Sister Carrie: Two Sides Of Modern City

Most of Theodore Dreiser's novels concern about city life. The city background is so attractive not only because Dreiser has unforgotten experience in the city, but also the city itself is full of contradiction. On one hand, the city is regarded as a place where the society would be more civilized, and people can really live a better life by their hard work; on the other hand, there are so many traps in the city—money, fame and power, etc. which force people to be far away from the happiness. Compared with the country men, people in the city seem to be more calculated, indifferent and blasé, which can be thought as the urbanite's typical character. Such kind of character is fully showed in the social communication. The duality of the city shocks Dreiser deeply. As a pioneering explorer of this territory, Dreiser often connects his characters with the environment, and each character has a deep relation to the place. Influenced by'Social Darwinism'and Herbert Spenser's philosophy, Dreiser regards the city as a jungle, and people compete fiercely to survive in the jungle. Sister Carrie is one of the representative works which describes the duality of the modern city.Urban Cultural Studies aims to study the city culture. As for city culture, or urban culture, according to Mr. Heng Xiaoqing, it means a cultural mode which is of city characteristic and is created by the citizen during their long-time daily life. It is the sum of city environment, lifestyle and the conventions. It mainly includes the following levels, material-culture, i.e. the architecture culture, including the architecture style and color, architectural layout, etc; management-system culture, i.e. the city management system, social organization, etc; life and behavior manner culture, which includes the convention, daily communication, etc; mental-concept culture, i.e. ideology, religious conception, political conception, philosophical conception, etc. Through studying city culture, Urban Cultural Studies furthermore makes an analysis on the development of the modern city, its typical characteristics and the urbanite's character. By using the achievement of research on city culture and studying Sister Carrie in detail, the thesis will discuss the duality of the modern city and how Dreiser describes this duality through the'material-culture'and'mental-concept culture'level. It will be a new and effective perspective to read the novel by combining the motivations of action, mental life, and the destiny of the characters with the duality of the modern city. And the application of Urban Cultural Studies in Sister Carrie provides a reference for the research on the relationship between city and literature.