the eye of a wealthy man named Rodney Aldrich. Despite their class differences, the two fall in love and start a passionate affair.However, their relationship is short-lived when Rodney's father finds out about Susan's past and forbids them from seeing each other. Susan is devastated and decides to leave New York and start a new life. She ends up in Chicago, where she meets and falls in love with a man named Karl. They get married and have a child, but their happiness is short-lived when Karl dies in a train accident.Susan is left alone to raise her child and struggles to make ends meet. She eventually meets Rodney again, who has since become a successful politician. They rekindle their love affair, but their happiness is once again short-lived when Rodney's political enemies discover their relationship and use it to destroy his career.The novel explores themes of social class, love, and redemption. It is a poignant and tragic story of a woman who rises from poverty to find love and success, only to have it all taken away from her.The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in that room all those years--was, indeed, actually the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1419150030
• ISBN13: 9781419150036
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing
• Length: 828 Pages
• Weight: 4.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 8.3" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

View the Victorians without the rose-colored glasses

I read this book at least five years ago, if not longer, and the impression is still with me. We meet Susan as a young lady in a small, closed minded town in the "Western" state of Ohio, just past the turn of the century. (the last century.) She believes a young man that he has fallen in love with her and will run away with her to marry. This was viewed as a terrible scandal by the petty members of the community, "forcing" her guardians to find a farmer for her to marry; a dreadful creature. This is the beginning of her fall, and she falls and falls for some number of years following. She ecapes to a city- was in New York? and makes her way as a well brought up young woman forced to do so in a man's world. Men were essential to women for their livlihood, and a woman without reputation and introduction were cast adrift with dreadful housing, horrible food, terrible job prospects, if they can even be called a job. The gap between rich and poor was tremendous even then, and literally pennies were all that were needed to improve the lot of the "working poor", just as is the case now. The lot of the workers was easily improved, and it was tragic to see how callous the manufacturers were to the needs of their laborors. Susan, luckily, "rises" but has a talent and ability to develop it that so few have. That she had the opportunity at all was mere chance.