The Town by Conrad Richter

First published: 1950

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional romance

Time of work: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: Ohio

Principal Characters:

• Sayward Wheeler, a pioneer matriarch
• Portius, her husband
• Resolve, ,
• Guerdon, ,
• Kinzie, ,
• Huldah, ,
• Sooth, ,
• Libby, ,
• Dezia, ,
• Mercy, and
• Chancey, her children
• Jake Tench, a steamboat operator
• Mrs. Jake Tench
• Rosa Tench, her child

The Story

Three times in her life Sayward Wheeler had felt that her life was over and done. Not that it frightened her any; she figured she could do as well in the next world as in this. Once was the day before her father told her the game was leaving Pennsylvania. The next week, Sayward and her family traipsed west. The second time was the night she married Portius. This time she was not sure the feeling was more than that she would never have any more babies. She reckoned ten was enough, though one lay in the burying ground.

Her youngest worried her the most. All the others had been hearty enough, but Chancey was so frail that folks thought it would have been easier for him to die when he was born. When he was a little fellow, his heart flopped so much when he walked that he spent most of his time sitting on a stool in his daddy’s office. He looked out of the window for hours, never opening his mouth. Chancey lived in two worlds, the earthy, boisterous one his family loved, and one in which he could float away and do wonderful things.

Sayward had fretted herself to raise him. To harden him, she always had guests sleep with him. She never knew how he shuddered lying next to most of them, but he liked the softness of the bride the time the bridesman got angry up in the loft with all of them and spent the night sitting in the kitchen.

Chancey was his father’s favorite because his mind ran as clear as water. Often he rode his father’s shoulders into town. He had an uncertain ride the day Portius took him to the hay scales. Portius had just returned from the state capitol where he had put through a bill calling for a new county for the township. With the making of the new county went four judgeships. Portius, because he was an agnostic, did not get an appointment as he had expected. It was given instead to a skinflint tax collector. Portius had come home, drunk and disheveled, minus his horse and saddle. Shortly afterward, the new judge came to deliver a load of hay which had to be weighed in town on the new scales. Portius, with Chancey on his shoulders, followed the wavering wagon tracks into town. With one eye on Portius’ unsteady gait, the new judge stayed on the wagon while it was weighed in. They clinched their bargain at the inn, the judge demanding cash which Portius produced. When the judge started to leave, Portius claimed that he had bought the judge’s person with the load of hay. Before he left the inn, the judge had given Portius the hay to avoid being hauled to court. Not many could get ahead of Portius; Sayward thought he had too much of the rascal in him himself.

Although he was not yet a judge, he was a popular lawyer, and he was the leader in the fight to have Americus named the county seat. Resolve had studied law with his father and also practiced at the courthouse. Sayward was pleased when he married a girl who was sensible, even if she did have a lot of money. Sayward felt at the time that things were going along too well and that the Lord would fetch her feet to the ground soon.

She was brought around feet first when Huldah disappeared. Sayward knew that black-eyed minx never fell in the river as some folks thought, but she was taken a little aback when she heard that Huldah had gone to a man’s house stark naked, claiming the gypsies had taken her clothing. Sayward went after her. On the way home, the ferryman, muttering a coarse remark Sayward only guessed at, made them wait for a second crossing. Sayward would not wait; she drove her horse into the river and forded it instead. Huldah listened respectfully after that.

Her set-to with the ferryman settled in Sayward’s mind. Next thing he knew, Portius was arguing for a bridge in town. When it was built, Guerdon worked on it, though he claimed all the while that it was too low for flood time. When the floods came, Chancey, running away, was caught on the bridge and washed down the river. He could not tell whether he was in a dream or not until some men rowed out after him. Guerdon came down the river later to take him home.

Guerdon married a slut and ran away after he killed her lover. Guerdon’s daughter Guerda, a sprightly and prophetic child, became Sayward’s favorite. Soon after, Guerda told Sayward that a good angel was coming for her, and the child died suddenly of a throat infection.

