Jennie Gerhardt is a tragic romantic novel following the destitute young Jennie through loves and losses. It exemplifies the naturalism of which Dreiser was a proponent, telling the story of a working-class woman who accepts all adversity and becomes the mistress of two wealthy and powerful men in order to help her impoverished family. Theodore Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist who the naturalist school and is known for portraying characters whose value lies not in their moral code, but in their persistence against all obstacles, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency.