♪Money, Money, Money, Money... MONEY!♪

 In Sister Carrie, it obvious that Carrie abhors the routine of daily life. She wants the finer things in ligr. She wants to dress as nice as possible. She wants to go to the theatre all the time. Her choice in men also... interesting. Now, I'm not saying she's a gold digger, but she's not messing with... any broke gentlemen. That is, I don't think that she would intentionally. From the beginning of the book, Dreiser writes that Carrie brought with her to Chicago "her total outfit (in a small trunk), ... a cheap imitation alligator purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money." (page 1) The reader is not given much background information on Carrie's past other than the possessions from her past that she brought with her. What speaks the most about her character to me is the imitation alligator purse. This says to me that she wants people to think she has the money for the high life, but in reality, she cannot afford a real alligator purse, but merely an imitation. Also, the fact that she did not have but four dollars of spending money with her is astounding. She took less than what she would make in a week at the shoe company with her to Chicago. At the shoe company, she made $4.50 per week. So, she took barely no money with her. This emphasizes to me that she literally started from nothing and worked up. She was led by her fancy for the finer life rather than by reality. She found money by it being given to her rather than her working hard for it. First Drouet buys her clothes and a place, but then she sees an even greater profit through Hurstwood. Then, when he loses everything he has, she loses interest in him. Only after her options are exhausted does she decide to pursue her interest of acting. However, when she finally does achieve spending money, the very thing she was so lustful for, she felt a bigger hole in her heart. Something was still missing. I did not like the ending because of the message it brings. In the beginning, it says "money should be desired, because routine is boring". In the end, it says "Money is not the path to happiness." It seems that no matter how hard the characters of the book tried or did not try to gain happiness, they did not find it. I am depressed.

Desire and Shadows

I had but one jaw dropping moment in the whole of Sister Carrie.  This moment came when Hurstwood deceived Carrie concerning Drouet, dragging her all the way to Montreal, and finally to New York. 

It is strange, this novel, everyone gets what they want.  I find that often life can be like that: you get everything you want, but it is not at all what/how you think it would be or should be.  Carrie achieved fame and fortune but (classically) found it empty.  Drouet continues doing what he always did.  The Hurstwood family went about their ways pretending the father no longer existed; Jessica becomes an expert flirt, while the missus tags along with her daughter and son-and-law (I’m sure they love that).  Hurstwood himself escaped on the immediate consequences of his crime, started over with Carrie, and ultimately failed.  Everything you want and more is in the making of a decision, no?

But Carrie’s position is different.  Indeed, she has it all in meaningless fashion, yet she is aware there is more to life.  A part I found so interesting in Dreiser’s description of Carrie’s dreamy nature was this:

“Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional nature—that mind that reasons, and the mind that feels.  Of one come the men of actions—generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreams—artists all” (353).

I keep trying to decide if Dreiser favors one over the other, the intellectual or the emotional.  And if he does, that means he is more connected to his characters than I originally thought.  Carrie is an obvious dreamer.  If Dreiser favors the emotional, then he is sympathetic to her; if he favors the intellectual, then he is either indifferent or antagonistic.  In my opinion, indifference to one’s characters is disrespectful as an author; as with people, we must come to a place where we like or dislike/love or hate characters.

  

Characters shadow and imitate reality, and Dresier embodies that in Carrie throughout the novel.  From the start Carrie acts as a chameleon in her surroundings, adjusting herself with each turn of the page.  Dreiser ends the novel acknowledging Carrie’s potential to move out of the emptiness, but I question her subconscious motives.  Women of her track record tend to become the projection of whatever man holds her attention at the time, and Sister Carrie ends with Ames.

I read this novel too fast, and it will take a lot longer for it to really sink it.  But I enjoyed it nonetheless.  In class, perhaps let us discuss how Dreiser uses and writes about contrasts in the novel.  I think this becomes a more acknowledged trend toward the end of the novel; at the very least I noticed it more when he started mentioning it.

Sister Carrie 2

Even though Sister Carrie goes through hard times, she eventually finds fame and fortune in the end. However, even with her material success she still feels like she is missing something. The characters in this book are all so greedy, I can't tell if what they feel for one another is real, or if they just need to possess something. Sister Carrie spends the entire book wanting more material things than what she has, so she doesn't even seem to notice what she is really missing. She has two men in her life, and she seems to care a little for each of them, but she doesn't care enough for them to be content with just them. Also, they care for her, but they see her more as a possession. I think at one point both men have some feelings for her, but none of them are real. I feel like they only want her out of greed.  

City of Corruption or City of Fancy

From the beginning the narrator seems to indicate the Carrie’s undoing would happen in the city. The narrator seems to infer that there is a certain innocence that outsiders from the city innately possess, that is easily corrupted,

The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light wooing and fascinating the eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal sounds. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breath into the unguarded ear! (1)

The city seems to corrupt the purity of all its new comers. And the narrator is sure to tell us his take when comes to the moral position of the main character, Carrie Meeber. It seems like the narrator pronounces certain ideals and seems to indicate Carrie’s spiraling moral status as she grows in age and maturity.

