Naturalism In Sister Carrie

Naturalism is a special creative current of thought which emerged in 1890s and came to a dominant position in 1900s in Europe and America. It is characterized by its great emphasis on fidelity and truthfulness in the writing process, the starkest advocating of environment and heredity as those important deterministic forces shaping the fates of individuals, the amoral attitude towards the materials, pessimistic determinism, as well as its stress on the animal side of human nature.Dreiser's Sister Carrie is well known as the works in which Naturalism attained maturity in America. Thus, the paper taking Sister Carrie as an example, attempts to study it from naturalistic point of view and explain how environmental factors and hereditary factors influence Carrie's fate. Besides that, since it's well understood that naturalism has several limitations, the paper aims to discuss naturalism in Sister Carrie with critical eyes, criticizing pessimistic determinism and the concept of human beast as reflected in the novel.It is divided into three chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One and Chapter Two relate in detail the important roles played by the two most conspicuous factors determining Carrie's fate: one is environmental factor, the other is her hereditary disposition. Chapter one focuses on discussing these environmental factors. Naturalism greatly emphasizes the working of environment on one's fate. It puts forward the principle that the environment that is advantageous for one's development will contribute to one's rise, whereas the environment that is malicious...