Middle european scientific bulletin issn 2694-9970

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MIDDLE EUROPEAN SCIENTIFIC BULLETIN 
ISSN 2694-9970 
211 
Middle European Scientific Bulletin, VOLUME 10 March 2021 
 
 
Description of Historical Background and Socio-Economic Life in Theodore 
dreiser’s “The Financier” 
 
Bakayeva Muhabbat Kayumovna
Bukhara State University, Faculty of Foreign Languages 
Professor of English Literature, Doctor of Philology). Uzbekistan 
Shamamedova Zinnat Xayrulloyevna
Bukhara State University, Faculty of Foreign Languages 
Master of Literature (English) Level 1. Uzbekistan
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
Theodore Dreiser is a prominent 20th century American novelist who has elaborately 
articulated the significant characteristics of American nation’s historical economy, social life and 
morality in his “The Financier”. He believed that in the late 19th century these characteristics were 
closely connected with the uncontrolled expansionism of the period and that American society was 
therefore at vast hypocrisy in which most commercial and public officials professed both a private 
morality and a devotion to the public welfare while plotting illegal affairs behind it. To this effect, this 
study examines the predicament of the social and economic life of the American capitalism.
Key words: Expansionism, capitalism, proletariat, financier, American dream, to finance, 
corruption. 
 
I. Introduction 
Theodore Dreiser’s “The Financier” was one of many reactions against the increasing 
concentration of wealth and the growth of power in late nineteenth-century America. Dreiser has 
grasped and projected American urban society by "telling the truth" about it more explicitly than any 
other writer. He has done this in a memorable way by presenting the reactions of society to some of his 
sensitive, rebellious and unconventional fictional characters. Robert Penn Wal'ren underscores this point 
when he observes, "He (Dreiser) did indeed relate social causation to the individual set against the great 
machine of secularized society ".
1
In his “The Financier” Dreiser portrays Cowperwood as a superman 
who is a prototype of Charles T. Yerkes, the unscrupulous manipulator of the economy of the entire 
nation, denying opportunities to millions of men to eke out a satisfying livelihood in spite of America is 
vast resources. Speaking of the contemporary American scene Dreiser says: «The general condition of 
the industrial life of our great cities and towns is enough to destroy the nerves as well as the comfort of 
many sensitive persons, in sane instances driving them to suicide.. How persistent and increasing is the 
number of those who decide to die and get away from it all!»
2
. 
1
Robert Penn Warren, Homage to Theodore Dreiser, New York: Random House, 1971 , p. 130. 
2
Theodore Dreiser; Tragic America, New York Horace Liverright, ,1931, p.1. 

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