Martin Eden

Martin’s love interest and, eventually, fiancée is Ruth Morse. She’s 24 and a college student studying English at the University of California when Martin meets her at the beginning of the novel. Ruth is beautiful and elegant. Her behavior, values, and attitude are all a result of her sheltered upbringing. She doesn’t understand the struggle of the working class, and she has a misguided view of poverty and an unconscious disdain for its effects on people. Because of her sheltered life, Ruth fails to recognize that she’s falling in love with Martin.

While Martin is attracted to Ruth’s grace and purity, viewing her as an angelic being, she’s unconsciously attracted to Martin’s physical strength, often fixating on his strong, broad neck. In these instances, Ruth feels ashamed of herself and experiences a mixture of disgust and animal attraction toward Martin. Ruth doesn’t consider the ethical implications of guiding Martin’s education, taking it on almost as a hobby. Her efforts to improve Martin help alienate him from his own class, while his poverty and ignoble origins prevent him from ever fully fitting in with the upper class either.

Ruth’s view of art, music, and literature are conventional, learned from popular critics and the dogmatic views of her professors. Martin’s exploration of realism and science in his writing is soon out of her depth. Ruth fails to see the value in his work because she doesn’t understand it, and she underestimates Martin’s effort, value, and strength simply because others haven’t yet recognized him. She breaks their engagement when Martin’s reputation threatens her own, proving Martin’s suspicion that she’s a slave to the common consensus. When he becomes famous, Ruth tries to win him back, but Martin refuses her advances.

Martin meets Russ Brissenden at a social mixer at the Morses’ house. Initially, Martin mistakes Brissenden’s indifference at the bourgeois scene as dullness. However, when they happen to meet on the street after leaving the party, they go out for drinks, and Martin soon discovers a kindred spirit and fellow intellectual in Brissenden. A frail man, Brissenden usually wears an oversized great coat. Martin notices how suntanned he is, though he doesn’t appear to be working class. He learns that Brissenden has tuberculosis, which likely contributes to his self-destructive lifestyle; he recently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Arizona, where he’d been living because the hot and dry climate eased his tuberculosis symptoms.

Of all the people Martin meets throughout his attempted rise to the upper classes, Brissenden is the only one who understands him. In addition, Brissenden takes a particular interest in Martin’s writing and philosophy. Martin, in turn, considers Brissenden the most capable writer he has ever encountered, though Brissenden himself has no interest in literary magazines or publication. He believes that beauty itself is its own aesthetic reward. On an intellectual level, Martin and Brissenden are somewhat opposed. While Martin is a Nietzschean individualist, Brissenden is an avowed socialist. However, this difference becomes fertile ground for robust debate and deepens their friendship. Brissenden introduces Martin to a bohemian intellectual circle in San Francisco—one of the highlights of Martin’s life—as well as a socialist meeting, which Martin doesn’t enjoy.

Brissenden is affluent and liberal in spending money on his friend, taking Martin to dinner and ordering them both copious amounts of whiskey, Martin’s drink of choice. This helps Martin through periods when his debts threaten to starve him. Reading Martin’s writings, in addition to their frequent conversations, spurs Brissenden to write his magnum opus, “Ephemera,” which Martin believes to be the perfect expression of form and substance in writing. Martin implores Brissenden to publish it. Against Brissenden’s wishes, Martin sends it off to publishers. Martin receives the notice that “Ephemera” has been published during a period when he can’t reach Brissenden and discovers that his friend has died by suicide and that his body was already shipped back East. “Ephemera” becomes an overnight hit, causing a great stir in the literary world, preceding Martin’s own fame. Brissenden’s death contributes to Martin’s increasing disillusionment with life and sets the precedent for Martin’s suicide at the end of the novel.

A working-class girl who falls in love with Martin, Lizzie Connolly has dark hair and dark eyes, and even Ruth notices that she’s beautiful. Lizzie is a parallel to Martin and a foil to Ruth. Like Martin, she’s naturally intelligent and lacks only a proper education to raise her from her working-class social situation. In contrast to Ruth, Lizzie has lived a hard life. Like Martin, she had to work from a young age, as is evident in the scars on her hands from working at the cannery.

Lizzie meets Martin at a theater. During the production, she catches his eye, and after the show, she (and an unnamed friend) flirt with him. While Ruth rejects Martin for his lack of success and future prospects, Lizzie remains devoted to him for who he is as a person, something that Martin realizes after he achieves literary fame. Lizzie confesses that she loves Martin so much that she’d die for him. Although he can’t return her love, Martin is grateful that she values him for himself. Consequently, before leaving the San Francisco Bay Area at the novel’s end, Martin funds Lizzie’s education, setting her up in night classes to ensure her future success. Martin briefly considers taking her with him to the South Seas but decides he’s too world-weary and tired of life to be a good partner to her.

A working-class girl who falls in love with Martin, Lizzie Connolly has dark hair and dark eyes, and even Ruth notices that she’s beautiful. Lizzie is a parallel to Martin and a foil to Ruth. Like Martin, she’s naturally intelligent and lacks only a proper education to raise her from her working-class social situation. In contrast to Ruth, Lizzie has lived a hard life. Like Martin, she had to work from a young age, as is evident in the scars on her hands from working at the cannery.

Lizzie meets Martin at a theater. During the production, she catches his eye, and after the show, she (and an unnamed friend) flirt with him. While Ruth rejects Martin for his lack of success and future prospects, Lizzie remains devoted to him for who he is as a person, something that Martin realizes after he achieves literary fame. Lizzie confesses that she loves Martin so much that she’d die for him. Although he can’t return her love, Martin is grateful that she values him for himself. Consequently, before leaving the San Francisco Bay Area at the novel’s end, Martin funds Lizzie’s education, setting her up in night classes to ensure her future success. Martin briefly considers taking her with him to the South Seas but decides he’s too world-weary and tired of life to be a good partner to her.