Sister Carrie (1900)

Sister Carrie (1900) was Theodore Dreiser's first book, and the tale of the small-town girl coming to the big city was loosely based on the experiences of Dreiser's sister. In Sister Carrie our protagonist takes the train from her small town in Wisconsin to the big city of Chicago in order to take the extra room in the apartment of her older sister and her family and to make her way in the world. She is 18, very pretty, not very curious and more than a little naive.

Carrie gets a job in a shoe factory, barely makes enough money to pay her rent, and pines for all the beautiful clothes she sees in the department stores on her long walk to work each morning. After losing her job due to illness, Carrie can't find more work and is on the verge of going back home when she reconnects with Charles Drouet, a dapper and smooth-talking salesman she met on the train to Chicago. Drouet sets Carrie up in an apartment and takes care of all her expenses. This seems to satisfy Carrie for awhile, but after meeting Drouet's much richer friend George Hurstwood, Carrie's eye begins to wander. Not really maliciously or hurtfully (since Carrie doesn't seem to think about anything strongly enough to really mean it), but enough to set Hurstwood on a path of adultery, crime and deception that eventually leads to a hasty retreat for both Carrie and Hurstwood from Chicago to the anonymity of New York.

Although originally published in 1900, Sister Carrie was buried by its publisher and had little success. After an extensive editing by Dreiser and his wife, a new version was published in 1912 to wider acclaim. Even in its edited version, the contemporary audience was shocked by the implied sex in the book and the lack of comeuppance for the immoral characters. It all seems pretty mild today, but you can see how a character like Carrie, no matter how naive and well-meaning she is supposed to be, who basically sleeps her way to comfortable living and attains fame and riches, could rub a turn-of-the-century audience the wrong way.

Although I loved the detailed descriptions of life in Chicago and New York, the philosophical/moralizing sections are insufferable, and the characterization is (probably intentionally) very two-dimensional. Carrie couldn't be more boring or unlikeable. The only things she gets excited about are new clothes and, to a lesser extent, her acting career (but really only to the extent that she can get more money). She lives with men for years without really seeming to care for them, to think about their pasts, or to ask any questions or show any interests in anything at all. So, when she is still melancholy at the end of the novel, despite her success on the stage (which is hilariously based on her ability to pout), I can't say I feel that bad for her.

Sister Carrie is definitely worth reading if you have the time, but if you don't, I'd probably start with one of Dreiser's other books...

[And the full text of Sister Carrie is available here if you'd like to give it a shot.]