Throughout William Dean Howell's novel A Modern Instance, modernity can be seen through the character of Bartley Hubbard in his experiences, actions, thoughts and feelings. Bartley successfully represents the epitome of the modern man, a man who once had everything only to lose it from his wrong decisions in life based often on his vanity and selfishness. In the beginning, Bartley is engaged to the beautiful and elaborate Marcia, only to lose her because of his accused affair with Hannah. Bartley shares characteristics with the modern man in his flirtatious nature with other women which generally leads to temptation and sinning as well.
             However, like the life in modernity, Bartley is given a second chance when Marcia asks for forgiveness and so, they run away and get married because of the opposition to their relationship from Marcia 's family. From here, one can already see the problems that will arise in this marriage between these two rebellious characters who have no true devotion to one another. The marriage between Bartley and Marcia parallels marriages in modern life in their attempted failures to preserve and maintain such a sacred bond between two individuals.
             The author conveys with Bartley the idea that modernity is a life where one changes drastically and becomes corrupted by the journey one takes to get to the top through their egotism and conceit. Bartley is so caught up in the journalism world, that it causes him to abandon his wife. The new journalism world has corrupted Bartley to become a man of despicable spitefulness in his actions towards other characters and in the thoughts and feelings he conveys through his works. Slowly and truly, Bartley has decayed morally into a man of self-indulgence, superficiality, and selfishness, all of which is evident when he is around people of the Boston society, who are high class and not immoral like Bartley. The author tries to convey the idea that modernity is ...