Sister Carrie-A Mirror Of Consumer Culture

Theodore Dreiser is the pioneer of American naturalist, whose first novel Sister Carrie was published in 1900. With American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as background, the novel witnesses the great changes of transitional America. From the early twentieth century of the context of consumer culture and emerging of "New Woman" in American, this thesis attempts to analyze a lively scene the author depicted in his works from the view of the consumer culture. In Sister Carrie, Carrie is one of the typical representatives by many descriptions of the details, such as people's clothing, department store.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one deals with a brief introduction of Theodore Dreiser's life,his works,literature review,and the realistic significance and the thesis's structure.Chapter two is about literary review, which mainly introduces a general studies on Sister Carrie and the history phase of studies on Sister Carrie.Chapter three is mainly concerned with the appearing of the theory of consumer culture and its main features and its influences on the Dreiser,the city environment,and the characters'ideology and behavior and the appearance of New Woman.Chapter four relates in detail the consumer culture embodied in the context of Sister Carrie:such as the family relationship under the consumptive ideology, the relationship between men and women,lifestyle and the appearance of New woman influenced by the consumer culture.Chapter five explores the consumer culture's influences on the city environment and characters'life choice there.Through the study of Sister Carrie from the perspective of consumer culture, the thesis finally reaches a conclusion that Sister Carrie successfully depicted the main features in commercialized society influenced by the consumer culture; it is just like a mirror of consumer culture, reflecting the true and vivid picture of American consumptive society.