The Winter of Our Discontent was published by the Viking Press, New York, on 23 June 1961, in a first printing priced at $4.95. It was Steinbeck’s sixteenth novel and his last. The Nobel Prize for Literature followed in 1962 — controversial, as many critics felt American literature had better candidates. The novel itself received mixed reviews: some praised its moral seriousness; others found it schematic and preachy. Its reputation has improved over time, as its portrait of American materialism and ethical compromise has come to seem less didactic and more prophetic.
The Novel
Ethan Allen Hawley works as a clerk in a grocery store in New Baytown, Long Island — a store his family once owned. The Hawleys were a leading New England family; Ethan’s ancestors were whaling captains. Now he is a hired man in his own former property, mocked by the town for his decline. His wife Mary wishes he were more ambitious; his children absorb the culture’s worship of success.
Over the course of a single spring — from Good Friday to the Fourth of July — Ethan transforms. He betrays Danny Taylor, his oldest friend, an alcoholic who owns a piece of land developers want, by feeding Danny’s addiction and then acquiring the land when Danny dies. He informs on his employer, an Italian immigrant named Alfio Marullo, to have him deported, then takes over the store. He learns that his daughter Ellen has plagiarised an essay to win a national contest. Each moral compromise makes the next easier.
The novel’s climax comes on the Fourth of July, when Ethan, appalled by what he has become, walks to the harbour with a razor blade, intending suicide. He is pulled back by the discovery that his daughter has placed a family talisman in his pocket — a gesture of trust that obligates him to live.
The American Moral Crisis
Steinbeck intended the novel as a diagnosis of American moral decline in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era. The title, from Richard III, signals its ambition: America is undergoing a spiritual winter. Every character is complicit: the town worships money, the children are taught to cheat, even the church accommodates corruption. Ethan’s fall is presented not as an individual failure but as a systemic one — the culture’s values make his betrayals logical, even rational.
Collecting The Winter of Our Discontent
First edition (1961, Viking): First printing, $4.95.
Identification points:
- Viking Press colophon
- First printing stated or identifiable by number line
- Green cloth binding
- Dust jacket
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $400–$1,200
- Signed first edition: $2,000–$6,000
- Without jacket: $50–$150
Value trajectory: Moderate demand. As Steinbeck’s last novel, it has a certain valedictory significance, and the Nobel Prize connection adds lustre. Signed copies are genuinely valuable — Steinbeck died in 1968, and his signature commands strong prices across all titles. The novel’s growing critical reputation may support further appreciation.
Steinbeck’s Last Word
The novel can be read as Steinbeck’s farewell not just to fiction but to America. He spent the last years of his life as a journalist, travelling through America (Travels with Charley, 1962) and covering the Vietnam War. The disillusionment evident in The Winter of Our Discontent — the sense that the country has betrayed its own ideals — colours everything he wrote afterward. It is not his greatest novel, but it is among his most honest.
The Nobel Prize Context
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1962, fourteen months after this novel’s publication. The Swedish Academy cited “his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception.” The award was widely criticised in the American literary establishment — many felt the prize should have gone to Nabokov, or that Steinbeck’s best work was behind him. Steinbeck himself was not entirely comfortable; in his acceptance speech he said the writer “is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams.” The Winter of Our Discontent is the novel that most directly embodies this charge.
The New England Setting
Unlike Steinbeck’s California novels, The Winter of Our Discontent is set in New England — specifically Sag Harbor, Long Island, where Steinbeck had a home. The shift in setting is significant: where California represented openness, possibility, and the frontier, New England represents tradition, decline, and the exhaustion of old money. Ethan’s family history — whaling captains, merchants, men who built the town — is the American past weighing on the present. The store is a miniature America: once owned, now rented; once a source of pride, now a site of humiliation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is this Steinbeck’s least-read novel? It lacks the accessibility of Of Mice and Men, the epic sweep of The Grapes of Wrath, and the warmth of Cannery Row. Its protagonist is an intellectual, its setting is middle-class suburban, and its tone is bitter. It is, essentially, a novel about a man deciding to become corrupt — a subject that makes readers uncomfortable in a way that poverty and injustice do not.
Is the ending hopeful? Ambiguously. Ethan pulls back from suicide because of his daughter’s trust — but the corruption he has committed cannot be undone. Danny Taylor is dead. Marullo has been deported. The essay was plagiarised. The talisman in Ethan’s pocket saves his life but not his soul.
How does this relate to Steinbeck’s other work? It represents a reversal. Where The Grapes of Wrath showed victims of the system, The Winter of Our Discontent shows someone choosing to become part of the system. Steinbeck’s sympathy shifts from the exploited to the exploiter — not because he approves, but because he recognises that the culture has made exploitation the rational choice.
What is the talisman? A family heirloom, a translucent stone that has been passed through generations of Hawleys. Its exact nature is never specified — it functions as a symbol of family continuity and moral obligation. When Ellen places it in Ethan’s pocket, she is unknowingly asserting the claim of the future on the present.