Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser, an American novelist of the "naturalist school" published this, his first novel, in 1900, to limited acclaim. The wife of the publisher, Mrs. Doubleday, was adamantly opposed to its publication since, in her opinion, "immorality," by which she means, Carrie's relationship with men, was not clearly punished. At the end of my "Barnes & Noble Classics" copy, there is a spot-on retort from a review in the "San Francisco Argonaut": "But these critics will have little to say in condemnation of the immorality of a commercial system which offers young girls a wage of three or four dollars a week in payment for labor as destructive to the mind as to the body." As with numerous other American novelists, their merit was first recognized in Europe, and then reflected back to the States. The novel was re-issued in 1907, to a much more receptive public. Dreiser grew up in Indiana, and went to Chicago as a newspaperman. The principal character, Carrie, is based on his sister, who, in the novel, went from Wisconsin to Chicago. Though re-issued in the same year that Upton Sinclair published his famous muck-raking novel  The Jungle , also set in Chicago, Dreiser's novel is actually set in the 1880's - `90's. In terms of the social classes, the two novels both complement and contrast the classes depicted, and there is a dash of some social mobility thrown in.Carrie is a classic country girl, fleeing a big family, for the lights of the big city. On the train to Chicago she meets Drouet, a smooth-talking salesman. Carrie's domestic situation, living with her sister and brother-in-law is not a happy one, and she soon takes up "domestic arrangements" with Drouet. And in the much more sedate time of what was the Victorian era in England, that is all you learn: the panting, puffing and groping are all carefully excised. Hurstwood, a married man of some property, and limited propriety, and an erstwhile friend of Drouet, also takes an unseeming interest in Carrie, which borders on Maugham's  Of Human Bondage . With this essential dynamic, the novel is propelled forward, with the inevitable vicissitudes in the human interactions as well as the social standing of the main characters. Roughly half the novel is set in New York City, so the reader gains an appreciation of the two largest American cities in the post-Civil War period, an event that is never mentioned."Naturalism" means a realistic account life in the aforementioned cities. No "stream of consciousness" or other innovative story-telling techniques. Just a straightforward story, an easy read. I felt that the characterizations of the men, both Drouet and Hurstwood, seemed to be more insightful. Carrie is depicted as a strong women, with an independent streak, but she is also simply swept along by events, and her motivation at times is difficult to understand. The economics of the times is also realistically portrayed, including the grinding poverty that was the fate of most. Unemployment, underemployment, many of the same themes that dominant today's economy were highly operative then. Carrie "made it," at least in terms of achieving success as an actress, but as Dreiser said, in terms of her relationship to Hurstwood: "She forgot her youth and her beauty. The handicap of age she did not, in her enthusiasm, perceive." She achieved "success," but not happiness. But that was not enough for Mrs. Doubleday, even though Dreiser says: "It is but natural that when the world which they represented no longer allured her, its ambassadors should be discredited...In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel."Regrettably, this is the first novel of Dreiser's that I have read. His other major work, published a quarter century later,  An American Tragedy  is now on the "to-read list." In terms of the characters, and the setting, it is an important American novel, relevant both then, and in our own troubled economic times. 5-stars.

Dreiser's classic, "Sister Carrie," was on my list of novels to choose from for my English 102 required reading. I chose it due to online reviews and the storyline's personal appeal to me. While Dreiser does an excellent job of describing his settings in their full historical context from Chicago to New York City, and is very thorough about his explorations of his characters' minds, I thought his novel too abundant with unimportant (yet painstakingly described) characters, meaningless details, lengthy explanations, and self-important philosophical ponderings.If you enjoy such literary journeys, however, give the book a read. Sister Carrie is unique for her time and her surroundings are fairly fascinating. I was unhappy with the somewhat chauvinistic undertone the story carries, although perhaps for the time period Dreiser would be considered fairly progressive. Many readers can likely identify with the story's opening theme, of a girl on her own for the first time, timid and feeling alone in a big, imposing city. Carrie's struggle with finding a job, money, independence, and her place in the world is easy to relate to and her inner journey is portrayed well. After reading the Shmoop review of the book, I decided I could have skipped laboring through Dreiser's long-winded writing and simply hopped through a few much catchier, more interesting scholarly critiques.The bottom line: If you're looking to spend many hours soaking into the pages of a well-developed rags-to-riches tale, check out Sister Carrie. If you're looking to enjoy the gist in a jiff, just read the reviews.

I was pleasantly surprised by Sister Carrie as a character study and a commentary on the social restrictions forced upon women during the late 1800's. Carrie's experience was so similar to my own situation when job hunting in the mid-1960's that the book could easily have been written about me. Carrie's decisions to use the men in her life who offered an easier life made sense to me, given her ambition and lack of opportunity for self-expression. All of the men in this book willingly gave everything to Carrie without asking her for commitment in return. Their characters and goals were different, but the development of Carrie's relationships with each man taught her how to grow as a woman. Dreiser had genius in writing his characters vividly and sympathetically. None of the men was a beast or cruel, just a simple human man trying to possess a woman who had different ideas about what her life should be. I found this book much more compelling and deep than I'd expected it to be. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in great literature, especially to those interested in literature about women finding their place in a male-dominant society.

