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Social class and status in sister carrie
Human nature self interest
A brief analysis of Sister Carrie's character
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Oscar (Shenyu) Wang Professor Jessamyn Hatcher Culture Foundation III Dec. 11th Instinct for Self-Interest in Sister Carrie In Chapter 1 of Sister Carrie, when Carrie boarded on the afternoon train headed for Chicago, “she was eighteen years of age, bright, timid and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth… She gazed at the green landscape now passing in swift review until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.” (page 3) At the time, we know only that Carrie was an eighteen-year-old girl from Columbia City, Wisconsin, that her father was a miller, that she had at least one elder sister, and that she grew up in straitened circumstances; however, in the end when Carrie seemed to have …show more content…
taken New York by the Storm “Miss Madenda”, she became an outstanding professional actress on the Broadway, remarked by critic of the “Sun” as “one of the most delightful bits of character work ever seen on the Casino stage, a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery, which warms like good wine.”(page 447) The timid small-town working girl was so fortunate that her appearance on the stage easily held all attentions and applauses. As Carrie became a Broadway super star, her former lover Hurstwood, who helped her elope to New York and witnessed her miraculous transformation, was trapped into a step-by-step descent toward suicide. When Carrie met him in Chapter 9, Hurstwood was a bar manager with wife Julia, son and daughter George Jr. and Jessica, a maid servant, and a residence “on the North Side, near Lincoln Park, (which) was a brick building of a very popular type at that time, a three-story affair, with the first floor sunk a very little below the level of the street.”(page 80) Such a wealthy gentleman, husband, and father might have never imagined his life would finally end at a “dirty four-story building in a side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been changed by soot and rain”(page 497) with a crowd of homeless people. Wang 2 In New York, the line of lives of Carrie and Hurstwood, which intersected in Chicago, were headed in opposite directions, Carrie moving up and Hurstwood slipping down, at the same time. When Carrie was installed in her luxurious quarters in the Wellington and enjoyed appreciations and adulations from gentlemen with fortunes, the gloomy Hurstwood just moved to a cheap hotel where he had taken refuge, with seventy dollars and nothing else. As a matter of fact, one unusual element of Sister Carrie is the way it depicts New York as a distinctive world where “the roads were any one of a half-hundred and each had been diligently pursued by hundreds, so that celebrities were numerous. The sea was already full of whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view, remain unseen. In other words, Hurstwood was nothing.”(page 305) In such a “new world”, Hurstwood became more insensitive and stubborn while Carrie became more flexible and versatile. She did not fall with him but remained a “common fish” with fortunate and drifted along on the tempestuous “sea”, looking for the fantasy of fame and luxury. “The fantasy became more and more vivid; it also became more realistic”(page 311) When Carrie found herself on the crest of a wave rushing toward success, she saw Hurstwood disappeared beneath the stormy surface. Wang 3 I would attribute the rise of Carrie to the strict loyalty to her instinct for self-interest, the natural tendency to focus on the needs or interests of her self. Carrie’s first reliance on instinct began at her accidental second meeting with Drouet and her submission to his promises. Taking advantage of her feminine charms, Carrie enjoyed the material pleasure offered by Drouet, and meanwhile switching unconsciously to Hurstwood with a better financial situation and emotional rapport. “She knew that she had improved in appearance. Her manner had vastly changed. Her clothes were becoming, and well-dressed men some of the kind who before had gazed at her indifferently from behind their polished railings and imposing office partitions, now glanced into her face with a soft light in their eyes.”(page 249) Carrie knew her attraction to men, as well as the fact that for Drouet and Hurstwood, she was everything. However, for Carrie herself, what really attracted her was not love, but her insatiable “craving for pleasure”(page 31) received from beautiful ornaments and noble life, which allowed her to drift from the orbit of one man to that of another so easily. Similarly, Carrie’s instinct for self-interest as an actress was directly translated into her artistic talents. Through Drouet, Carrie was introduced to the theater, originally as a part of chorus line and later even as Laura in a volunteer amateur production of Under the Gaslight. Receiving Drouet’s encouragement and support after a feeble first scene, Carrie gained access to her full creative energy. When she came to New York, the magic of the theater, fancy restaurants and rich crowds around Broadway fascinated her and again stirred her self-interest to act on the stage. Her performance became more increasing professional in the Casino opera. “To say truth, Carrie did unconsciously move about with an air pleasing and somewhat distinctive. It was due wholly to her natural manner and total lack of self-consciousness.”