"You must zee it all the time": Making Words into Windows

in A Hazard of New Fortunes

Gwen ~ Macallister
University of South Carolina

In A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells address-

es social injustices more explicitly than in any other of his novels.
Written partly as a response to his sense of outrage at the 1887
execution of the Chicago Haymarket anarchists, Hazard seeks to
demonstrate the responsibility of human beings to ameliorate the
inequities of society. In the novel, Howells attempts to turn his
words into windows through which readers can come to see the
plight of the poor and in turn be moved to action. The role of
vision, of how to properly see the injustices being perpetrated, is
clearly central to the novel; critics have often recognized its signifi-
cance through their attention to Basil March's ambiguous shifts in
view toward the poor in New York. However, critics have not
explored how Hazard seeks to guide readers toward a complicit
sense of their interconnectedness with others by contrasting two
different gazes: a frequently voyeuristic distanced gaze of appropri-
ation and an attentive gaze of compassionate action. Ultimately,
Hazard's aim to promote an ethic of complicity rests on the effec-
tiveness of this presentation of vision.
As a realist, vision is central to Howells's work as a writer. As
he writes in "Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading," the job of the
realist writer is "to make the truest possible picture of life" for
those "who have lost the true use of their eyes" (221). To create
this picture, Howells carefully weaves the two different gazes one
may take toward injustice throughout the novel, from the opening
descriptions of the Marches' reactions to New York, to the final
line of the novel when Basil invokes the need to trust Margaret
Vance's look. While physical gazing plays a major part in this con-
trast, the significance of vision is not limited to the eyes; it also
applies to the characters' mental perception of others. Many of
the chief characters can be identified with one of these two gazes.
Those who gaze with compassion are Berthold Lindau, Margaret

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Vance, and Conrad Dryfoos. They all share socialistic principles,
though Margaret and Conrad are Christian Socialists and do not
hold the more violent anarchist sentiments of Lindau. On the
other hand, most of the characters associated with the magazine
Every Other Week can be grouped together as gazing with the
hopes of appropriating something for themselves. These characters
include Fulkerson, Dryfoos, and Kendricks. Finally, Basil March,
the protagonist of the novel, stands apart as the one character
where these gazes come together in an uneasy confluence, which
holds important implications for the success of Howells's moral
project in Hazard.
The gaze of appropriation first manifests itself in the Marches'
house-hunting trips throughout New York. As Isabel and Basil are
continually confronted with the poor sections of the city, they fail
to see the suffering; instead, they find it entertaining. They meet
the "familiar picturesque raggedness of Southern Europe with the
old kindly illusion that somehow it existed for their appreciation
and that it found adequate compensation for poverty in this"
(HNF 48). Their self-absorbed view prevents them from not only
truly grasping the squalor around them, but it actually helps them
to justify it. March looks not only for his own enjoyment, but
also to "get something quite attractive"-interesting colorful
sketches for Every Other Week, which is also Kendricks's intent
when he gazes voyeuristically at Mela Dryfoos, with the aim of
working all her "slang and brag" into a literary sketch (232).
Both Dryfoos and Fulkerson look with a gaze of appropriation,
since they have allowed capitalistic goals to overshadow other
humanistic concerns. Fulkerson looks at almost everything and
everybody with the intent of appropriating it for the promotion of
the magazine, Every Other Week. Thus, he "especially befriend[s]
the correspondents of the newspapers of other cities" because he
knows "those fellows could give him any amount of advertising
simply as literary gossip" (HNF 171). Fulkerson's worst gaze of
appropriation comes when he is willing to consider "the idea of
throwing March over" to keep from alienating Dryfoos, the maga-
zine owner, over a conflict with Lindau, the magazine's translator
(321). It is significant that when he does reconsider as a result of
his fiancee's influence, the decision is described visually: "he now
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began to see it in [a different]...light" (321). As Fulkerson is
potentially willing to cast aside March and Lindau for the sake of
the magazine, Dryfoos is also unconcerned with other people. He
often views them as pawns to be used for his ends. For instance,
he only agrees to be the financial backer for Every Other Week so
that he can set up his son Conrad as publisher, to try to train him
for "business" (79). He does not see, nor care, as his wife does,
that Conrad "g[a]ve up a good deal when he g[a]ve up bein' a
preacher" (200). Dryfoos' s disregard of people is also evident in
his Wall Street speculating, which is portrayed as an unjust appro-
priation of money from the true laborers who have worked to pro-
duce it. As Lindau explains, "where you find gabidal, millions of
money that a man hass cot togeder in fife, ten, twenty years, you
findt the smell of tears and ploodt!" (276). Dryfoos is clearly
blind to the "tears and ploodt" behind his millions.
