Sister Carrie

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Sister Carrie is a novel by Theodore Dreiser that was made into a film in 1952 .

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18-year-old Caroline Meeber, also known as Carrie, is leaving her parents' home in rural Wisconsin to make a fresh start in the big city of Chicago with her older sister Minnie and her husband Sven. On her train ride to Chicago, Carrie meets Charles Drouet, a traveling salesman who is interested in her. Both the eloquence and the fashionable clothing of the shrewd city dweller Drouet leave a lasting impression on Carrie. After a brief chat, they exchange addresses, arrange to meet, but go their separate ways at the train station, as Carrie insists.

Arriving at the cramped apartment of her sister Minnie's family, Carrie inevitably realizes that Minnie has a low standard of living and therefore decides to cancel the agreed meeting with Drouet at her sister's. Carrie's brother-in-law Sven makes her unmistakably aware that she will soon be looking for a job and supporting the family of four. After several failed attempts to find a job, Carrie starts working in a shoe factory. Due to the physical exertion, she soon becomes ill and then loses her job. Shortly before deciding to go home, she meets Drouet, who invites her to dinner. He offers her his financial help and convinces her to move in with him in an apartment. Carrie becomes Drouet's lover, adopts new habits and behaves according to her new social status.

Drouet introduces Carrie to an influential friend, businessman George Hurstwood. Shortly after they meet, the unhappily married Hurstwood begins an affair with Carrie. By chance, Carrie got the unique opportunity to appear as an actress in the theater. She is enthusiastically received by the audience and her lovers.

The socially aspiring wife Hurstwoods confronts her husband after rumors about his affair. She wants to divorce him and insists on her financial claims. Carrie, who learns that Hurstwood is married, decides to cut off all contact with him. Out of desperation, Hurstwood steals the money from his company and drives Carrie to Drouet, who is said to be in the hospital. On the drive Carrie notices that he lied to her and that they are actually going to Montreal. Carrie reacts indignantly, but lets Hurstwood persuade her to try her luck with him. In Canada, his guilty conscience plagues him, he sends a large part of the money back and decides to go to New York.

When they arrived in New York, the "newly weds" rent a six-room apartment and use the surname Wheeler from now on. During the first two years the couple managed to keep their heads above water financially, but had little social contact. In her third year, however, Carrie met her new neighbor, Ms. Vance, and was immediately impressed by her exclusive lifestyle. Hurstwood loses his job and does not admit his situation until he has little money left. Carrie gradually becomes more dissatisfied with her life and cannot understand why Hurstwood is reluctant to look for a new job.

Her pursuit of social advancement and luxury goods and her troubling financial situation strengthen her desire to become a successful actress again. First, Carrie begins to sing in the theater and gets to know Lola, who makes her the offer to move in together. She leaves Hurstwood for good and receives a small role in the play. As Carrie becomes a famous star, Hurstwood becomes homeless and eventually takes his own life. Despite her success, fame, and money, Carrie doesn't get happy.

Structure / theory

Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie , published in 1901, is part of the canon of American naturalism. The cities of Chicago and New York represent various stations of the protagonists Carrie and Hurstwood in the novel and are the setting for two experiments in which the protagonists are placed. In this book, Émile Zola's concept of the experimental novel appears to be implemented. According to Zola's idea, the author's task is to create framework conditions for the protagonists, who are endowed with different character traits, and to observe them as an outsider, as it were, as they act according to their characteristics, the given circumstances and the external influences that determine their lives.

At the beginning of the novel, Carrie is a young, inexperienced, naive and uneducated girl. She strives for material goods of the consumer society, which she got to know in the big city of Chicago. She dreams of an acting career, but only in New York does she have the necessary ambitions to achieve her goals. The decisive factors for their change are their thirst for action, their previous experience, their ability to adapt to their environment and their newly acquired self-confidence. The selfish Carrie is no longer an innocent girl in New York and, despite her immoral behavior, is not punished at the end of the novel. Instead, she becomes successful and famous as an actress and thus achieves social advancement.

Hurstwood, on the other hand, is going through a reverse development. As a successful, ambitious businessman, he is introduced at the beginning of the novel. His financial and psychological crash begins with the affair with Carrie. The consequence of this is that he leaves his family, loses his position as a businessman and his reputation at the same time, steals money and ends up being a lonely, homeless beggar. His suicide at the end of the novel symbolizes his utter failure in New York, as he cannot find his way there.

In summary, one can say that the development of the protagonists corresponds to an X-scheme: While the arrow, which symbolizes Carrie's life, points upwards, Hurstwood's life goes steeply downhill. In this context it should be mentioned that Carrie finds herself in a similar new situation on the train to Chicago as Hurstwood on the train to New York. You can see these situations analogously to each other.

