Here, the heart of Ruth and Martin’s differences is revealed. Ruth and her social class are preoccupied with aesthetics and technicalities, while Martin focuses more on functionality and meaning. Ruth is someone who hasn’t had the need to work hard, so everything she learns and does is conceptual. She went to school, for example, because it was “the right thing to do” – but how many of the educational notions she learned has she actually applied to real life? Martin, on the other hand, has known a life of working hard and yielding certain results. Working on the ships was not a “pretty” experience, but the results of the labor were tangible. Similarly, his writing may not be the most beautiful, but he is more concerned with the emotional response it retrieves. Ruth and Martin, like their respective social classes, assign value to different things, and this deep-rooted conflict cannot fully be resolved.

The upper class's detachment from "the real world" is very apparent as the novel progresses. Perhaps this is why Martin's experiences with the leprosy princess, the ships, and even fighting attracts Ruth. These are things she has faintly heard of but has never fully accepted as real. It is almost like the equivalent of meeting a celebrity - can such people actually exist? In this way, Martin's experiences are interpreted more as a form of entertainment and wonder than as genuine hardships that he went through as a working man. Her attraction to Martin seems almost condescending, and makes a mockery of the working class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DccmKKnizFY

Ruth's "advice" brings to mind No Doubt's 1992 song called Trapped in a Box. While the song has more feminist undertones, it is still applicable here. Ruth's upper class world, as mentioned earlier, carefully upholds an aesthetic of poise, class, and a polite nonchalance. Martin, on the other hand, struggles with finding the balance between speaking intellectually and also passionately. Ruth was never given the environment to act on her passions; it is the reason why she does not respond to his otherworldly writing, nor does she openly accept her love for him. Now, Ruth is attempting to restrain Martin in the same way. Expressing passions in a "professional" or "civilized" setting is taboo. As the No Doubt song lyrics go, "Trapped in a box of tremendous size/ It distorts my vision, it closes my eyes.../ It sucks up our lives and proliferates lies." The social restraint practiced by the upper class can be very limiting to their worldview. In the Morse family alone, it has created a sense of pretentiousness and close-mindedness. Now, Martin needs to limit a part of himself if he ever wants to fit in, but this seems to be a sacrifice without much of an ultimate reward. The upper class is a box, and Martin might not want to get trapped in it after all. The "box" has taken a toll on Ruth especially. Her love for Martin grows organically and without thought. However, the way she responds to her own feelings and the actions she takes are entirely reliant on the tendencies of her class. She even admits to her mother that she loves Martin, but then she justifies the reasons why she shouldn't marry him. Instead of embracing a natural life event - loving someone - Ruth has to constrain it within the limits of her class.

This reminds me of Ruth's conversation with her mother about Martin. At that time, she said "No one ever loved me before . . . and it is sweet to be loved - that way." Still, she continues to talk about how ineligible Martin is to be her husband. She needs someone who more suitably fits within her social class. It seems a little hypocritical that Ruth will scorn his realism in literature, but forgoes loving Martin solely on the grounds of practicality. Martin "destroys beauty" by seeing the world through practical eyes, but Ruth gives up a genuine love for doing the same thing. This only scratches the surface of the complexity of Ruth's character. Her desires do not always align with those expected of her social class; however, when she acts on them (for example, when she comes to see the way Martin is living), she is both intrigued and repulsed. Ruth can easily critique Martin Eden from a distance, but perhaps she is not so different from him after all.

Later in the novel when Martin is "successful," Ruth returns to try to continue their romance. Has she finally succumbed to her heart's true desires? Unfortunately, it is clear to Martin that she has returned only because of the wealth, fame, and social status he has earned. In the moment where Martin can finally have what his heart has been wanting, he becomes the realistic one instead, and actually rejects her. Ruth's bravery doesn't seem able to exist without a little bit of logical justification. She could not marry Martin as he was before, but when he is richer version of himself, suddenly it is okay. Ruth evolves into someone who can assess her desires and act on them a little better than before, but she is not totally free of the social restraints that bind her.

This sentence reminds me of a cover of The New Yorker. On this particular cover, men in suits are walking lifelessly, their faces staring straight ahead, unaware that they'll soon be walking of the edge of a cliff. Martin has no face or voice to put to the rejection letters he keeps receiving, which makes the editors seem unreal - perhaps like robots. Martin makes it clear that his stories are full of life, bursting with passion, and impossible to resist. For these editors to reject his work so easily makes them seem like a different species. How can they be so unaffected by these tales while Martin is overly exited about the same ones?

The way Ruth reacts to Martin's work is similarly mechanical. She has grown up studying a particular type of literature and conforming to a certain set of ideals. All of her feedback to Martin's work is in regard to how it conforms to the cultural archetype she is used to. His ideas may genuinely be good, but Ruth has been bred to only accept clean, "safe" ideas and stories. The reader can predict Ruth's reactions to his work before she even responds because of the way she systematically rejects what is different.