德萊塞在《美國悲劇》中描寫了主人公克萊德·格里菲思受到社會上邪惡影響，逐漸蛻變、墮落為凶殺犯、最後自我毀滅的全過程。小說共分三卷。
The home of Samuel Griffiths in Lycurgus, New York, a city of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants midwaybetween Utica and Albany. Near the dinner hour and by degrees the family assembling for its customary meal.
On this occasion the preparations were of a more elaborate nature than usual, owing to the fact that for the pastfour days Mr. Samuel Griffiths, the husband and father, had been absent attending a conference of shirt andcollar manufacturers in Chicago, price-cutting by upstart rivals in the west having necessitated1 compromise andadjustment by those who manufactured in the east. He was but now returned and had telephoned earlier in theafternoon that he had arrived, and was going to his office in the factory where he would remain until dinner time.
Being long accustomed to the ways of a practical and convinced man who believed in himself and considered hisjudgment and his decision sound -- almost final -- for the most part, anyhow, Mrs. Griffiths thought nothing of this.
He would appear and greet her in due order.
Knowing that he preferred leg of lamb above many other things, after due word with Mrs. Truesdale, her homelybut useful housekeeper2, she ordered lamb. And the appropriate vegetables and dessert having been decided3 upon, she gave herself over to thoughts of her eldest4 daughter Myra, who, having graduated from Smith Collegeseveral years before, was still unmarried. And the reason for this, as Mrs. Griffiths well understood, though shewas never quite willing to admit it openly, was that Myra was not very good looking. Her nose was too long, hereyes too close-set, her chin not sufficiently5 rounded to give her a girlish and pleasing appearance. For the most part she seemed too thoughtful and studious -- as a rule not interested in the ordinary social life of that city.
Neither did she possess that savoir faire, let alone that peculiar6 appeal for men, that characterized some girls evenwhen they were not pretty. As her mother saw it, she was really too critical and too intellectual, having a mind that was rather above the world in which she found herself.
Brought up amid comparative luxury, without having to worry about any of the rough details of making a living,she had been confronted, nevertheless, by the difficulties of making her own way in the matter of social favorand love -- two objectives which, without beauty or charm, were about as difficult as the attaining7 to extreme wealth by a beggar. And the fact that for twelve years now -- ever since she had been fourteen -- she had seen thelives of other youths and maidens8 in this small world in which she moved passing gayly enough, while hers wasmore or less confined to reading, music, the business of keeping as neatly9 and attractively arrayed as possible,and of going to visit friends in the hope of possibly encountering somewhere, somehow, the one temperamentwho would be interested in her, had saddened, if not exactly soured her. And that despite the fact that thematerial comfort of her parents and herself was exceptional.
Just now she had gone through her mother's room to her own, looking as though she were not very muchinterested in anything. Her mother had been trying to think of something to suggest that would take her out ofherself, when the younger daughter, Bella, fresh from a passing visit to the home of the Finchleys, wealthy neighbors where she had stopped on her way from the Snedeker School, burst in upon her.
Contrasted with her sister, who was tall and dark and rather sallow, Bella, though shorter, was far moregracefully and vigorously formed. She had thick brown -- almost black -- hair, a brown and olive complexion11 tintedwith red, and eyes brown and genial12, that blazed with an eager, seeking light. In addition to her sound and lithephysique, she possessed13 vitality14 and animation15. Her arms and legs were graceful10 and active. Plainly she wasgiven to liking16 things as she found them -- enjoying life as it was -- and hence, unlike her sister, she was unusuallyattractive to men and boys -- to men and women, old and young -- a fact which her mother and father well knew.
No danger of any lack of marriage offers for her when the time came. As her mother saw it, too many youths andmen were already buzzing around, and so posing the question of a proper husband for her. Already she had displayed a tendency to become thick and fast friends, not only with the scions17 of the older and moreconservative families who constituted the ultra-respectable element of the city, but also, and this was more to her mother's distaste, with the sons and daughters of some of those later and hence socially less important families ofthe region -- the sons and daughters of manufacturers of bacon, canning jars, vacuum cleaners, wooden and wicker ware18, and typewriters, who constituted a solid enough financial element in the city, but who made up what might be considered the "fast set" in the local life.
In Mrs. Griffiths' opinion, there was too much dancing, cabareting, automobiling to one city and another, withoutdue social supervision19. Yet, as a contrast to her sister, Myra, what a relief. It was only from the point of view ofproper surveillance, or until she was safely and religiously married, that Mrs. Griffiths troubled or even objected to most of her present contacts and yearnings and gayeties. She desired to protect her.
"Now, where have you been?" she demanded, as her daughter burst into the room, throwing down her books anddrawing near to the open fire that burned there.
"Just think, Mamma," began Bella most unconcernedly and almost irrelevantly20. "The Finchleys are going to giveup their place out at Greenwood Lake this coming summer and go up to Twelfth Lake near Pine Point. They'regoing to build a new bungalow21 up there. And Sondra says that this time it's going to be right down at the water's edge -- not away from it, as it is out here. And they're going to have a great big verandah with a hardwood floor.
And a boathouse big enough for a thirty-foot electric launch that Mr. Finchley is going to buy for Stuart. Won'tthat be wonderful? And she says that if you will let me, that I can come up there for all summer long, or for aslong as I like. And Gil, too, if he will. It's just across the lake from the Emery Lodge22, you know, and the EastGate Hotel. And the Phants' place, you know, the Phants of Utica, is just below theirs near Sharon. Isn't that justwonderful? Won't that be great? I wish you and Dad would make up your minds to build up there now sometime,Mamma. It looks to me now as though nearly everybody that's worth anything down here is moving up there."She talked so fast and swung about so, looking now at the open fire burning in the grate, then out of the two high windows that commanded the front lawn and a full view of Wykeagy Avenue, lit by the electric lights in thewinter dusk, that her mother had no opportunity to insert any comment until this was over. However, shemanaged to observe: "Yes? Well, what about the Anthonys and the Nicholsons and the Taylors? I haven't heardof their leaving Greenwood yet." "Oh, I know, not the Anthonys or the Nicholsons or the Taylors. Who expects them to move? They're too oldfashioned. They're not the kind that would move anywhere, are they? No one thinks they are. Just the sameGreenwood isn't like Twelfth Lake. You know that yourself. And all the people that are anybody down on theSouth
