Sylvias Marriage

Sylvia's Marriage

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sylvia's Marriage, by Upton Sinclair
(#15 in our series by Upton Sinclair)
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Title: Sylvia's Marriage
Author: Upton Sinclair
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year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 4,
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SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
SOME PRESS NOTICES
"The importance of the theme cannot be doubted, and no one hitherto
ignorant of the ravages of the evil and therefore, by implication, in need
of being convinced can refuse general agreement with Mr. Sinclair
upon the question as he argues it. The character that matters most is
very much alive and most entertaining."--_The Times._
"Very severe and courageous. It would, indeed, be difficult to deny or
extenuate the appalling truth of Mr. Sinclair's indictment."-- _The
Nation._
"There is not a man nor a grown woman who would not be better for
reading Sylvia's Marriage."--The Globe
"Those who found Sylvia charming on her first appearance will find
her as beautiful and fascinating as ever."--_The Pall Mall.
"A novel that frankly is devoted to the illustration of the dangers that
society runs through the marriage of unsound men with unsuspecting
women. The time has gone by when any objection was likely to be
taken to a perfectly clean discussion of a nasty subject."--_T.P.'s
Weekly._

SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
A NOVEL
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
AUTHOR OF "THE JUNGLE," ETC., ETC.
LONDON

CONTENTS

BOOK I SYLVIA AS WIFE
BOOK II SYLVIA AS MOTHER
BOOK III SYLVIA AS REBEL

SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
BOOK I
SYLVIA AS WIFE

1. I am telling the story of Sylvia Castleman. I should prefer to tell it
without mention of myself; but it was written in the book of fate that I
should be a decisive factor in her life, and so her story pre-supposes
mine. I imagine the impatience of a reader, who is promised a heroine
out of a romantic and picturesque "society" world, and finds himself
beginning with the autobiography of a farmer's wife on a solitary
homestead in Manitoba. But then I remember that Sylvia found me
interesting. Putting myself in her place, remembering her eager
questions and her exclamations, I am able to see myself as a heroine of
fiction.
I was to Sylvia a new and miraculous thing, a self-made woman. I must
have been the first "common" person she had ever known intimately.
She had seen us afar off, and wondered vaguely about us, consoling
herself with the reflection that we probably did not know enough to be
unhappy over our sad lot in life. But here I was, actually a soul like
herself; and it happened that I knew more than she did, and of things
she desperately needed to know. So all the luxury, power and prestige
that had been given to Sylvia Castleman seemed as nothing beside
Mary Abbott, with her modern attitude and her common-sense.
My girlhood was spent upon a farm in Iowa. My father had eight
children, and he drank. Sometimes he struck me; and so it came about
that at the age of seventeen I ran away with a boy of twenty who
worked upon a neighbour's farm. I wanted a home of my own, and Tom
had some money saved up. We journeyed to Manitoba, and took out a
homestead, where I spent the next twenty years of my life in a

hand-to-hand struggle with Nature which seemed simply incredible to
Sylvia when I told her of it.
The man I married turned out to be a petty tyrant. In the first five years
of our life he succeeded in killing the love I had for him; but meantime
I had borne him three children, and there was nothing to do but make
the