sliadows assailed them on every side.” Bromficld saw the f^actor’rnsystem and modern war as a common assault on humanrndignity. The novelist rose to the defense of immigrant workersrncondemned by the greedy industrialists to squalid, patheticrnlives. lie blasted Rotary Clubs, Chambers of Commerce,rnand faith in “progress” as corrupt and dehumanizing, hi bothrnThe Green Bay Tree and A Good Woman, he portrayed the fictionalrnMarxist labor leader Krvlenko as a tragic hero. lie evenrnindulged in a bit of fashionable leftist anti-Semitism, castingrntlic fleshy, sweaty Judge Wcissman as the most ruthless of thernMill promoters.rnCritics at the Nation and the New Republic also nodded approvingU’rnat his skeptical treatment of Protestant Christianity,rnweak or hypocritical clergymen, and cynical, self-interestedrnmissionaries. Later in his career, Bromfield took other stepsrnthat should have secured his position as a great American no-rnelist. He was an enthusiastic early advocate of the New Dealrnand wrote a no’el—Mrs. Parkington—portraying Roosexelt’srnwork in glowing terms. In 1958, he became president of thernEmergency Committee for the American Wounded in Spain.rnAnd in 1942 he published Until the Day Break, a stridently anti-rnGerman book, described bv a critic as “one of the mostrnoutspoken condemnations of an entire people that has everrnbeen produced by a prominent American writer.”rnAs early as 1930, however, Bromfield was already falling outrnof favor at the Nation, criticized for his growing focus onrnhuman personalit}’ and moral responsibility to the detriment ofrnsocial and economic forces. Then, in his 1933 novel, ThernFarm, Bromfield cast aside all pretense and stood revealed as arnsentimental romairtic, the last Jeffersonian, defender of anrnaristocracy rooted in the land. Reading backwards into his previousrnnovels, one could find these themes already there, beneathrnthe proletarian veneer. His treatment of sexuality was,rnin fact, ruthlessly moralistic. The extramarital frolicking herncites with approval was confined exclusively to the servants andrnthe lower classes, where it was related to an earthy, animal-likernfertilit}. As for characters of prominence, infidelit}’ or fornicationrninvariably condemned them to incomplete or tragicrnlives. The central theme of Early Autumn was the choicernfaced by 01i’ia Pentland between fidelity’ to an empty marriagernto the withered scion of a dying New England family andrnadultery with a vigorous, attractive, wealthy, and worshipfulrnsuitor. She chooses, in the end, fidelity, with the author’s fullrnapproal.rnIndeed, Olivia responds here to the call of duty, another latentrntheme in Bromfield’s fiction. The author’s vision ofrndemocracy rested on a natural aristocracy, the few endowed brnnature’s God with the ability to lead. As the aging John Pentlandrn—”the last Puritan”—tells his Irish-born daughter-in-law:rn”You sec, Olivia, there are people . . . people like you . . . whornha’e to be strong enough to look out for the others. It’s a hardrntask . . . and sometimes a cruel one. If it weren’t for such peoplernthe worid would fall apart and we’d see it for the cruel, unbearablernplace it is.”rnBromfield’s strong women, moreover, were not drawn fromrnthe feminist prototypes of the 1920’s. Rather, they werernthrowbacks to an earlier era, where tough pioneer womenrnbonded with virile men to settle a frontier. Of Ellen Tolliver,rnBromfield wrote: “When she found that the Ibwn was unendurablernshe had reversed the plan of her pioneer ancestors andrnturned east instead of west, to seek a new wodd. . . . |S|hernmoved about restlessly . . . . exploring, conquering, exhaustingrnnow this city, now that one.” I lis strongest praise went to womenrnhappy in their domestic life, such as Hattie Tolli’er, whornwas, “like most good mothers and housewives, a pure realistrnwho dealt in terms of the material.” The author also believedrnthat a world dominated by women was a sign of decay, matriarchyrnbeing “the last refuge of a family whose strength wasrngone.”rnBromfield’s anticapitalism, moreover, drew no sustenancernfrom socialist theory, but was wholly agrarian in origin. Libertyrnand democracy could rest only on families rooted in farms,rnbound to the soil and living in harmom- with the rhythm of nature.rnIn its mad quest for profit and progress, the town had soldrnits soul to a devil, made incarnate in the unnatural furnaces ofrnthe Mills.rnIn addition, the author’s apparent defense of the new immigrantsrnwas strained, the artifact of a desperate situation inrnwhich remnants of the agrarian order sought any alliance,rnhowever unlikely, with other enemies of the machines. Just belowrnthe surface of The Green Bay Tree and Ear/y Autumn can bernfound a hostility toward the Greek shopkeepers on Main Street,rn”a new element in the groyving alien population of the Town,”rnand toward the residents of the Elats, who refuse to learn English.rnLater, Bromfield would write of the new immigrants:rn”none of them could hae [fitted] into the dream of an agriculturalrndemocracy.”rnIn The Green Bay Tree, Bromfield also struggled with and defeatedrnthe dark side of his anti-industrialism, rejecting both thernnihilism and the protofascism that might have followed fromrnit. In a fascinating exchange between Lily Shane, now anrnemigre-resident of France caught in the Battle of the Marne,rnand a German officer who has occupied her villa, the latter explainsrnthe cause of the war:rn[T]he monkeys. . . the fools have ci ilized all the wodd,rnso that they might sell their cheap cotton and tin trays.rnThey have created a monster which is destroying them.rnThere is no longer anv peace .. . anv solitude. Theyrnhave even wrenched the peasant from his plow . . . thernshepherd from his hillside.. . . They have driven themrnout upon the plains where the cauldrons hae overflowedrnacross all Europe.rnThe German concludes that he “must kill as many men asrnpossible,” because “if wc destroy enough the monster will haxernnothing to feed upon.” But Lily, still tied in a distant way tornthe earth, turns her thoughts solely to her son and her lover,rnboth called to service in the French cavalry. She understandsrnthat they might be counted among the men that the Germanrnwill indiscriminately destroy. In response, she kills the officerrnwith his own pistol, on the slight chance that it will improve thernodds of their sur ival. Bromfield’s moral universe reached itsrnbedrock in this primal loyalty to ties of blood.rnPublication of The Farm also made explicit Bromfield’s richrninterpretation of American history. Heavily autobiographical,rnand bearing similarities to the best of Sherwood Anderson’srnwork. The Farm traces the course of a famil ‘s settlement inrnOhio’s “Western Reserve.” Carved out of a wilderness byrnideal-driven men and their strong-willed wives, the farm reachesrnits apogee under the care of Old Jamie, Bromfield’s grandfather,rnthe quintessential Jeffersonian Democrat. In the tworndecades before the Civil War, the machines were still far fromrnDECEMBER 1993/27rnrnrn