With Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” American literature made its most lasting contribution to the Faust myth which had long inspired European artists. Benet’s take is uniquely American, presenting the unwise victim who enters into an ill-conceived bargain with the devil not in traditional European aristocratic terms, but as a poor, hapless farmer down on his luck. Thus does story from outset attempt to do what American writers have always done best when looking to the myths and legend of European history: the devil gets democratized.
Anyone who can be fair game for a deal with the devil, the story asserts. This may not be the best news; after all, there is something to be said for aristocrats—even if aristocratic artists—being targeted while the devil leaves the rest of us peasants alone. What Benet is really suggesting, however, something about worth and equality. American democracy situates everyone as being on the same level; no one is born into an upper class. They are only born into wealth which may not be the same thing.
Except, of course, that is the great American myth. America’s flat panel approach to equality has never been true and deep down everybody knows it. We just don’t admit to outsiders. America likes to keep its image going even if among ourselves we grumble about the aristocracy of the rich. What really makes Benet’s Americanization of Faust so wonderful is that while the story is clearly intended to democratize it to make it more applicable to the average American, it also reveals the swampy foundation beneath that idealization of democracy.
They key element separating “The Devil and Daniel Webster” from European Faustian stories is the trial. Nothing speaks louder to the ideal of democracy than a judicial system which treats everyone the same. Wealth may be a substitute for aristocratic titles outside the courtroom, but inside the rich man and the poor man are equal before the law in a way that the King and the commoner never was unless there was an angry crowd with gathering around guillotine. Step into the courtroom and more than anywhere else in America, the reality of equality moves closer to the dream.
Benet gives his Faustian bargain the uniquely American spin of allowing even a clearly guilty man of arguing his case before a jury and allowing the jury—not the crown—to decide his fate. It is a state of affairs almost unimaginable in a Faustian tale before 1776. And yet, before that jury convenes and announces their verdict, Benet will subtly introduce irony that reminds Americans that we are a nation that holds so fast to our ideal image of ourselves that it has become increasingly easy to convince ourselves that maybe the ideal is the reality.
Jabez Stone is guilty; no reader can possibly question that. Even so, the jury finds in his favor. A guilty man gets out of paying his debt to society. The only possible relief an American can find there is that at least he didn’t get off because of the circumstances of his birth. So there is that small bit of democratic pride to hang onto. And then there is whole concept of the farmer’s success. What is the American Dream: Anybody willing to work hard can become a success; the circumstances of being born to a lower class does not automatically obstruct any chance of realizing success or earning or wealth. That is one of the bedrocks of the idealized version of American democracy. But Jabez Stone does not become successful because he works hard; he only break his string of bad luck by literally entering into a deal with the devil to purchase the wonder fertilizer of black magic. If anything, the story of Jabez Stone is more a corruption of how great it is to be an American than a celebration of it.
And yet, ultimately, Benet is celebrating American democracy. This is the system we have chosen for ourselves and chosen to support and continue. Sure, we know it’s not perfect like we pretend and, yeah, we might even occasionally be moved to suggest that needs fixing. But so far we’ve not yet really reached the point where we are ready—as a nation—to say it is broken and mean it enough to change. Guilty men go free and people become wildly successful without seeming to do much work to deserve it. But that is the price we have decided to pay for the privilege of choosing ourselves to determine who is guilty or innocent. And if we get upset as the spectacle of the “instant reality show” millionaire, we would rather have that option remain available than live in a system that determines the future of children based on the marriage of their grandparents. Most of us would probably prefer our system to that, in fact, that we’d sell our soul to maintain it.
