A mocking realism in a Hazard of New Fortunes: Isabel March as the example of incorrect realist observation and immorality. A Hazard of New Fortunes is a realistic novel written by the American novelist and literary critic William Dean Howells. This book was published in 1890. The story is about Basil March and his family who move to New York because of Basil's new job as an editor of a literary magazine called Every Other Week. In New York, Basil meets with the help of Fulkerson, the manager of the magazine, a wide range of people with their ideologies that occasionally clash. While the Marches are living in New York, they are witness to the social tension in New York. This tension is also present on the work floor. This culminates towards …show more content…
When I go back to the first confrontation mentioned in the alley with the tenements, there is a discussion between Isabel and March that is an example of this immorality. In her essay, Michelle Kohler argues that morality is absent in this conversation after their encounter of the tenement-houses street (Kohler 206). This discussion is about Isabel who proposes to basil that he should ask Fulkerson if it was possible for Basil to make use of this experience of the tenements for Every Other Week (Howells 66). Kohler writes that even though Isabel gives a lot of advice to March, her morals are not as good as she pretends them to be (Kohler 206). Also, Isabel's first reaction to the tenements is one of pure disgust (Howells 65). A few pages later; there is also mentioned that 'she was not humbled in the least by what she had seen in the tenement-house street; she yielded no point in her ideal of a flat' (Howells 67). This shows that the confrontation of this poverty did not have a lasting effect on Isabel. She continues to have exaggerated demands for an apartment, and even the narrator criticizes her behaviour in the quoted