Reception of John Woolman's Journal in Theodore Dreiser's The Bulwark

The article discusses the reception of John Woolman's Journal (1774) in Theodore Dreiser's The Bulwark (1946). John Woolman was a prominent 18th-century Quaker minister and abolitionist, whose Journal, usually defined as a spiritual autobiography, is his most famous text. Since its first edition, The Journal has been highly acclaimed among American autobiography readers and critics. In 1939 it was reverently perused by Dreiser. Two decades earlier, in 1914-1920, the writer had produced drafts of his Quaker novel The Bulwark but had not completed this text, partly due to a certain ambivalence he felt toward the protagonist. The 1920s-1930s, meanwhile, were decades marked by Dreiser's arduous intellectual and spiritual search and extensive reading. Arguably, it was Dreiser's acquaintance with Woolman's Journal which played a transformative role in his decision to reshape The Bulwark. The novelist rejected the original satirical portrayal of the central character and expanded the timespan of the novel. The idea of Woolman's influence on The Bulwark has been maintained by several critics; however, it was mostly mentioned without much elaboration. G. Friedrich's article (1955) and D. Pizer's monograph (1976) have been the only studies to discuss the reception in more detail. This article corroborates Friedrich's and Pizer's findings and contributes to the associations established in prior scholarship. Besides, it endeavors to provide a classification of Woolman's reception indicators in The Bulwark. Comparative analysis of the two narratives reveals two aspects of Woolman's reception in The Bulwark. The first aspect is associated with The Journal introduced to the plot as a book that accompanies the characters throughout their lifetime and is perceived differently by them in different periods. The Bulwark contains four explicit references to The Journal. Whereas it is a “desk companion” for the protagonist, Solon Barnes, the younger generation tends to perceive The Journal as an irrelevant, outdated text. The novel's final chapters emphasize the significance of Woolman for the characters. The second aspect of reception appears to be manifested in the numerous associations between the figure of Solon Barnes and the Journal autobiographical hero, their relatedness being suggested by psychological similarities as well as the novel plotting. The article argues that The Bulwark contains at least nine allusions to The Journal. These allusions may be discovered (1) in the chapters narrating Woolman's and Barnes's early years, (2) in the depictions of their worldviews, (3) in the motif of “intuitive communication”, (4) in third-person self-reference used by the two characters in the final chapters. The article concludes that the “personal spiritual drama” of Solon Barnes is composed by Dreiser with a considerable number of direct and indirect allusions to Woolman's autobiography.

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