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.