58 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
Strindberg; but actually his conception of heredity, far
from being scientifically rigorous, scarcely rises above the
level of folklore and family gossip. For instance, Frank
Cowperwood questions the potentialities of the Negro for
development under freedom: “He had observed that race
from his boyhood with considerable interest, and had been
struck with virtues and defects which seemed inherent and
which plainly, to him, conditioned their experiences.” (The
Financier, p. 85.) Jennie Gerhardt “was a product of the
fancy, the feeling, the innate affection of the untutored but
poetic mind of her mother combined with the gravity and
poise which were characteristic of her father” (Jennie Ger-
hardt, p. 1). Of the father, in turn, Dreiser reports:
[HJis honesty, like his religious convictions, was wholly
due to inheritance. He had never reasoned about it. Father
and grandfather before him were sturdy German artisans,
who had never cheated anybody out of a dollar, and this
honesty of intention came into his veins undiminished.
(ibid., p. 54)
Eugene Witla is significantly attracted to his future father-
in-law:
Eugene was drawn to old Jotham as a filing to a magnet.
His was just the type of mind that appealed to him, and
Angela gained by the radiated glory of her father. If he was
so wonderful she must be something above the average of
womanhood. Such a man could not help but produce ex-
ceptional children. (The “Genius,” p. 179)
The close physical resemblance of the first cousins, Clyde
and Gilbert Griffiths, controls the plot of An American
Tragedy by first making Clyde’s uncle “want to do a little
Sometlring for him” (p. 176) and later causing the mistaken
encounter with Sondra Finchley “which in so far as he and
the Griffiths were concerned was destined to bring about a
chain of events which none of them could possibly have fore-