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Five and ten

by Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)

  • Free to read
  • 6 hours to read
  • 11 chapters

"Five and ten" by Fannie Hurst is a novel written in the early 20th century. It examines the price of American success through dime-store magnate John G. Rarick, his ambitious, dissatisfied wife Jenny, and their sharp, sophisticated daughter Jennifer as they chase status amid New York’s elite. A scholar-lodger, Dr. Felix Gerkes, stands as a foil to their glittering world of “things,” highlighting the tension between material display and inner substance. The opening of this novel centers on Rarick’s sleepless reflections on his improbable rise and on Jenny’s relentless drive to convert his fortune into social position, culminating in her pressing him to buy the palatial Ficke house on Fifth Avenue—which he does. In New York, Rarick befriends the austere, learned Dr. Gerkes and installs him in their home, to the thinly veiled disgust of Jenny and the bemused defiance of Jennifer. Jennifer’s brazen, witty persona surfaces in public antics and private clashes with her father, who struggles to anchor his family against the drift of luxury and speed. Summoned to meet Gerkes, she is forced to skip a society dinner, and an awkward family evening exposes the central conflict: Rarick’s craving for meaning and restraint versus Jenny and Jennifer’s appetite for display, motion, and modern amusements. A formal dinner with Gerkes crystallizes the clash of values—his dry, erudite talk and quiet integrity set against the family’s glittering surfaces and quick patter—leaving the household’s fault lines starkly visible.

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  • Rich people
  • United States · Social life and customs · 20th century
  • Husband and wife
  • Families
  • Parent and child

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Five & Ten

Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods.

In the long reaches of what had become chronic insomnia John G. Rarick found himself mentally mouthing to himself phrases such as this: I am a rich man. I am a very rich man. Me, John G., rich!

It was his way of striving to grind into his overtaxed realizations the fact that, as he lay there, wheels of industry, turning by now of their own momentum, were pouring more and more gold into Rarick coffers.

Even in a land where such annals of achievement as textbooks and success magazines were crowded with the names of those who had vaulted from petty beginnings into high places, there was something about the rapid phantasmagoria from obscurity to rapid success that never failed to tax Rarick’s credulities.

Now, Jenny Rarick, lying there beside him in the elaborate marquetry bed, the first piece of signed furniture, by the way, which they had acquired, had less imagination to startle with the fecundity of events. She had a capacity to take for granted many of the phenomena of the world in which she lived.

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Contents

  1. Five & Ten
  2. Ramon
  3. Dear Moth
  4. Jenny’s Day
  5. Rarick’s Day
  6. Magnate Mingles with Strap-Hanging Crowd
  7. Another College Suicide
  8. Gratton Davies
  9. Jenny
  10. Jennifer
  11. John Noon

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About this edition

This free edition of Five and ten by Fannie Hurst comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #78515, released 2026-04-21. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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