The present dissertation argues that more fully than any other fictional work in the latter third of the nineteenth century, Harold Frederic's _The Damnation of Theron Ware_ illuminates the cultural controversies within fin de siecle America. Given the inconsistent nature of its subsequent critical examination, Theron Ware lends itself to a type of new as well as traditional forms of historicist inquiry. While recent efforts by Lisa MacFarlane and Donna Campbell have broadened earlier perspectives to include the gender and theological controversies of the post bellum era, Theron Ware remains unexplored by still another vehicle that Frederic provides (127-143; 80-81). Within a complex and repeated series of episodes, Frederic uses standards of personal etiquette enunciated through a century-long series of published manuals to ponder both the inevitability and the likely consequences that will result from these "compendium of intellectual currents" (Campbell 80).