Sister Carrie
by Theodore Dreiser

Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.

Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason

This is also No. 784 on the 1001 books you must read before you die list.

Theodore Dreiser was a writer of the late 19th and early 20th century who was part of a larger group of writers in the school of naturalism or literary realism. These writers include Emile Zola, Frank Norris, Henry James, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. Naturalistic works tend to focus on the darker aspects of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for focusing too much on human vice and misery. But overall, they tended to look at life realistically many times without a happy ending as in romances of the time. I read Dreiser's An American Tragedy many years ago and always thought it one of the great American classics. I have been meaning to read Sister Carrie for years and finally got around to it. Because of the themes of the novel, Dreiser and his wife cut and revised the original text significantly before its publication in 1900. In 1981, the full unexpurgated edition was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The edition I read was the 1900 edition which is the standard text of the novel.

The story is really pretty simple. Carrie, who lives in a small town in Wisconsin, moves to Chicago when she is 18 years old to stay with her sister and try to make a living. She looks for work in Chicago at various places and eventually finds work at a shoe factory making very scant wages. The work is hard and the hours long and Carrie doesn't last long. But on the train ride to Chicago, she met a salesman or "drummer" named Drouet who later meets up with her and rescues her from her life of drudgery by buying her clothes and moving her into some decent rooms. Of course, he also stays with her in the rooms. No explicit sex is ever mentioned but it is definitely implied. Druet later introduces Carrie to a Mr. Hurstwood, who is the manager of a "resort" or club and who is quite wealthy. Hurstwood falls for Carrie and ends up leaving his wife and taking Carrie to New York. But when he leaves Chicago, he steals $10,000 so he can start a new life after his wife sued him for divorce. He is caught, however, and ends up returning most of the money, leaving him with little to survive on. In the mean time, Carrie has her eyes set on the stage after getting some good reviews in a local production in Chicago. She eventually makes it big on the New York stage while Hurstwood falls to very bleak circumstances and ends up living on the streets after Carrie leaves him.

I guess Dreiser was trying to show how life is not always happy and circumstances seem to determine how you end up. While Carrie seemed to make it to her dreams, she was never happy. Hurstwood went from being very well off to ending up totally distraught and with no hope. While Druet carried on as he always did as a rake and wanting to socialize and have fun. None of the characters in the novel were very likable. Carrie seemed to use people at her convenience while Hurstwood left his home and family for a pretty face. But overall I thought this novel was definitely worth reading even though some of the language seems a little stilted today.

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Read this as part of the 1001 list challenge for 2019

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