While the narrator seems to imply that Carrie’s corruption came from moving to the city, one might argue that Carrie innately had a fatal flaw that is easy to fall to—the desire for entertainment and material possession (wealth). It follows that the city merely fed her desires, but it did not cause her fall. The narrator describes her in the very beginning saying, “…She was interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things” (2). As a young woman, living with her sister and brother in law she was not entertained by their hum—drum routine of work and rest.   Before she even had her first day of work she wished to go to the theater. She was drawn in by the city, its bright colors and noise because it fed her fancy.

I Apologize in Advance for My (Slightly) Feminist Rant

Why are all the female characters we read about so weak? They are unable to make decisions for themselves. As Dreiser says, “When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse” (1). But why are these her only two options? Why does a girl of eighteen, or any age for that matter, need someone to save her? She is more than capable of saving herself. I don’t like the way women are portrayed as inferior to men, sorry my feminist hackles are slightly raised right now and I have to write this post. Sister Carrie, even though she is eighteen and self-absorbed, can make all of her own decisions and does not need saving because she will be just fine.

Also, I found it interesting that, on the first page, Dreiser makes a vague Shakespeare reference. “Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions” (1). Which is a lot like what Orsino says to Viola in Twelfth Night or What You Will Act II Scene 4: “For women are as roses, whose fair flow’r / Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour” (II.4). Why do so many people believe that women cannot stay beautiful for a prolonged period of time? We can be beautiful, and are beautiful, until the day we die!! I’m mad and I apologize for my ranting.

Hey, I have WiFi this time. Cool.

I am only about 100 pages in, but already I am starting to see the connections of sexuality in Sister Carrie with the sexuality of McTeague.  It is consistent with the idea that “chance” or even Fate had put Carrie and Drouet on the train together; that Drouet by mere chance sees Carrie from across the street.  Within Carrie there seems a similar sort of tension with Drouet to that Trina has in her initial encounters with McTeague.  Carrie also goes through chances quickly once she gives into the money that Drouet offers her.  This is inverse order to the way Trina and McTeague’s changes occur: for them it begins with caving into physical desires; for Carrie and Drouet, it starts with money but escalates to the physical. 

I don’t want to spend my whole blog comparing the two novels, but I figured it would be a good place to start since Dr. Mitchell had made mention of the similarities of addressing sexuality in the novels. 

I think perhaps my favorite section of the reading so far has been Dreiser’s description of habit:

“Habits are peculiar things.  They will drive the really nonreligious mind out of bed to say prayers that are only a custom and not a devotion.  The victim of habit, when he has neglected the thing which it was his custom to do, feels a little scratching in the brain, a little irritating something of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness” (57).

Oh…I am about to fail at not comparing the two novels…because Norris made mention of religiousness once in McTeague, while Dreiser mentions something about religiosity several times within the first 100 pages.  Basically all I am wondering is if that is the difference between writers within the time or if there was not a standard concerning religiousness during the time. 

Anyway, back to habit…I enjoy the way Dreiser uses this description.  He defines habit according to his standards, gives it a meaning within the novel, and then he refers back to the term “habit” on several occasions when he goes to describe characters he introduces.  He also does something similar with several other terms.  I like it; by doing so he creates his own definitions to work from in the novel, rather than a dictionary definition.  Not that he ditches meaning; he keeps the dictionary definition, he isn’t changing words, but he is giving them a specific function within the narrative. 

So far, this novel feels like a sociological experiment—and far less grotesque than McTeague, which is refreshing…then again, I am only 100 pages into it…

Illusion

Why is the transition to realism and modernism an ideal period for marriage conflict? As a guy, I sometimes find it difficult to be whisked into an emotional tangle like Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Unfortunately, watching Gatsby recently prepared me to understand it more. I am not sure I can handle another conflict over a woman.

At the end of chapter 21, Dreiser writes of Hurstwood, “The manager started, hit as he was by a problem which was more difficult than hers. He gave no sign of the thoughts that flashed like messages to his mind” (144). He does indeed have a problem. He’s a married man who wants to marry another girl. Not that it’s acceptable, but he does not even want to divorce the woman he has now. It seems that his distaste for her promotes her ill temper, which is why he dislikes her anyway. Come on, man.

And Carrie. I’m not sure how I feel about her. I know she’s been caught up in big Chicago. The men initially attract her because they can take care of her, not because they care for her. A lot of her troubles have begun because of Minnie and Hanson’s frugality, of course, but the poor girl needs to realize the trouble she’s entered.

I suppose she cannot be expected to avoid the problem if the men haven’t given her any hints at all. They’re built on illusions. The entire Gatsby affair confronted the same problem—the illusions of the emerging big city. Despite the façade, illusion runs deeply into every pore of life, including marriage.  I just hope Carrie prevents the same violent ending.