On Identity Performance Of Carrie In Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser is an excellent American novelist in twentieth century.He is an outstanding representative of realism and naturalism.As one of his masterpieces,Sister Carrie,his first novel,becomes a model for feminist research,because it describes the theme of women seeking survival in a cruel social environment.The current female research on it mainly focuses on the women’s power statement and consumer culture from the perspective of naturalism,and pays less attention to the construction of Carrie’s female identity that is precisely the basis for the study on the statement of women’s power.Sister Carrie’s female identity is culturally constructed,which is achieved through identity performance.The thesis studies the modes of Carrie’s identity performance from the perspective of Butler’s performativity theory,aiming to elaborate the relation between people’s identity and performativity.Based on research,Carrie’s gender identity as woman and social identity are firstly the performativity for social norms and cultural conventions.Meanwhile,language and discourse as language practice have a performative function on her gender identity and social identity,so Carrie’s gender identity and social identity are constructed in language and discourse.Secondly,Carrie’s each identity is constructed through the performance and performativity of gestures and behaviors that a certain identity should have on her body.Therefore,Carrie’s gender identity and social identity are both unnatural and dramatic.Lastly,Carrie is androgynous.Both femininity and masculinity play an important role in Carrie’s identity performance.But only when her femininity and masculinity are in a harmonious ideal state can Carrie’s female identity construction be in the optimal state.