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Get Fancy With Genteel
In A History of the Novel (1975), David Freedman wrote of Theodore Dreiser, “Certainly there was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as a man or novelist.” Indeed, few of the many uses of the adjective genteel would seem to apply to the author. When it comes to the use of genteel to describe people or things of or related to the upper class of society, for example, Dreiser doesn’t fit the bill: unlike many of his contemporaries, including Edith Wharton, Dreiser came from poverty. His novels, too, are hardly genteel in the sense of “striving to maintain the appearance of superior or middle-class social status or respectability.” Sister Carrie, his best known work, features a heroine who goes unpunished for her transgressions against conventional sexual morality. In fact, the book so troubled the genteel (“polite”) sensibilities of Dreiser’s publishers that they limited the book’s advertising, and it initially sold fewer than 500 copies. Sister Carrie is now considered a masterpiece, and Dreiser, according to Freedman, “the supreme poet of the squalid” who “felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying the American Dream.”
Examples of genteel in a Sentence
Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Mar. 2026
But for women of Austen’s circumstances, living genteel lives without actual land or ample income, employment would have been inappropriate, even scandalous (recall Philadelphia’s slippery slope scenario), and therefore unthinkable.
—Literary Hub, 9 Mar. 2026
And tours of the Owens-Thomas House and its slave quarters capture an ugly history in which genteel opulence and oppression existed side by side in Savannah.
—Adam Kuehl, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2026
The genteel dean of the Maryland delegation, who helped send billions of federal dollars to his state as an appropriator, was often a key negotiating partner for Republican leaders who maintained better relations with him than the hard-charging Pelosi.
—Benjamin Siegel, ABC News, 7 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for genteel
Cite this Entry
“Genteel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genteel. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.
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genteel
adjective
