Carrie's Social Identity Reconstruction In The Perspective Of The Social Identity Theory

Sister Carrie is a representative of Theodore Dreiser.By describing how the country girl Carrie struggles to take root in the big city,this novel reveals little figures' hard fight for survival in the capitalist society,and shows the author's understanding and sympathy for them.Since its publication,Sister Carrie has never failed to attract the attention of critics and researchers,who,by employing the theories of naturalism,realism,feminism,American Dream and consumer culture and soon,have achieved a great many researches on it.However,social psychology has been seldom adopted in the research of Sister Carrie.This thesis tries to interpret it from the perspective of social psychology,and social identity in particular,to analyze the process of Carrie's social identity reconstruction.Social identity theory holds that society is composed of different kinds of groups and each group has its corresponding rights,status and so on.Individuals gain their social identity through their group relations.When in-group is superior to other out-groups,group members would gain their positive collective self-esteem and social identity.Yet when in-group is negatively treated by the outside world,group members would have a negative social identity.Driven by the motivation of self-esteem,group members will adopt different strategies to rebuild their social identity.The pursuit of social identity affects personal cognition,psychology and behavior.Through the analysis of Carrie's social identity reconstruction,it helps to better understand the deeper reasons behind the heroine's behavior mode.First,this thesis analyzes the causes of Carrie's motivation to reconstruct her social identity from external and internal aspects.External factors include the influence of society and the influence of other people.How the outside world thinks of Carrie's disadvantaged group would conversely influence Carrie's sense of value and her social identity.In terms of internal factors,the thesis touches upon Carrie's insatiable desire,lack of stable values,as well as her inferiority and insecurity complex.These factors are combined to lead to Carrie's dissatisfaction with her group status and low identification with in-group.Therefore,she attempts to squeeze into a better group to reconstruct her social identity.Then this thesis analyzes the process of Carrie's social identity reconstruction.Through social categorization and social comparison,Carrie gains a clearer insight into the disadvantages of her in-group.And after finding that the group boundary is permeable,Carrie chooses the strategy of individual mobility,that is,to change her membership by joining in strong groups,thus to gain her self-respect in the society.Therefore,she tries to modify her own defects and differentiate from in-group members.At the same time,she actively draws close to the members of desirable out-group,expecting to enter their group circle and get her recognized membership.Finally,by fleeing from her original group to join in a better one and using new group identity as source of self-esteem,Carrie obtains her so-called positive social identity.As a product of special culture and history,character's social identity construction is closely related to social needs,historical development and the author's claim.By analyzing Carrie's social identity construction,this thesis can reveal the ideology mainstream and value system of the society Carrie just lived in as well as Dreiser's certain ideas.Applying social identity theory into literary analysis can make readers better understand the characters and grasp the connotation of literary works.