A Study Of Sister Carrie In The Perspective Of Consumer Culture

Sister Carrie is one of the most important representative works of Theodore Dreiser.It tells a story about how a girl turned herself from an underclass girl to a successful actress and superstar of Broadway.Sister Carrie was written in 1900,just at the time when consumer culture sprang up in America.Consumer culture refers to the sum of consuming ideals,consuming modes,consuming behaviors,and consuming environment as shown in the material production,spiritual production and daily consumption,while consumerism,as part of consumer culture,refers to the reckless possession and consumption of natural resources and material wealth and the idolization of consumption as the highest ideal of human life.In our society,the features of Sister Carrie's time have not disappeared yet,therefore it is very meaningful to study Sister Carrie from the perspective of consumer culture.This thesis mainly studies three aspects: 1.the features of consumer culture of Sister Carrie;2.the influences of consumer culture on Carrie's character;3.the influence of consumer culture on other characters in Sister Carrie.The introduction mainly introduces Dreiser and it also summarizes the researches done at home and abroad,analyzes the significance of this thesis,and gives a brief introduction of consumer culture.The first chapter mainly studies the features of consumer culture in three aspects: 1.unrestrained pursuit of material possession;2.showing off and intemperate spending;3.irrational competition.The second chapter studies how consumer culture influenced Sister Carrie's character in four ways: 1.loss of innocence;2.hedonism;3.betrayal.The third chapter studies other characters' fate in consumer culture: 1.cruelty;2.indifference;3.selfishness;4.Loneliness.This thesis concludes that greed is the reason of degeneration of humanity,so everybody should have a noble spiritual pursuit to promote the harmonious social development.