Of all the Wheeler children, Chancey always had the hardest row to hoe. He fell in love with Rosa, the child Mrs. Jake Tench had had by Portius. When Rosa realized that all chances were against her, she committed suicide.

After his Aunt Unity died and her Bay State furniture was sent to him, Portius persuaded Sayward that his position in town warranted a mansion on the square. Sayward was proud of the house, but comfortable only in the kitchen and the room where she kept her old cabin furniture. Oh, she never disgraced her family; she could keep up with folks, even when Resolve became state governor. Although she was the richest woman in town, her family said she was so common that she spoke to everyone she saw. The things she missed most at the townhouse were trees. She, who had sworn so often at the big butts, grew lonely for them. The first trees in town were those she planted in her yard.

She enjoyed having Portius’ sister come to visit for a month, though the Bay State woman harped mostly on things and folks back east. Sayward could not help laughing when her old bushnipple of a pappy came in to see the woman and praised the old settlers skyhigh.

Her pappy had tracked down their lost Sulie. When Sayward and Genny went out to see her, they found her a squaw woman who would not admit she remembered them.

Chancey left home to become a newspaper editor, blasting the pioneers who slaved for their livelihood and praising the men who advocated the abolition of hardship. Sayward secretly supported Chancey’s paper; she thought he had as good a right to say what he pleased as anyone. She missed him, but his newspaper pieces seemed to bring him closer. When he came back for Portius’ funeral, Sayward guessed he really came to see if his father had left him any money.

Sayward was lonely. All the folks who had known her kind of life were gone. The children thought her mind wandered a little before she died. She talked to her trees and said in her will that they could not be cut down. When she finally took to her bed, she had it turned toward the trees outside.

Critical Evaluation:

As the third novel in a trilogy on early American life, The Town completes the story of Sayward Luckett Wheeler, her husband Portius, and their nine children. It depicts the settlement and growth of a town and describes the way of life experienced by the families who live and work in that period of American history when the frontier was closing down. In this historical novel, Conrad Richter gives sharp details about the everyday life and possessions of the early settlers. He uses authentic speech and describes their food, clothing, tableware, and furniture. Even accounts of medical practices and methods of printing are woven into the family experiences. Richter gives descriptions to fit each era of the trilogy, and much of the interest and warmth of the story comes from these ordinary aspects of daily life.

In addition to its value as history, The Town is also a commentary on progress and civilization. It compares the past, as in the Luckett’s early years on the Ohio frontier, with the present in the town of Americus, Ohio. As participants in and builders of the new town, Sayward and the other oldtimers wonder if the “easy life” they now have is really advancement or if it is the opposite—a demoralizing situation. The radical opinion, which Sayward’s youngest son Chancey holds, is that pioneer times were brutal and wild and that true progress should continue. As times change, labor will not be necessary, and peace and happiness will flourish in a life of ease. Many of the discussions in the book concern the validity of each of these opposing ideas.

Richter, the son of a minister, was born in 1890 in Pennsylvania. At age fifteen, he finished high school and began a succession of jobs which included being a clerk, a farm laborer, and a county correspondent. He also reported on the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Journal, and by age nineteen he was the editor of the weekly Courier at Patton, Pennsylvania. From there he went on to report for daily newspapers and then worked as a private secretary in Cleveland, where he sold his first fiction story.

In 1928 Richter moved to the West and began collecting materials on early American life. Not satisfied with his research into original sources, early rare books, newspapers, and manuscripts, he found and talked to early pioneers who were still alive. His lengthy visits with them provided much of the historical detail for his novels.

Richter published his first book in 1924, BROTHERS OF NO KIN AND OTHER STORIES. During his lifetime, he wrote approximately twenty-five books and published his last, THE ARISTOCRAT, shortly before his death in 1968. In 1950, he published THE TOWN and in 1951 received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for that book.

