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…