A summary of Theodore Dreiser’s "Gallery of Women"

The two-volume collection of psychological essays and portrait stories, "Gallery of Women," published in 1929, was a natural continuation of the writer’s autobiographical series, begun with "Twelve Men" in 1919. This book contains fifteen biographical narratives about the lives of women the author personally encountered. Within its pages, the writer captures living human characters, their social illusions, attempts to gain independence, love dramas, and life catastrophes.

Stories of vain passion and broken hopes

The story of the wayward Rayna reveals the disintegration of her marriage to hard-working logger Sven Bergstrom. Rayna craves the easy life, luxurious clothes, and Hollywood entertainment. Settling in Los Angeles near her actress sister, Rhoda, she neglects her family responsibilities and spends her husband’s savings. Sven struggled to build a successful timber company, but his wife’s whims and financial carelessness lead him into debt and his sudden disappearance. Left with nothing, Rayna works as an elevator operator and telephone operator, admitting her past mistakes, but soon leaves for Canada with yet another wealthy patron.

Olivia Brand grows up in a Salt Lake City professor’s family, but early on she rebels against rigid religious dogma. Married to a wealthy lumberman, she finds her bourgeois surroundings oppressive and becomes involved with socialists. A visit to a workers’ colony leads to a major family scandal. Olivia leaves for New York, where her husband pursues her with damaging rumors. Finally, she finds fulfillment in literature and finds happiness in her marriage to journalist Jethro. Olivia’s sudden death from illness devastates Jethro, who takes to drink and dies, repeating her name before dying.

Artist Ellen Adams Rynn overcomes poverty and marries broker Walter Rynn, but leaves the comforts of her family to pursue painting. In Paris, she comes under the influence of avant-garde movements and the master Keir McKale. Mastering form and color in the vein of Post-Impressionism and Cubism, Ellen creates vibrant decorative canvases, earning critical acclaim. When McKale leaves her for a Polish dancer, Ellen loses her inspiration. An attempt to rebuild her life in a new marriage to the Englishman Netherby fails: deprived of her spiritual mentor, she puts down her brushes and reaches a creative impasse.

The daughter of a Russian general and an Englishwoman, Lucia loses her father early in life and is raised in Switzerland. She is imbued with a sense of fatalism and a search for the ideal. While studying painting in Paris, she seeks romantic experiences, interacting with bohemians and the aging inventor Daniel Sarvasti. A meeting with Canadian Frank Stafford leads to a passionate romance and a trip to Montreal. However, the dry, puritanical conventions of her fiancé repel Lucia. She flees the altar and returns to Europe, consciously choosing independence and the pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

The search for spiritual support and social upheaval

Eccentric spinster Honoria Gifford, nicknamed "Giff," divines fortunes from tea leaves and coffee grounds. After surviving confinement in a mental hospital, where her relatives committed her to secure an inheritance, she escapes to the United States. Living in poverty, working as a waitress and organist, Giff maintains a radiant faith in God and a genuine kindness. Her prophecies come true with astonishing accuracy. Dreaming of saving money for a tea pavilion in Florida and adopting an orphan, she tragically dies in a squalid room from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty stove.

A native of Texas, Ernita was raised in a spirit of protest against social inequality. After marrying the theologian Leonard, she recruited him to the movement against war and capitalism. Her work at the San Francisco People’s Institute and her ideas for organizing workers led her to become fascinated with the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1922, Ernita and her husband traveled to Kuzbass, Siberia, to work in a colony of American specialists. There, she experienced a passionate affair with a young engineer, gained personal independence, separated from her husband, and remained to work in Soviet Russia, dedicating herself to serving the social ideal.

Albertina grew up poor in Jersey City and began working in a factory at fourteen. She soon married an ambitious interior decorator, Phil Millerton. Thanks to his talent and intricate business dealings, Millerton became a leading antiques dealer. He was completely absorbed in his business, leaving Albertina feeling lonely. She remained grateful to her husband but entered into a platonic relationship with a sculptor, with whom she had a daughter, Joan, concealing the truth from everyone. When Millerton was charged with customs fraud, Albertina supported him through difficult times.

