![]() The novel ends with Carrie becoming a successful stage actress in New York City, while one of her lovers spirals downward and commits suicide.ĭreiser’s frank treatment of sex and materialism, and his refusal to punish characters for their behavior, shocked readers. The novel shows the attractions and dangers of big city life in the late nineteenth century, with its glittering department stores, theaters, dance halls, and other opportunities to mingle with the opposite sex without supervision. First seduced by a traveling salesman on her train ride into the city, Carrie quickly adapts to her new environment, where she learns to make use of other men and the opportunities she encounters. ![]() The novel centers on Carrie Meeber, a young woman from rural Wisconsin who moves to Chicago to earn money. Sister Carrie (1900) was Dreiser’s first novel, and it reflects the ideas of literary naturalism through its attitude of scientific objectivity toward human behavior. Interested in the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Dreiser began writing fiction that explored ideas of social determinism and the “survival of the fittest,” particularly during a period of intense urbanization across the country. ![]() After several years of menial labor and some college, in 1892 he started as a journalist at the Chicago Globe. The eleventh of thirteen children, he had an unhappy childhood shaped by poverty. Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser, an influential and at times infamous author of literary naturalism, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. ![]()
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