The Financier

The Financier is a novel by the American writer Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), first published in 1912. It is the first volume of the "Trilogy of Desire" (The Financier, The Titan, The Stoic), modeled on the real-life Chicago streetcar magnate Charles Yerkes. Set in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, as American capitalism transitioned into monopoly, the novel's protagonist, Frank Cowperwood, is the son of a Philadelphia bank clerk. From boyhood he displays a keen business mind and a strong acquisitive drive; as an adult, through daring and cunning, he rises swiftly amid relationships with powerful figures such as the wealthy merchant Butler and the city treasurer Stener, becoming a commanding presence in Philadelphia finance. Yet his embezzlement and speculative manipulation cannot last: a great fire in Chicago breaks his cash flow, his partners avoid him, and his affair with Butler's daughter Aileen sharpens the conflict, until exposure of his embezzlement brings bankruptcy and prison. After release, he still bides his time for a comeback. With meticulous, cold-eyed prose, Dreiser interweaves personal ambition, desire and capital operation, painting a social landscape of collusion between officials and businessmen and of power-for-money deals, revealing the predatory nature and moral predicaments of capital accumulation. The novel neither passes moral judgment on its protagonist nor idealizes him; its almost "documentary" approach and abundance of business and judicial detail make it an important literary text for understanding nineteenth-century American financial history and social psychology.