After a difficult breakup with her first lover, beautiful nurse Regina K. decides to cynically exploit men. She works as the director of Dr. Walter LaGrange’s hospital and becomes his mistress. Addicted to morphine, Regina descends into depravity: stealing medications from the register, swapping morphine for strychnine in LaGrange’s kit, and engaging in dangerous scams with fake patients. Her professional career is ruined, and LaGrange’s attempts to save her fail. Having lost her beauty and her mind, Regina ends up in police custody and dies, completely broken by drug addiction.

Tragedies of fading and the fate of women

Rella, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a federal marshal from Arkansas, captures the heart of a married poet visiting relatives. Their secret rendezvous and passionate flirtations among fields and streams are interrupted by fear of the girl’s stern father and the jealousy of the poet’s wife. Rella is sent to boarding school and then married to an oil merchant. A serious illness quickly robs her of her former beauty and health, turning the young bud into a withered flower.

Young actress Ernestine de Jongh leaves the theater for silent films. She abandons poet Varn Kinsey for a wealthy producer promising her leading roles in Hollywood. Her debut brings her fame, but the producer quickly moves on to new favorites. With the onset of a crisis in the film industry and the emergence of younger competitors, Ernestine loses roles, wealth, and admirers. Unable to bear the collapse of her illusions and the fading of her beauty, she returns to New York and ends her life in Greenwich Village by poison gas.

Rona Murtha, the owner of a typing pool, falls head over heels in love with the carefree and impractical poet Winnie Vlasto. She supports him completely, finances the purchase of a farm and apple orchards in Oregon, and secures his divorce from his first wife. However, Winnie, having become wealthy and successful thanks to her business acumen, leaves Rona for a wealthy widow. Broken by the betrayal, Rona sells her property, attempts to enter a convent, but eventually returns to the humble work of stenographer.

The downtrodden daughter of the despotic and stingy farmer Fred Khoshavut, Ida spends her youth in backbreaking labor. After her father’s death, she inherits part of his fortune and marries the lazy vagabond Henry Weddle. Ida idolizes her husband, works the farm for two, and serves him breakfast in bed. Ida dies of exhaustion and uremia in childbirth, and Weddle spends her money, throwing a lavish funeral for his own self-affirmation.

The Boundaries of Loneliness and Soul Searching

Emanuela, a writer from Illinois, is blessed with classical beauty, but she upholds puritanical views on art, rejecting the theme of carnal passion. The poet Ernest Scheib falls in love with her, but his unrequited feelings drive him mad. Emanuela herself has spent her entire life avoiding physical intimacy due to deep-seated complexes and her family upbringing. Only on the threshold of adulthood, having realized the failure of her parents and the futility of their harsh prohibitions, does she realize she has missed out on real life and finds herself completely alone.

Red-haired beauty Esther Norn works in a laundry and aspires to perform on stage. She marries the impoverished and eccentric poet Leif Doane. Out of loyalty to her husband, Esther refuses the offer of a wealthy impresario who promised to make her a star. Suffering from severe lung and heart disease, she endures Leif’s infidelities and selfishness, and later finds spiritual solace in the publicist D.D. Before her death in a sanatorium, Esther paints portraits of Leif, keeping her love for him alive.

A feisty and sharp-tongued Irishwoman, Bridget Mullanphy, lives in the slums of Lower Manhattan, working as a janitor and cleaner. Her lazy husband and adult daughter, Cornelia, constantly add to her worries. Despite her fervent faith in God, Bridget constantly quarrels with her neighbors and turns a blind eye to her nieces’ petty thefts, yet she shows compassion for neighbors being evicted for debt. After yet another scandal, the Mullanphy family secretly moves, continuing their relentless struggle to survive.