I am half way through this great Sinclair Lewis novel which I neglected to read in my younger years. Lewis- A Nobel Prize winner in Literature - makes all these very rich, upper class people -especially Dodsworth himself- profoundly human but THEIR capitalist system he makes completely abominable .Similar to Edith Wharton's " House of Mirth " . The novel says a lot about bourgeois marriage even today. And there are some subtle hints that even a very rich capitalist like Dodsworth ( in the novel he was a pioneer of the early 20th century automobile industry ) would wink at an American Lenin Bolshevik socialist -and his VANGUARD PARTY - blowing the whole rotten capitalist system sky high in a 1917 style upheaval.
The sensitive reader of " Dodsworth " will think that all the millionaire car maker ever needed was LOVE as the Beetle song lyrics tell us.
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I see the novel as both a criticism of bourgeois marriage and of the incurably irrational American capitalist system . At the time " Dodsworth " was written ( the Depression Era USA ) SOCIALISM was in the air. Today -just follow the news headlines - SOCIALISM as an idea is both in the air and on the air. But don't look to hard for the specter of SOCIALISM on the FAR LEFT of the Democratic Party . Their job is to keep the SOCIALIST voice crying in the wilderness.