Though these characters are not all explicitly guilty of failing to
truly see the poor, they all exhibit a fundamental failure to identify
with the objects of their gazes, which is central to Howells's ethic
of complicity. They generally see people as foreign "others" who
can be used to achieve certain ends, whether they be financial or
artistic. Their appropriating gazes are marked by distance, as they
remain detached spectators unable to sense a vital human connec-
tion with what they see. Howells, then, portrays the selfishness of
these characters to kindle distaste for these attitudes in readers and
to underscore the virtue of sympathetic gazing that attempts to
bridge the distance between people through compassionate identifi-
cation.
Berthold Lindau, March's German friend from youth, functions
as the most prominent compassionate gazer in the novel. Lindau
realizes his connection with the poor, but this identification is
predicated on seeing them. He knows that he is not any better or
really any different from the poor. Thus, he emphatically tells
March, "you must zee it all the dtime-zee it, hear it, smell it,
dtaste it" (HNF 165). These words form the core of Hazard, as
they express the necessity of vision-vision that compassionately
and completely identifies with the object of the gaze. Lindau's
vision dictates how he acts, as he moves to the Bowery to be with
the poor and even renounces his job and the money he earns as a
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 translator, since he does not want to take Dryfoos's money that he
regards as "boison" with the "ploodt" of the poor on it (315).
Though Lindau's compassionate gaze is in many ways admirable,
the political nature of it is ultimately portrayed as too radical and
dangerous, which is underscored by the fact that he gets killed off
when inciting the anger of the police in a strike riot. The political
action his gaze leads to cannot be allowed to survive, though his
noble identification with the plight of the poor is commendable.
The other models of compassionate vision in the novel are the
two Christian Socialist characters: Conrad Dryfoos and Margaret
Vance. Their brand of looking is more in line with Howells's sym-
pathies, as he was actively interested in the Christian Socialist
movement at the time of Hazard's composition due in large part to
his discovery of Tolstoy in 1885. The truth that Howells respond-
ed to in Tolstoy's work was one of social responsibility to one's
neighbor-the creed of Christian Socialism.
Thus, it is not surprising that Howells creates characters like
Conrad Dryfoos and Margaret Vance, whose Christian Socialist
compassion results in their active involvement in trying to alleviate
injustice. Though Conrad is coerced into working at the maga-
zine, he spends his spare time working in impoverished areas with
"some sort of 'Piscopalians" who "do a heap 0' good amongst the
poor folks" (HNF 200). Like Lindau, Conrad understands the
necessity of seeing the poor. He explains to his parents, "we ain't
got any idea how folks lives in them tenement houses, hundreds of
'em in one house" (200). Conrad attempts to convey his percep-
tion of the poor living conditions, so that his parents can form
their own mental pictures and hopefully be moved to see with
empathy. Similarly, Margaret Vance also feels the same desire to
alleviate the suffering. Though she is of the upper class, she does
not allow her own wealth to blind her to the economic inequities
of New York. We are tOld that she had "that look of patience
which those who have seen much of the real suffering of the
world-the daily portion of the poor-have for the nervous woes
of comfortable people" (374-375). Though Margaret is one of the
"comfortable people," she is able to transcend her own condition
and truly identify with the suffering because the sight of it has
moved her with compassion.
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Conrad and Margaret appear to function as the desired examples
of compassionate gazers for readers of Hazard to emulate. But
their ultimate effectiveness in the world is undermined by the fates
of each. Conrad attempts to help Lindau in the midst of the strike
riot and is shot to death in the fray by policemen. Though his
death is sacrificial, it does not prevent Lindau's own death a few
weeks later. Margaret Vance, on the other hand, retreats into a
convent, where she "can do all the good she likes," but this retreat
seems too removed from the grime of life. If both characters had
the necessary compassion and identification to truly see and help
the suffering, why does Howells marginalize them by the end of
the novel?
It seems that Howells himself cannot identify with these char-
acters and knew that readers would have difficulty also. Their
other worldliness makes them "too good" for the world, even as
they are powerful models of people who strive for justice. As a
realist, Howells knows that while people can learn to see with the
compassion that these characters demonstrate, they are more likely
going to be prone to their own selfishness.
