Sunday book pick: ‘Sister Carrie’, published in 1900, predicted the individualism of urban life

“She wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of knowing much in order to do anything in it at all.”

Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel, Sister Carrie, joins the list of my favourite novels of all time.

Set in the 1880s, well before the First World War and during a time of general peace, Sister Carrie is a wondrous, humane epic about encountering a city, finding a place for yourself in it, and, if luck is on your side, making a fortune and a name for yourself.

The eponymous Sister Carrie arrives in Chicago from Columbia City, a small town by all definitions. Modestly educated and lacking any real skill, Carrie only has her determination to rely on to make a living in the city. She puts up with her sister and her husband in their tiny apartment and works poorly-paid, backbreaking jobs in dingy shops. Much of her earnings go toward paying her keep and the monotony of work, despite the city’s various excitements, causes her despair.

So Carrie is not entirely heartbroken when she loses her job after a brief spell of illness. On her way to the city, Carrie had caught travelling salesman Drouet’s fancy, who struck up a friendship with her. She moves out of her sister’s house and begins living with Drouet, without really defining their relationship. However, he introduces her as his wife and she accepts it without protest.

Money matters

Dreiser is finely attuned to a woman’s perspective of the city. Chicago, so vast and bountiful, stirs great excitement in Carrie but it is the elegant women in their fine dresses and ornaments that make her realise the luxury of money and want to do something where she’s at total freedom to splurge on herself. The dedicated workforce at shops and factories is a reminder of the changing mood in the late 19th century, when it was starting to feel that even the most common man could come into wealth if they only applied themselves sincerely. To this effect, Drouet is a self-made man and so is Hurstwood (who leaves his wife and family for Carrie), a bar manager. Carrie is paid for and looked after by these kind men, who gladly indulge her vanity.

However, it is when Carrie moves to New York City with Hurstwood that her problems really start. Hiding from his family and having embezzled funds, Hurstwood is only able to manage a short spell of comfort before money troubles start making themselves felt. It is when Hurstwood withholds money from her that Carrie realises that she is truly in danger. Avenues of money-making close and the couple amasses creditors, leaving Carrie with no choice but to take matters into her own hands.

Hurstwood’s morale takes a hit and Carrie, remembering her brush with theatre in Chicago, turns to Broadway in search of acting roles. Her ambitious move is more about survival rather than any real aspirations of the glamorous life. The gender roles are upended and we witness Hurstwood spending longer hours at home, without work, while Carrie goes out into the world, doing whatever she can, to earn – the ultimate humiliation being the once-proud Hurstwood having to beg his wife for an allowance.

The more Carrie finds success on Broadway, the more defeated Hurstwood becomes. Carrie decides to keep the money for herself and cuts Hurstwood off. His generosity in the past, and even Drouet’s, do not move her and she views her relationship with the men as the most practical, realistic way for a woman to survive in a man’s world. The men owed her their patronage in exchange for her companionship.

While the men might have felt something like love for her, Carrie does not bother herself with such illusions. Even in her lowest moments, she does not falter in her ambition for a good life and it is this steady desire that makes her acutely aware of her reality – that of a woman with no wealth of her own. Therefore, it is no wonder that Carrie sees the men as helpful links between her and the world, each offering her the opportunity to venture out and come into her own. If Drouet eased her into the world, Hurstwood toughened her up for unfavourable circumstances.

Urban ambitions

Dreiser is not shocked by Carrie’s amorality, though he’s sympathetic to Hurstwood’s poverty. In Carrie, we witness the cold, calculative manipulation of a determined mind but as the novel argues, it is necessary for survival and not the symptom of excessive ambition. Carrie quickly adapts to the crisis while Hurstwood gives in – the city allows no time to stop. It moves ahead at a breakneck speed and so must its people. Carrie’s success is slow to arrive but we do not find her reflecting on her failures – it is not so much a moral limitation as being too preoccupied with earning a livelihood. Hurstwood falls back in time, quite literally, as he spends his days reminiscing about his comfortable life in Chicago and the money that was always in abundance.

Even in the 1880s, when these cities were nothing like the beasts they are today, they were already formidable. The novel predicts the consuming exhaustion to keep the urban life afloat. Even the small distractions – going out, dining well, dressing prettily – become a source of anxiety rather than pleasure. Even during her hardest days, Carrie cannot stop desiring pretty dresses and baubles, making her all the more determined to not share her wealth with Hurstwood. She does not mind extending her credit with the grocer and the landlord if it means buying a new dress. Individualism is the urban philosophy and Carrie’s selfishness, a natural result of it.

Carrie is enamoured with the bright city lights but they do not illuminate her future. Even in this early commentary on urban restlessness, it is evident that money was becoming a temporary possession rather than a long-term asset. The hedonistic pleasures of the city made it extremely difficult for the newly-rich to save up, creating a perpetual cycle of desperation. It also tied an individual’s worth to their economic status. Money becomes an all-consuming chase, where betrayal and abandonment become necessary to race ahead. Unknown forces seem to chug Carrie along – very few decisions are of the heart and most are made out of necessity. Almost all philosophising is done by the omnipresent narrator, the characters perhaps finding it a waste of time to ruminate on their fates.

Dreiser’s ornate prose and eloquent contemplation cannot hide the gruesome reality of American urban life. Grimy yet glittering, suffocating yet bountiful, poor yet opulent, the city can be whatever you want it to be – the choice, at least at the turn of the 20th century, was yours.

Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser, Penguin Classics.