The theater in Sister Carrie

Theater as an institution as well as a social authority plays a major role in the novel. It serves as the main metaphor in the text for life in the anonymous metropolis (Chicago and New York) at the turn of the century. The important role of theater is particularly evident in the novel scene in which Carrie appears in the amateur play Under the Gaslight . Carrie's cloakroom backstage is the place where the three main characters of the novel meet, which introduces the second phase of the novel, in which Carrie now lives with Hurstwood instead of Drouet and is thus in the second relationship of dependency without marriage.

The role of the theater in 19th century social life

Theater also plays a major role in social life; it is a setting for seeing-and-being-seen. However, it is only the wealthy who make up the middle and upper classes of society who have access to the theater. This becomes clear in the scene in which Hurstwood visits Carrie, who at this point is already a celebrated star of the New York theater, but cannot enter the theater because of his appearance.

The theater in the novel symbolizes a social event that is the authority of the new entertainment culture. In the city, the theater serves as the scene of social events. Accordingly, theater in Sister Carrie is a metaphor for the so-called society of the spectacle - Guy Debord's critical examination of the capitalist ideology of consumption - which replaces social relationships with the consumption of goods. In addition, plays are sometimes seen as role models for normative social behavior.

In the novel, theater also represents the opportunity for social advancement: in fact, it is the only opportunity for Carrie to advance in society at all. She has no professional qualifications and she is not educated. However, she is good at imitating, imitating other people and has the necessary vanity to portray all of this credibly. Theater gives her an opportunity to express, and more importantly, an opportunity to earn. It offers her the opportunity to be independent, to be able to rely on herself and on this ability, which she has mastered best, to build her life.

"Loss of innocence" and prostitution as a metaphor

In this regard, after "losing her innocence", Carrie remains a kind of prostitute. At first she is a kind of prostitute due to her addiction to Drouet and Hurstwood, later in the theater. In Chicago she lives financially dependent on Drouet, later in New York from Hurstwood. In New York City she can ultimately move financially independently in society through her career as an actress, but her success is based on her looks, on her beauty, as well as on her ability to imitate, on the basis of which she has achieved social advancement.

"Loss of innocence"

Carrie's "Fall" or her "loss of innocence" ( fall from innocence ) is symbolized in the novel at the point when she combines the impressions of the city with warmth. In this scene Drouet holds her hand in a friendly way and strolls through the city with her. While Carrie lets her gaze wander dreamily through the streets of the city, Drouet looks at her steadfastly:

"He took her hand and held it genially. He looked steadily at her as she glanced about, warmly musing. "

These different perspectives and styles, as well as two subsequent scenes in the same chapter reveal something about the change in the relationship between Carrie and Drouet and suggest that Carrie enters into an intimate love relationship with Drouet without being married to him. This form of coexistence was seen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the "loss of innocence" and decency of young women.

Drouet's steady gaze looks like a predator fixating its victim, while Carrie's wandering and dreaming gaze, hypnotized by the impressions of the city, represents the perfect victim:

"She was again the victim of the city's hypnotic influence."

At that moment, she doesn't even notice Drouet's gaze. Following the scene of the couple strolling through town, Carrie's sister Minnie dreams of a great loss and Carrie's fall from a rock. A second subsequent scene shows Drouet visiting Hurstwood in his office a week after the scene with Carrie to invite him to visit his new home with Carrie. This is how we learn of Carrie and Drouet moving into a shared apartment. While Carrie's social "fall" or "loss of her innocence" is symbolically represented in Minnie's dream by Carrie falling from a slippery rock, the second scene in which Drouet invites Hurstwood to an evening for three contrasts the presentation of his trophy Carrie his friend. So Drouet conquered Carrie, while Carrie worries about her social status because of her lost innocence:

“'Oh,' Drouet thought, 'how delicious is my conquest.' 'Ah,' thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, 'what is it I have lost?' "

Prostitution as a metaphor

The financial dependence on her two suitors Drouet and Hurstwood and the associated "loss of innocence", as well as her work as a successful actress, can be interpreted metaphorically as a form of prostitution. In both cases, both in their love affairs and in the acting performance on the theater stage, male fantasies of idealized femininity are projected onto Carrie. Carries' metaphorical prostitution begins with her passivity - coupled with her purchasability due to her material longings - and is continued in the course of the novel through her talent for imitation. It increases its attractiveness and popularity through the perfection of the imitation. This only requires her outward appearance and the performance of female physical grace, which Carrie uses as a socially standardized ideal of femininity and thus fulfills a social role. Instead of the role of the respectable married woman, she takes on the role of the beautiful, unreachable and dangerous social figure of the prostitute - for her lovers as well as for the theater audience.

In the case of the two suitors, she becomes particularly desirable for the two men at the very moment when she overcomes her insecurity during the performance of her first appearance of the amateur play and casts the audience under its spell with her acting. Her attractiveness increases with this first appearance, with which she gains power over her admirers:

"They only saw their idol, moving about with appealing grace, continuing a power which to them was a revelation."

