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Chapter 13
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Rise of Silas Lapham, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class
Realism vs. Melodrama
Love and Communication
Morality and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
Anna and Bromfield have lived on their street, Bellingham Place, for a long time—and the house has been in Anna’s family for many years. But now much of the street is taken up by boarding houses. When the Laphams arrive at the house for dinner, Tom comes to greet them. Persis can see that Tom is wondering where Penelope is. When Anna notices the Laphams, she is both glad and surprised to see that they seem to look respectable.
As this passage reveals, the irony of Persis being jealous of the Coreys’ more fashionable neighborhood is that in fact the Coreys themselves don’t live in the most desirable place anymore. Boarding houses (which are popping up on their street) are places where lodgers rent rooms and aren’t typically associated with luxury. Anna and Bromfield’s ornate house seems to be becoming a relic of the past.
Active
Themes
Persis gets embarrassed when she has to explain to Anna that Penelope didn’t come. When Anna replies with just “O,” Persis feels it burn into her soul. Later, Lapham worries about being polite at the table. He doesn’t usually drink wine and isn’t sure of the polite way to refuse. He also isn’t sure what’s polite to do with the food, so he ends up taking everything and eating everything.
Anna replies to Persis’s explanation about Penelope’s absence with just one word—in fact, just one letter—and Persis still feels a whole range of emotions from it. This once again shows how communication is subtle for people in Anna’s old money social class—and how Persis has increasingly begun to catch on to his.
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Themes
At dinner, the architect compliments the Corey house. On the subject of houses, Bromfield brings up the idea that someone should do something with all the homes in Boston that stay empty the whole summer while their owners are away. He wonders why the poor don’t just break into the houses. Anna says you couldn’t let anyone into the empty houses because they’d probably ruin the furniture. They all start talking about people they know that Lapham doesn’t recognize.
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Themes
Lapham overhears some words between Tom and Irene, which seem to suggest that they’re speaking of Penelope. Lapham remains annoyed that Penelope couldn’t come. One of the guests, Miss Kingsbury, brings up a popular novel that she really likes, but both Bromfield and Nanny feel that novels with so much sentimentality are awful. Another guest, the minister Sewell, suggests that novels should strive to be realistic, and this seems sensible to Lapham. But Bromfield asks what happens if real life isn’t interesting.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
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Sewell says he thinks love isn’t interesting to write about because love is mostly for young people, and they don’t yet have enough life experience to be interesting. He believes that love isn’t forever, as young people claim, because he’s known some very good people who got married a second time later in life. As dinner continues, Lapham is baffled by all the different courses, since he’s used to usually eating everything at once.
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Themes
After dinner, Bromfield offers Lapham a cigar with coffee. With a cigar, Lapham begins to feel a little more comfortable. James Bellingham, Tom’s uncle who fought in the Civil War, remembers a battle where both his and Lapham’s regiments were present. Many Union soldiers died in a charge at the battle, and Lapham talks about it in a detached way. Bromfield never fought in the Civil War, although supposedly he had some involvement in the Italian revolutions in 1848.
Active
Themes
The guests begin talking about how not many “club men” in their present day would want to go to war. Bromfield suggests perhaps it’s because there’s no good occasion. Lapham says seriously that he’d rather not see any more men killed in his time. Sewell notes that non-combatants are often the ones most reluctant to stop fighting.
Lapham takes out his cigar and begins to tell a war story about a man named Jim who sent all his money back to his wife and his daughter, Zerrilla, even though Jim’s wife squandered the money. Jim would cry sometimes outside of battle, but in battle, he was brave and ended up dying in the process of warning Lapham about a sharpshooter. The story makes a big impression at the dinner. After telling the story, Lapham takes some Madeira wine for the first time in a long time.
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Themes
Lapham notices that Irene looks beautiful with Tom, but she’s not talking—Lapham once again is annoyed that Penelope didn’t want to come, since she might have helped the situation. Lapham feels good about how his Civil War story went over and even begins to become a little boastful about other parts of his life, believing that he is holding the other guests’ interest and that the dinner is a “triumph.”
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Themes
Lapham gets word that Persis is ready to leave, but Lapham himself is in no hurry. He tells everyone he sees to drop by his office and makes them promise to come. Tom comes to Lapham and insists again that Persis is ready to leave. Persis herself didn’t realize that because her family was the main guest, she was keeping everyone else at the dinner late, so now she wants to go home. She also feels that the dinner went well for her and Irene.
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Themes
The Laphams go home, and Lapham falls asleep immediately. The next morning is gray, and Lapham has a headache. He is grumpy all day at the office. In the evening when he’s about to leave, his typist lingers because she has something important to say. Lapham calls her by her first name, which reveals that it’s Zerrilla. Tom also wants to speak with Lapham. Lapham asks Tom if he (Lapham) was drunk the previous night.
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