The Cider House Rules was published by William Morrow in 1985, and it represents Irving’s most sustained engagement with a single political issue: abortion. The novel follows Homer Wells, raised from infancy in St. Cloud’s orphanage in Maine by Dr. Wilbur Larch — a physician who delivers unwanted babies for women who want them and performs abortions for women who don’t. Homer, trained by Larch as an obstetrician, refuses to perform abortions — then must eventually decide whether his principles can withstand the reality of women’s suffering.
Irving’s treatment of the abortion question is neither polemical nor neutral — it is novelistic. He creates a world in which the abstract arguments of both sides are tested against lived experience: against the specific women who need help, the specific children who are born unwanted, and the specific moral choices that individuals must make without the comfort of certainty. The novel’s conclusion — that Homer eventually performs an abortion — is not presented as a political argument but as a human decision made under the pressure of compassion.
The title refers to the posted rules in a cider-house dormitory where migrant workers sleep — rules written by people who don’t live there and therefore have no understanding of the actual conditions. The metaphor extends to abortion legislation: rules made by people who have never faced the situation they legislate.
Irving won the Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation (1999 film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Tobey Maguire and Michael Caine).
Collecting The Cider House Rules
First edition (William Morrow, New York, 1985): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in fine jacket: $75–$200
- Signed first edition: $150–$400
- Reading copy without jacket: $8–$20