In this novel scene, the meeting of the desires of her lovers and the theater audience becomes clear. Lovers and audiences alike are enthusiastic and fascinated by Carrie. Just as prostitutes are admired and feared for their power at the same time, Carrie experiences the unpleasant aftertaste of that power in the moment of success and independence. She notices that she has taken the position of a prostitute:

"The independence of success now made its first faint showing. With the tables turned, she was looking down, rather than up, to her lover. "

So instead of enjoying her powerful position, she recognizes the negative implication in this success.

expenditure

  • Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. from the English by Anna Nussbaum. Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 1929.
  • Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. Ille & Riemer, Leipzig / Weißenfels 2004, ISBN 3-936308-20-9 . (New edition of the Nussbaum translation with an afterword by Prof. Dr. Heike Paul)
  • Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. Translated from English into German by Susann Urban. Verlag Die Andere Bibliothek , Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-8477-0392-1 . (Epilogue: Ilija Trojanow; translated for the first time from the unabridged original version)

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The play Under the Gaslight (1867) by Augustin Daly is a melodramatic and Daly's first successful play, which was successfully performed on numerous theaters in the USA up to the end of the 19th century. See also: Augustin Daly. ( Memento of July 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ “He [Hurstwood] was evidently a light among them, reflecting in his personality the ambitions of those who greeted him. He was acknowledged, fawned upon, in a way lionized. Through it all one could see the standing of the man. It was a greatness in a way, small as it was. " Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 171.
  3. ↑ "He was more generally known than most others in the same circle, and was looked upon as someone whose reserve covered a mine of influence and solid financial prosperity." Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 169.
  4. ↑ "People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure. (...) He stopped stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered foolishly in [through the windows of an imposing restaurant]." Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 477.
  5. ↑ "(...) Carrie was naturally imitative. She began to get the hang of those little things which the pretty woman who has vanity invariably adopts. In short, her knowledge of grace doubled, and with it her appearance changed. She became a girl of considerable taste. " Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 103. "(...) a little suggestion of possible defect in herself [was] awakening in her mind. (...) Instinctively, she felt a desire to imitate it. " Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 100.
  6. ↑ "Although Carrie rises to fame as a Broadway actress (…) she is really a showgirl who shares with [Emile Zola's] Nana the lack of any real acting talent. This aligns her more with the entrapment of the naturalist prostitute than with the new woman who 'writes' her own life as an artist. " Irene Gammel: Sexualizing Power in Naturalism : Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove. 1994, p. 75.
  7. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . A Signet Classic, 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 80 .
  8. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . A Signet Classic, 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 79 .
  9. ↑ "The last [strange scene] made her [Minnie, Carrie's sister] cry out, for Carrie was slipping away somewhere over a rock, and her fingers had let loose and she had seen her falling. (...) She [Minnie] came away suffering as though she had lost something. She was more inexpressibly sad than she had ever been in life. ”Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , pp. 80-81.
  10. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . A Signet Classic, 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 90 .
  11. ↑ "Both Hurstwood and Drouet viewed her pretty figure with rising feelings. The fact that such ability should reveal itself in her, that they should see it set forth under such effective circumstances, framed almost in massy gold and shone upon by the appropriate lights of sentiment and personality, heightened her charm for them. " Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 179.
  12. ↑ "The audience, which had been inclined to feel that nothing could be good after the first gloomy impression, now went to the other extreme and saw power where it was not." Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 178.
  13. ↑ "Dreiser aligns the new, financially independent woman with the naturalist prostitute, by emphasizing that Carrie's spectacular success on stage is built on a very subliminal fantasy of power and pleasure for the male audience. When Carrie is on stage, men project different fantasies into her body; for each she becomes something different, like the prostitute who is called on to become any feminine type her customer requires. " Irene Gammel: Sexualizing Power in Naturalism : Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove. 1994, p. 74.
  14. ↑ "As a sexual icon she [Nana; and Carrie as naturalist prostitute] represents the danger of eros with its implicit threats of social contamination and corruption." Irene Gammel: Sexualizing Power in Naturalism : Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove. 1994, p. 74.
  15. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 182.
  16. ↑ "Their [Drouet's and Hurstwood's] affection for her naturally heightened their perception of what she was trying to do and their approval of what she did." Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 158.
  17. ^ "It was in the last act that Carries fascination for her lovers assumed its most effective character." Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . Hammondsworth, Signet Classic 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 179 "The manager suffered this as a personal appeal. It came to him as if they were alone, and he could hardly restrain the ears for sorrow over the hopeless , pathetic, and yet dainty and appealing woman whom he loved. Drouet also was beside himself. " ibid, p. 182.
  18. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . A Signet Classic, 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 183 .
  19. ^ Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie . A Signet Classic, 2000, ISBN 0-451-52760-7 , p. 184 .