Sister Carrie, published in 1900, was Dreiser’s first novel, and what a deep novel it is. It follows a clear narrative journey, has completely believable characters, the central ones of whom are particularly complex, nuanced and perfectly credible as recognisable individuals – but we also absolutely see the history and culture of time and place acting on them, moulding them, influencing and shaping them. Choices may be made, which seem individual, but the freedom of expression may be more circumscribed than some characters – or some readers – may believe.Carrie is a young rural girl, who comes to Chicago in 1889, to stay with her sister and her brother-in-law. Carrie has ambition, she is a young woman of beauty and some delicacy, wanting to improve her status and opportunities. She aspires to some kind of clerical office job, or perhaps as a sales assistant in one of the burgeoning glossy department stores. Unfortunately, her poverty and lack of experience are against her. It is an employer’s market, and all she can get is dirty, badly paid, unskilled factory work, exploited and working in impossibly harsh conditions.Dreiser, writing with irony, looks back on the 1889 working conditions and compares them to the more enlightened thinking of ‘now’ (1900):“The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather – a combination which added to by the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant, even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept each evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of footrests, swivel-back chairs, dining rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The wash rooms and lavatories were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere of hard contract”Another writer with a socialist, humane ideology, Upton Sinclair, in his famous book The Jungle, set also in Chicago, in the meat processing industry, and published in 1906, rather shows the ‘atmosphere of hard contract’ had not changed in the intervening years, so Dreiser was writing at a time when, practically, those footrests, dining rooms, clean lavatories and the rest, were still unthought of in factories.Dreiser’s particular focus in this book though, is on women, on the circumscribed choices available to women, and how poverty and want may drive a woman to make a living by selling herself. He explores the different power dynamic between men and women, and also the different morality expected of the sexes.I discovered with interest that though Sister Carrie found a publisher, the book was considered too hot – or even too offensive – to handle, and was expurgatedWhat 1900 society found so offensive in Dreiser’s writing was his refusal to act the moralist, thundering down abuse on this fallen woman – instead, he reminds us how society itself creates the world in which the Carries must make this choice.There are three major figures in this book, Carrie herself, the travelling salesman Charles Drouet and the sophisticated bar manager G.W. Hurstwood, looked up to by both Carrie and Drouet. Hurstwood is a man beginning to move in circles near the people of greater power, celebrity and wealth. In fact, the adulation of celebrity, and its shallowness, so symptomatic of our own age, is also laid out here.I found the authorial voice, and the wide ranging evidence of Dreiser’s sophisticated, nuanced thinking, as fascinating and absorbing as the story of Carrie and Hurstwood, the trajectory of their entwined histories. The first section of the book has Carrie, starting from a kind of point of lowliness and desperation, and follows her rise (looked at one way) which might also be considered her fall. When she first meets Hurstwood, his star is in the ascendant, and life is rosy, and showing every possibility of getting rosier, for him. From thence, the fortunes of the two, initially linked, begin to travel in different directions. It is Hurstwood who becomes the major focus, and the drift of his story also offers a glimpse into early twentieth century capitalism in America, and the hard fought struggles of labour to achieve fair wages, fair conditionsI must admit that Dreiser’s style is style is not always the most flowing, and he isn’t a writer of what appears to be so well and beautifully crafted that the writing seems effortlessly poised, but what at times may be rough-hewn has honesty, and the ‘stuff’ of his writing is powerful, important and necessary.I found this an absorbing, humane, compassionate and thought provoking readFinally, kindly alerted by other reviewers, I did NOT get this on Kindle, and went for a second hand market place seller paperback, for readability instead of poorly formatted eread!

the book starts as a Jane Austen novel but soon it is clear that we are 100 years later and in the rough industrial Chicago period end 19th century. In the beginning you feel sympathy for Carrier in her quest to find a good job and a good life but soon she starts using the men around her to get some fame and income, first Drouet who really wants to help her out and marry her and then later to a rich manager who was introduced by Drouet.Soon she starts an affair with the married manager and under false pretences he takes her with him to New York. From there one the decline in life starts for Hurstwood after he also sends some money back he's stolen from his ex wife. In this part you more and more start to feel sorry for Hurstwood, leading to a tragic end. On the contrary, my interest in the main character became less and less, maybe because she ends up far better off.

When the heroine, Carrie, was first introduced as a naive small-town girl heading to Chicago and falling for the advances of a travelling salesman on the train, I was worried that this would be a simple tragedy, where the helpless Carrie gets chewed up by the big city and ruined.Fortunately, the book is a lot more interesting than that. Carrie does suffer, she does get disillusioned, but she also fights back and makes a concerted attempt to find happiness, and the results are far from predictable. Some of the men who try to prey on her end up as victims themselves, while Carrie experiences a real mix of good luck and bad.Dreiser's writing style is a little verbose by modern standards, but still the story moves along quickly enough. The author also puts in some moral judgments and quasi-scientific explanations for the characters' actions, things which a modern writer would leave out but which work fine as artefacts of the age. The story was compelling and unpredictable, and I'm glad I read it.

I love novels from this era, early 1900's, especially, as here, based in America. It gives insight into women, their emancipation, and emerging role in society. Written by a man there is not enough description of current dress and fashion for my liking! That said, this novel goes at the type of pace I enjoy, fairly slow, as it does go quite deep in describing the characters' sometimes devious, sometimes innocent, minds. It gives an insight into life at the time of growth and change in America through the eyes of a young country girl when she moves to Chicago.

A engrossing novel of an ambitious young girl's coming of age in 19th. century Chicago and New York. The character sketches are vivid and real, and Dreiser cleverly tears the reader from empathy with first Carrie and then her lovers, upon whom she depends for her expensive tastes. It is fascinating to see her apparent adaptation when one of them falls from grace.This was Dreiser's first novel, written in 1900, and the prose, with occasional delightfully archaic flourishes seems surprisingly modern. Others have noted that this transcription to e-book is ridden with typos and spelling errors. Simply not true; perhaps these critics are mistaking the American spelling.