Like the earlier novels in the trilogy, THE TOWN is written in the third person, and much of it is from Sayward’s point of view. In this last novel, however, the reader is also given the viewpoint of Chancey, Sayward’s son. Even in Chancey’s early years, his thoughts, feelings, and dreamworld are known to the reader.

As THE TOWN begins, Sayward is in her late forties but remains the strong, practical woman she was in her earlier years. She represents realism, the acceptance of events as they happen. In character and determination, she is similar to the fictional characters of Scarlett O’Hara and Selina DeJong. She believes that physical work and hardship develop moral strength, healthy values, and happiness. Money and “society” mean nothing to her, although she is probably the richest and best-known person in town. She loves her simple cabin, built by her father when the Lucketts first moved to Ohio, and she moves to the mansion in town only when Portius insists on it. Sayward, who hated the trees when she first moved to Ohio and worked for years to clear away the growth and plant crops, now discovers she misses the huge old trees. She begins to see backbiting, pride, and greed for material things, attitudes she does not remember existing in frontier life. In Chancey and other town children, she discovers an aversion to work, and she considers this a weakness unheard of in her youth. It is these realizations that cause her to question the good of change and advancement.

It is also these observations that deepen the conflict between Sayward and Chancey. He is a dreamer, an idealist in a family of realists. Perhaps because he is weak and sickly, he has few friends and always feels misunderstood. Even Sayward, who has insight into her other children, lacks an understanding of Chancey’s feelings and opinions. As a believer in progress, he stands against the brutal labor that opened the frontier. Although he ridicules her accomplishments and beliefs, she continues to support his newspaper work; this indicates her motherly love and her attempt to understand him. On his part, he feels only hate and does not accept or even tolerate another’s opinions. Only at Sayward’s deathbed does he even reconsider his attitudes toward her. Sayward’s and Chancey’s relationship illustrates the not-so-modern generation gap. As a real character, Chancey is not very believable, but as a representative of an idealistic and radical theory, he is a credible part of the story. Age versus youth and realism versus idealism are strong themes in this novel.

Minor issues in THE TOWN include a conflict between a belief in God and agnosticism, exemplified by Sayward and Portius, and the Indian-white relationships. This novel tells of the white man’s fears, friendships, and attitudes toward the Indians. Another of Richter’s novels, LIGHT IN THE FOREST, discusses the relationship from the Indians’ point of view.

When the novel ends, Portius and most of the old-timers are dead, and Sayward is dying. THE TOWN has portrayed a family—its problems, joys, and adventures—but it has also told the story of a growing town and the changes in people, economics, and attitudes. It leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion about the advantages and disadvantages of progress.

Richter’s purpose in writing these books was not a historical one. History for its own sake never enters into the story. Richter wanted, instead, to give to the reader the feeling of having lived with his characters, of being familiar with their colloquial speech, their habits, their clothes, their everyday problems, and their struggle for survival against nature, man, and beast. These are satisfying books, full of the love of the land, of earthy wisdom, and broad sympathy.

Bibliography

Barnes, Robert J. Conrad Richter. Austin, Tex.: Steck-Vaughn, 1968.

Carpenter, Frederic I. “Conrad Richter’s Pioneers: Reality and Myth.” College English 12 (1950): 77-84.

Cowan, William. “Delaware Vocabulary in the Works of Conrad Richter.” In Papers of the Twenty-ninth Algonquian Conference, edited by David H. Pentland. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1998.

Edwards, Clifford D. Conrad Richter’s Ohio Trilogy. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1970.

Flanagan, John T. “Conrad Richter: Romancer of the Southwest.” Southwest Review 43 (1958): 189-196.

Gaston, Edwin W., Jr. Conrad Richter. Rev. ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989.

Johnson, David R. Conrad Richter: A Writer’s Life. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Kohler, Dayton. “Conrad Richter’s Early Americana.” College English 7 (1947): 221-228.