Several comments Howells made in letters at this time reveal
his discomfort with this sacrificial nature. For instance, in a 1887
letter to his father, he wrote, "I don't exactly see how this [renun-
ciation of luxury] helps, except that it makes all poor alike and
saves one's self from remorse'" (quoted in Crowley 86). Sacrificing
all, like Margaret, who enters a convent, cannot truly help the situ-
ation of the poor-there are too many suffering people. Everyone
would have to sacrifice for wealth to be evenly distributed. While
Howells did concede that "'to work for others'" was good, he
questioned his own ability to do so, since he was "'fifty, awkward,
and fat'" (86). Obviously, Howells could still volunteer to help the
poor at age fifty, but his reluctance to do so demonstrates his self-
ish laziness and consequent distance from the active zeal of Conrad
.. and Margaret.
Knowing of Howells's own altruistic reservations makes the
characterization of Basil March understandable. As mentioned
above, March is the only character in the novel whose gaze consis-
tently fluctuates from one of selfish voyeuristic appropriation to
one of compassion. It seems likely that Howells characterizes him
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 this way expressly for the majority of his comfortable, middle-
class, March-like readers to identify with, who also may struggle
with how to gaze at injustice. While a number of critics have seen
a definite shift in March's ideological stance, I believe a careful
reading of the novel reveals that March always backs away from
any lasting gaze of complicity, often falling back into a distanced
gaze of appropriation.
Incidents can be found throughout Hazard highlighting
March's waffling gaze, but I will only focus on two, which I see as
particularly representative. The first occurs as March makes his
way through the poorer sections of the city toward Lindau's home.
While traveling, he relishes the "shapeless, graceless picturesque-
ness of the Bowery... that always amused him in that uproar to
the eye which the strident forms and colors made" (HNF 159).
Clearly, the sights of this neighborhood are a delight for him to
look at. However, he moves away from this distancing gaze to
have a moment of genuine insight: "the whole at times seemed to
him lawless... the violent struggle... penetrated with its dumb
appeal the consciousness of a man who had always been too self-
enrapt to perceive the chaos to which the individual selfishness
must always lead" (160). Yet, as soon as he has this revelation
about the relation of his own selfishness to the "struggle" of the
poor around him, the narrator is quick to explain that actually
nothing more than a "vague discomfort" is affecting March (160).
In fact, in a moment March is back to his voyeuristic gazing,
thinking about the "neglected opportunities of painters in that
locality" (160).
March's strongest avowal of compassion is also his last, which
suggests that maybe he really has achieved a gaze of identification.
However, the circumstances surrounding his assertion undercut
this assumption. After the deaths of Conrad and Lindau, March
does struggle to understand the world that led to these unnecessary
sacrifices. The statements he makes are quite bold and passionate:
But what I object to is this economic chance world in
which we live and which we men seem to have created.
It ought to be law... that if a man will work, he shall both
rest and eat But in our state of things no one is secure
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of this. ...I may have my work taken away from me at any
moment...; and so we go on, pushing and pulling, climb-
ing, cheating, stealing, and we come to the end, covered in
blood and dirt and sin andshame (HNF 380)
March finally realizes his brotherhood with those who daily are
"pushing and pulling" to stay out of the poorhouse, even acknowl-
t, edging his complicity in creating and contributing to the unjust
I
( economic conditions. Yet for all this compassion, March has not
!' done anything to help his "brother men," and worse yet, the text
makes clear that March only moves to this strong sense of com-
plicity because his own economic situation is threatened. Hence,
the personal references, which express his real fear that he may
end up jobless despite his hard work, if Dryfoos gives up the mag-
azine now that Conrad has died. In a further emphasis of this
point, Isabel asks him soon after this statement if he is "really
uneasy about [his] place?" (381). Though Basil dissimulates, claim-
ing that he is not uneasy, his previous impassioned speech reveals
the exact opposite. After making the speech, it seems he immedi-
ately becomes embarrassed, as he denies any genuine concern for
his own position and then proceeds to make light of the plight of
the poor he has just lamented. Recalling an earlier moving experi-
ence of seeing a man picking food out of the gutter, he flippantly
suggests he could also play "that little game and maintain [his]...
family in the affluence it's been accustomed to" (382). What had
once shaken his view of the world, albeit temporarily, has now
become a "great comfort," as he envisions himself in the position
of the poor man rioting off the money he makes from handouts.
How does March manage to shift his gaze so quickly from one
of understanding, to one of facetious appropriation, as he playfully
considers enacting his own street fraud to sustain his family?
