Sister Carrie.docx

Sister CarrieTheodore Herman Albert Dreiser is one of Americas greatest writers, and its greatest naturalist writer as well. Sinclair Lewis, the first American writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1930, held that Dreiser should have been the winner. Theodore Dreiser was born into a German-American family in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1871; his childhood was marked by poverty. At the age of fifteen Dreiser quitted school and looked for all sorts odd jobs in Chicago, at there, he had ever worked on various kinds of chores. When he was eighteen, a sympathetic teacher helped him enter the University of Indiana, but Dreiser quitted after a year and returned to Chicago. During 1890s Dreiser once successively acted as reporter, journalist, editor or special feature writer in various newspapers and magazines in Chicago, New York etc. While, he began to writing novels in 1899, and in 1927, he visited the Soviet Union. After returning from the Soviet Union, Dreiser not only devoted to his literature creation, but also took an active part in social activities, and finally joined in the American Communist Party before his death.Theodore Dreiser received education irregularly, acquiring knowledge mostly through learning by himself. He widely read in literature, Balzac, Zola, Mark Twain and his contemporaries. Jack London and Frank Norris were all on his reading list. Until 1894, he found a job with the Dispatch in Pittsburg, where for the first time, he read the works of Huxley and Herbert Spenser, which were by far the greatest and the determining influence on Dreisers outlook and his future writing. He also embraced social Darwinism, learning to regard man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a world to struggle for existence, in which only the “fittest”, the most ruthless, can survive. “Man is, to him, only a mechanism reacting to chemic compulsions and human comes as a result of the collision between mans biological needs and societys ruthless manipulation”.1 In addition, Darwins theory has profound influence to develop Dreisers evolutionary ethics.Theodore Dreiser is a productive writer; he wrote an incredible quantity of words during a fifty-year-long career in letters, including seven long fictions, four short stories, and some scripts, political comments, autobiographies, etc. Sister Carrie, which was published in 1900, was his first long novel; besides, Sister Carrie is to some extent considered to be the representative works of American literature. In fact, according to records, Carrie can represent one of his sisters, for his sister Emma and her husband shared the similar experience with Carrie and Hurstwood. It tells a story of a young girl named Carrie who leaves her small hometown for Chicago. She meets a traveling salesman named Drouet and moves in with him after a few weeks. After being wooed by Hurstwood, she is cheated by him and goes to New York with him. Hurstwoods financial decline forces her to apply for jobs in theater, and she soon becomes a well-known actress. Then, she discards Hurstwood and enjoys great success as one of Broadway stars, however, even in all her wealth Carrie remains unhappy at the end of the story.Since 1978, with the renaissance of foreign literature studies in PRC, some Chinese critics have also shown great interest in Sister Carrie. Two domestic literary magazines, Foreign Literature Study and Foreign Literature Review, have been the major publishing fields for these critics. Realism of Sister Carrie, Dreisers Sister Carrie and Dreisers contradictory feminism in terms of Carrie figure are quite influential among the essays on Sister Carrie. They try to analyses the novel from the different perspectives such as feminism, realism and naturalism. Most of them are study it with some subjective thoughts, seldom of them study it objectively. Thus, this paper is intended to study it from naturalistic point of view and explain the main naturalism viewpointsdeterminism and evolutionary theory in the novel, and the significance of naturalism literature in American literary history.Quite contrary to Carrie, Hurstwood is haunted by his past resplendence. When he fails in his investment, more than once he is repentant of the stealage he commits in Chicago which costs him his possessions in all which is usurped by his legitimate wife, his prestige in Chicago and especially his decent life. How eager he hopes to resume all the “old things”! When he loses most of his fortune in the second-rate bar, Hurstwood does nothing but recalls the past and regrets. His past brilliant life lingers so much over the air of his home that he stay at home foe three months, reading newspapers. He builds himself a fortress which is permeated with recollections.Not equipped with the capability of adapting to outer environment just like Carrie, Hurstwood indulges in the recollections of former wealthy life. He retrieves, repents and at one point he even hopes that he may Resume his old place.” He gets used to leading so rich a life that he thinks it is a scorn for him to find a menial job to support himself. On this matter it is reasonable for Carrie to leave him when she finds a job in the chorus. His lacking of adjustability contributed to his fatalistic fall.In the novel, Carrie assumes various roles in her life and she endeavors to play them well. She tries to be a real Mrs.Drouet when she is kept by Drouet, although she is more or less uneasy for her amoral deeds. Regarding herself as Mrs.Drouet, Carrie responds passively towards Hurstwwoods courting despite the fact that she finds a favor in him. Regarding herself as Mrs.Drouet, Carrie struggle mentally for a long time when Hurstwood tries to persuade her to elope with him to Canada. Settling down in New York, Carrie exerts herself hard to devote all her attention and energy to her marriage life for the first three years. Hurstwood loses all his eminent social status and wealth when leaving Chicago, so they two cant lead an abundant life.Carrie is the winner in life since she always looks forward to the future. She breaks from her marriage life when Hurstwood goes bankrupt and falls into the asylum of repenting. Discarding her identity as Mrs.Wheeler, Carrie gains herself a new status as an unmarried woman named Carrie Madende who makes a through break from the past. It is her innate ability to adapt and her hard work that win her great wealth and fame.As an eager learner, Carrie works hard to improve her manners and increase her captivation. Her merits of adapting herself to the changing reality permits her to progress closer and closer to the climax of her acting career. And her modest attitude towards Ames suggestion no wonder open a new door to happier world.“The Struggle for Existence” and “the survival of the Fittest”, phrases coined by Herbert Spencer, were popular in the last decades of 19th century America. According to the famous philosopher, human beings were divided into two types: the strong and the weak. Survival and existence were a cruel and fierce competition