Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreisser
Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreisser :
After he had all the money in the hand bag, a wave of revulsion seized him. He would not do it-no! Think of what a scandal it would make. The police! They would be after him. He would have to fly, and where? Oh, the terror of being a fugitive from justice! He took out the two boxes and put all the money back in the safe. In his excitement he forgot what he was doing, and put the sums in the wrong boxes. As he pushed the door to, he thought he remembered doing it wrong and opened the door again. There were the two boxes, mixed.
He took them out and straightened the matter, but now the terror had gone. Why be afraid?
While the money was in his hand, the lock clicked. It had sprung! Did he do it? He grabbed at the knob and pulled vigorously. It had closed. Heavens! He was in for it now, sure enough. The moment he realised that the safe was locked for a surety, the sweat burst out upon his brow and he trembled violently.
I shouldn't complain. I've been assigned some wonderful books out of this project this year, including both Hammett and Chandler. I was bound to get a real dud sooner or later, and here it is.
The title, "Sister Carrie", is misleading. While there’s a Carrie in the story, she’s neither a nun nor does she have a sibling of any importance, and she’s not even the main character. Her story is a subplot about a country girl from the midwest flirting her way to stardom on Broadway or something. I barely noticed her as she flew by, except to have vague feelings of inertia.
The real story is about the slow, excruciating fall of a man named George Hurstwood, from comfortable Babbitlike retail manager to unbearable, gut wrenching poverty following episodes like the one quoted above, in which fate pronounces judgment and execution on him before he’s finished wrestling temptation. It’s like chewing on tinfoil for several hours of reading, and it brought back all my own poverty nightmares. Yes, Dreisser does it very, very well, but what he does causes intense pain to the reader.
It’s not that Hurstwood is a compelling and sympathetic character; he’s really a colorless nobody who gets kicked around as much due to his own fecklessness as due to the hostility and indifference of the cold, cruel capitalist world out there. However, the amount and degree of suffering he goes through I’d have a hard time wishing on anyone who isn’t downright evil.
Similarly, it’s hard to have a feeling of rejoicing at Carrie’s theatrical career, since it just sort of drops into her lap at the opportune moment for plot advancement, with no description of any training or actual talent on her part. Hence, fate happens to the characters regardless of what they deserve, which is possibly Dreiser's main point. If so, it's a stupid point. I’d go mad or stop trying in such an environment. Which is, coincidentally enough, what Hurstwood eventually does.
In fact, I've read Dreiser's better known book, An American Tragedy, which seems to have a similar point with much less defensibility. In that book, the main character goes out of his way to plot a murder and lure the victim to a distant location, and still the suggestion is that it wouldn't have happened if society had provided a better opportunity for someone like that to advance without having to kill. In Sister Carrie, Hurstwood at least has the temptation and opportunity fall on him, to the point where it's questionable how much he really meant to do in the first place.
Like I said, it's like chewing tinfoil.
After he had all the money in the hand bag, a wave of revulsion seized him. He would not do it-no! Think of what a scandal it would make. The police! They would be after him. He would have to fly, and where? Oh, the terror of being a fugitive from justice! He took out the two boxes and put all the money back in the safe. In his excitement he forgot what he was doing, and put the sums in the wrong boxes. As he pushed the door to, he thought he remembered doing it wrong and opened the door again. There were the two boxes, mixed.
He took them out and straightened the matter, but now the terror had gone. Why be afraid?
While the money was in his hand, the lock clicked. It had sprung! Did he do it? He grabbed at the knob and pulled vigorously. It had closed. Heavens! He was in for it now, sure enough. The moment he realised that the safe was locked for a surety, the sweat burst out upon his brow and he trembled violently.
I shouldn't complain. I've been assigned some wonderful books out of this project this year, including both Hammett and Chandler. I was bound to get a real dud sooner or later, and here it is.
The title, "Sister Carrie", is misleading. While there’s a Carrie in the story, she’s neither a nun nor does she have a sibling of any importance, and she’s not even the main character. Her story is a subplot about a country girl from the midwest flirting her way to stardom on Broadway or something. I barely noticed her as she flew by, except to have vague feelings of inertia.
The real story is about the slow, excruciating fall of a man named George Hurstwood, from comfortable Babbitlike retail manager to unbearable, gut wrenching poverty following episodes like the one quoted above, in which fate pronounces judgment and execution on him before he’s finished wrestling temptation. It’s like chewing on tinfoil for several hours of reading, and it brought back all my own poverty nightmares. Yes, Dreisser does it very, very well, but what he does causes intense pain to the reader.
It’s not that Hurstwood is a compelling and sympathetic character; he’s really a colorless nobody who gets kicked around as much due to his own fecklessness as due to the hostility and indifference of the cold, cruel capitalist world out there. However, the amount and degree of suffering he goes through I’d have a hard time wishing on anyone who isn’t downright evil.
Similarly, it’s hard to have a feeling of rejoicing at Carrie’s theatrical career, since it just sort of drops into her lap at the opportune moment for plot advancement, with no description of any training or actual talent on her part. Hence, fate happens to the characters regardless of what they deserve, which is possibly Dreiser's main point. If so, it's a stupid point. I’d go mad or stop trying in such an environment. Which is, coincidentally enough, what Hurstwood eventually does.
In fact, I've read Dreiser's better known book, An American Tragedy, which seems to have a similar point with much less defensibility. In that book, the main character goes out of his way to plot a murder and lure the victim to a distant location, and still the suggestion is that it wouldn't have happened if society had provided a better opportunity for someone like that to advance without having to kill. In Sister Carrie, Hurstwood at least has the temptation and opportunity fall on him, to the point where it's questionable how much he really meant to do in the first place.
Like I said, it's like chewing tinfoil.