(page 397) Still remembered the girl who suffered from stage fright in Chicago? Not any more. She was raised to be the head of chorus and finally seized the opportunity to become a huge success. Carrie fed her unsatisfied urge to be famous and her instinct for self-interest took her from “an apparent and painful insignificance of the part”(page 393) to the center of theater, a real place of her imagination. Wang 4 Since then, Carrie entered the walled city of privilege, whose “splendid gates had opened, admitting her from a cold, dreary outside.”(page 449) The rise of Carrie might be a story in which a character was favored by good fortunes all the time. However, her strong instinct for self-interest to be richer and famous pushed her forward in the “sea”. It is interesting if we marked the innocent countryside Carrie in Chapter 1 “the first generation”, or Carrie 1.0, and we can see how Carrie continuously updated herself to 2.0, 3.0, and so on. When Hurstwood tricked her into boarding on the train with him for Montreal, though reluctant and feeling a bit guilty, Carrie unconsciously convinced herself that Hurstwood could give her a better life and continued on the journey. In New York, fascinated by the splendor of the city, Carrie 2.0 was made aware- more than ever- of her inferior status. Her self-interest again motivated her to enter the world of theater and find her position on the stage. She was unstoppable to be a better and updated Carrie. If I were Hurstwood, I would have exclaimed thousands of times, “why does Carrie succeed but not me?” However, he would probably not do that. As a matter of fact, His instinct for self-interest had gradually disappeared when he struggled for his fate in New York, eaten up by his growing introspective and secretive feelings. Instead of establishing his new self in New York, His fantasies of employment consistently seek to revive his first generation self in Chicago. After losing the investment in the Warren Street Saloon which earned him a monthly net worth of 150 dollars, Hurstwood “began to see it as one sees a city with a wall about it. Men were posted at the gates. You could not get in. Those inside did not care to come out to see who you were. They were so merry inside there that all those outside were forgotten, and he was on the outside.”(page 339) Wang 5 Since then, Hurstwood repeatedly withdrew from working opportunities that “was either too expensive or too wretched for him.”(page 330) He paralyzed himself with some forms of high-ended works that might fall on him, while remained reluctant to take real challenges. For instance, in Chapter 41, when Carrie blamed him of his recoils from job seeking, Hurstwood replied, “I saw some of the brewery people today. One man told me he’d try and make a place for me in two or three weeks. ”(page 389) When reduced to living off savings, Hurstwood only briefly considered an option as a bartender. “Bartender, he-the ex-manager!" (page 352) As a matter of fact, each time he argued that “how could an ex-manager do such job” did opportunities slip through his fingers. Even during his main effort at employment as a strikebreaker, Hurstwood remained awkward pride and superiority over his coworkers. When hearing two talking about their experiences before the strike break, he treated them as ignorant and commonplace. “ ‘Poor devils’, he thought, speaking out of the thoughts and feelings of a bygone period of success.”(page 415) Finally, he gave up all attempts either to continue updating or to retrieve his first generation self. “What’s the use?”(page 499) he compromised, sat in the rocking chair, read his newspaper and began his nostalgic journey, allowing his free fall into the poverty and the end of life. Wang 6 The achievement of Sister Carrie is that it vividly depicts the society in which phenomenon of the cruel struggle for existence, embodied in the contrast of the fate of two main characters, truly existed.
It subtly exposes the tragedies that people with instinct of self-interest could control their own fate in the unpredictable future, while others who paralyzed in past success and unrealistic fantasies could not. It also shows how those who were unable to update themselves from 1.0 finally became the prey of those 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and so on. It is a story about self-interest is the winner. However, if Sister Carrie takes place live in such a world, where people are completely honest about their instinct for self-interest: clothes, money and social positions, where people move from one relationship to another without any attachment and sympathy and where people busy at updating themselves without any self-sacrifice, it will be a completely different story. Carrie might have never received Drouet’s help and met Hurstwood; she might have never got the opportunity to come to New York and realize her actress dream; she might have become another “Hurstwood”. Therefore, we could realize that a man’s fate is always unpredictable, regardless of the social system and circumstances, and nobody could predict what the future would bring to him or
her. Wang 7 Works Cited: 1. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Penguin ISBN:01401.88282
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This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
...al mechanism, and desire only a function of reproduction. Yet, it is not so. Individual human destiny is much stronger than the force of history if only individuals grapple with who they are and the forces pressuring them, and have the courage to meet the mass wave head on. Perhaps no one in this play does so, but the desire is there and we can learn from their failure.
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