1 Ultimately, March cannot sustain his gaze of compassion long
enough to truly be willing to take any action to affect this "chance
/' economic world." He realistically admits that in this give and take
world he would be only too ready to take any opportunity that
promised more money, as he hypothetically asks Isabel, "if anyone
offered me more salary than Every Other Week pays... what do
you think my duty to my suffering family would be?" (HNF 382).
March, as an established middle-class businessman, is too set in his
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 comfortable life to move toward a sustained altruistic perspective.
He may see the suffering, but only in flickering glimpses, which
makes it easier to push aside any discomfort.
Yet if Howells's purpose in writing the novel was to address the
wrongs that beset society, wouldn't it be more effective to have
March truly shift his perspective and make concerted efforts
toward alleviating the injustice? Why go to all the trouble of
focusing attention on March's fluctuating gaze, if in the end, he
does not achieve a lasting gaze of compassion? One explanation is
that Howells does portray clear examples of each type of gaze, so
readers can see the dangers of a gaze of appropriation and the ben-
efits of an active gaze of compassion. Therefore, it is not as
important for March to be firmly aligned with one gaze; it is actu-
ally more realistic and beneficial that he embodies both, since the
common person tends not to be almost wholly selfish like Dryfoos,
or wholly virtuous like Conrad and Margaret. The majority of
readers will probably see themselves in Basil March. In fact,
Howells may have kept March from completely "converting," so
readers' identification with his moral ambiguity could lead them to
question for the good their own gazes at the poor. They may
become uncomfortable with their own complacency towards injus-
tice and their part in contributing to it. The words of Hazard and
the picture of March, then, become windows that can reflect back
the images of the gazers, hopefully leading to change.
When Basil March invokes the need to "trust that look of
[Margaret Vance's]" in the final line of the novel, readers are
reminded that they must trust to a look as well, whether it be one
of compassion or one of distanced appropriation. The challenge
facing them was the challenge of Howells, who wrote in a letter,
"Words, words, words,! How to make them things-deeds"-
how to turn perception into compassionate action (quoted in
Crowley 87). Howells took the first step toward action in writing
A Hazard of New Fortunes and turning words into windows
through which readers could glimpse economic injustice and the
different ways to "see" or respond to it. The next step, to actually
gaze beyond the words to act with compassion, remained the "haz-
ard" beyond the page for Howells, and remains a "hazard" for
readers today.
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Notes
1 Some critics who focus on the issue of how to view injustice
in the novel are Emily Fourmy Cutrer, Charles Harmon, and
Thomas Galt Peyser. See cited articles.
2 I will use HNF as an abbreviation for A Hazard of New
Fortunes in parenthetical citations.
3Howells later renounced the Christian creeds associated with
this movement, saying, they "revolt me" (quoted in Cady 146).
4 For instance, Emily Fourmy Cutrer sees March's gaze as
definitely transformed: "He sees how the other half lives, and it
touches him" (270). Michael Spindler also sees a clear-cut shift:
"he does not shift his ideological stance until his own material
prospects and middleclass lifestyle are threatened by the collapse of
the journal" (80). Though Spindler does correctly point to an ide-
ological retreat at the end, he fails to see how March is always
retreating throughout the novel.
Works Cited
Cady, Edwin H. The Realist at War. Syracuse:SyracuseUniversity
Press, 1958.
Crowley,John W. "The UnsmilingAspects of Life:A Hazard of
New Fortunes." Biographiesof Books: The Compositional
Histories of Notable American Writings. Eds. James Barbour
and Tom Quirk. (Columbia: Universityof Missouri Press, 1996)
78-109.
Cutrer, Emily Fourmy. "A Pragmatic Mode of Seeing:James,
Howells, and the Politics of Vision." American Iconology: New
Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature. Ed.
David C. Miller. (New Haven: YaleUniversityPress, 1993)
259-275.
Harmon, Charles. "A Hazard of New Fortunes and the
Reproduction of Liberalism." Studies in American Fiction 25.2
(1997): 183-195.
Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes. New York:
Signet, 1965.
--. "Novel-Writingand Novel-Reading." Selected Literary
Criticism.By Howells. Bloomington,Indiana UniversityPress,
1991. 215-231.
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Peyser, Thomas Galt. "Those Other Selves: Consciousness in the
1890 Publications of Howells and the James Brothers."
American Literary Rea/ism 25.1 (1992): 20-37.
Spindler, Michael. "The Condition of the Poor in the Work of
Howells, Norris, and Dreiser." American Literature and Social
Change. By Spindler. London: Macmillan Press, 1983. 74-93.

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