Mark Twain's "The $30,000 Bequest" II

After reading Melanie's post referencing the Time Magazine article about wealth in respect to happiness, I thought she posed some provoking questions regarding how this principle applies (or doesn't apply) to Twain's characters Aleck and Sally in his story "The $30,000 Dollar Bequest".  While the Time article applies to the present day, and thus the salary in question, $75,000, is not what it would have been in Twain's day, I think the premise is very much still applicable to Twain's short story.

As Melanie pointed out, the Time article claims that an average income of $75,000 correlates to a person's peak level of satisfaction, and after that, his or her happiness plateaus regardless of whether or not his or her income (and therefore standard of living) increases.  In her post, Melanie questions whether or not this same premise works to describe Aleck and Sally's financial situation, and I too can see the ambiguous nature of her query.  I think the majority of the differences between the Time article and Twain's story stem from the fact that, for Aleck and Sally, the money is never real.  For them, wealth is a limitless fantasy that allows them to imagine a life they do not yet have but believe they will.  In the Time article, a certain level of income and standard of living has presumably already been achieved, and thus the actual manifestations of wealth on the person's happiness is measurable and actualized.

At the same time, Aleck and Sally experience the same sort of moral decay that many people who actually are wealthy experience in both today's society as well as in the past.  Testifying to the unfettered nature of greed and desire, Aleck and Sally, despite never having any money at all, begin to break important traditions to them such as observing the Sabbath and ignore each other's and their daughters' needs in favor of managing and imagining their wealth.  Ultimately, while their wealth is never real, the effect of money on Aleck and Sally is very much a reality as it would be for someone who genuinely did have too much money.  Pedigree becomes more important than personality, and Aleck and Sally, believing themselves to be royally wealthy, forget the influence and importance of humanity on their family and on their daughters' futures in a way that is very much in line with the Time article's assertion that wealth cannot, in fact, buy happiness.  In this sense, I think that Twain's story is highly effective because, although the wealth is never real, his characters' limitless desire is very much so, illuminating the universally insidious and corrupting nature of greed in the realms of both reality and fantasy.