David Ashford, Hostile Symbiosis: The American Invasion of the London Underground in Theodore Dreiser’s The Stoic. Symbiosis, 11.2 (October 2007) 85-99.

This essay was originally published in Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, Volume 11.2 (October 2007) pp. 85-99.

Please note: the e-version lacks two illustrations printed in the original and is therefore different in pagination.

Essay Topics and Keywords:

the London Underground, the GEC power plant at Lots Road, Theodore Dreiser’s The Stoic, American Anglophobia, America’s entry into WWII

An extract from this essay:

“Dreiser’s political views were to become increasingly dominated by the national-binary formulated at [the GEC power plant at] Lots Road , a process that culminated in a visceral Anglophobic outburst shortly after America’s entry into WWII. The final, long-delayed novel in the Cowperwood Trilogy, published posthumously as The Stoic in 1947, is thus an extraordinary palimpsest of Anglo-American hatred—the history of an American financier’s ruthless invasion of a transport-network at the heart of the British Empire—told by a pre-eminent American novelist who deeply resented the two countries’ political alliance in the First World War, and who wished to prevent a recurrence of this in the Second. This essay will explore the historical events upon which The Stoic is based, explain the circumstances that compelled Dreiser to resume work upon the long-delayed novel, and show how the crude national binary which animates the biographical and historical background suffers an enriching complication in the finished work; a work which should at last be recognised as one of the key texts in the symbiotic relationship between the British Empire and the United States.”

David Ashford

Affiliation: Selwyn College, University of Cambridge