Formation Of Desire And Identity Crisis In Sister Carrie

Set in the fin-de-siecle America,Sister Carrie portrays the relentless self-pursuit under the consumer desire,which is deemed as a representative of the American naturalist novel.Yet it pinpoints the social dynamics between desire and loss of subjectivity through the rise and fall of the characters,which is profoundly realistic with its thematic and formal implications.Concentrating on the realistic portrayal of the social-historical milieu and the character relation in Sister Carrie,this thesis argues that the novel refracts the identity crisis in the emerging consumer society.Characters’fabricated identities through money and commodities are a sham.This urban identity crisis is represented in three aspects,namely,the consumer desire,the commodified character relation,as well as the disruption of family and marriage convention.While drawing on the post-structuralist body politics,premising the bodily desire as a product of social construction,the present study pays equal attention to the social and historical background of the novel,revealing Dreiser’s naturalist style as a detached form of social critique.In Sister Carrie,characters are objectified,who undergo a reversal of subjectivity from people to things under the desire constructed by the consumer capitalism.A traveling salesman,Drouet is constituted by commodities.Hurstwood attempts in vain to rebuild his identity through Carrie’s youth and beauty,who is reduced to nothing without money and managerial position.Once severed from her family due to their incapability to satisfy her basic needs,Carrie soon constructs her urban identity through clothes with Drouet’ s money under her consumer desire,fashioning herself as an object of visual appeal.The triangular character relation is an anti-romance inscribed with pecuniary relations,through which Carrie rises to stardom.Yet her success is an illusion.It is structured as an ironic revelation of her moral decline,through which the novel calls into question the conventional moral criticism.In pinpointing Carrie’s moral defeat but refusing to condemn her,the novel launches its thematic critique of consumerism,thereby revealing Dreiser as an unconventional moralist.Coupling with the analysis of th e novel’s realistic narrative strategies,this thesis contends that through its seemingly naturalist stance,Sister Carrie refracts the problematics of selfhood and its moral ramifications in the consumer society.