嘉莉的“新女性”身份：《嘉莉妹妹》女性主义论

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ABSTRACT

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) is not only one of the first significant writers of the

20th century American literature but also one of the pioneers of the American modern

novels. His contribution to American literature mostly lies in his pioneering the way of

depicting factually the new city life of the United States without any prejudice. His

influence on his contemporary writers and the writers of later generations is so great that

Sinclair Lewis claimed in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1930 that Dreiser was

the one who should have won the prize.

Sister Carrie is Dreiser’s first novel. It is not only a major work of art but also an

important landmark in the development of American literary modernism. At the turn of

the 20th century, the first wave of the feminist movement pushed the “New Woman” to

the forefront of the historical stage. She was not satisfied with her social and family role

imposed to her by the convention at all and stepped into the public sphere that used to

be occupied by men. Even though many writers in that era especially some male writers

of the genteel tradition tried hard to attack the “New Woman” in their work, Sister

Carrie breaks the Howellsian genteel tradition and disregards the advocacy of the “True

Woman” in mainstream ideology. Dreiser in this novel shows his great sympathy

toward its protagonist Carrie Meeber, the country girl who comes to Chicago to seek her

fortunes, and finally builds up her identity as a “New Woman”. For clarity, “identity” in

this thesis just refers to the being or the quality of the “New Woman” against the

background of the “New Woman” in the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

Establishing Carrie’s identity as a “New Woman” takes a process and her identity as a

“New Woman” is mainly demonstrated by the following four aspects: her sexual

liberation, her economic independence, her spiritual independence and her final

self-fulfillment out of marriage and family. Carrie’s identity as a “New Woman” not

only threatens the male authority but also challenges powerfully the traditional gender

relations and the conventional conception of family. At the same time, however, Dreiser

presents an ambivalent view of female identity portraying Carrie as a “New Woman”.

On the one hand, he portrays Carrie as a successful “New Woman”; on the other hand, it

seems that he can not tolerate men’s weakness in front of the empowered femininity and

tries his best to defend masculinity. This is the result of both Dreiser’s personal

experiences and the strong power of the mainstream ideology.

This thesis attempts to analyze and interpret Carrie’s identity as a “New Woman”

against the background of the “New Woman” in the United States at the turn of the 20th

century. Also, this thesis intends to study Dreiser’s ambivalence in his view of female

identity in relation to the complicated relationship between Dreiser and his mainstream

ideology.

Key Words: Sister Carrie, “New Woman”, gender relations,

mainstream ideology，ambivalence

中文摘要

西奥多.德莱塞（1871-1945）不仅是 20 世纪美国文学中的一位重要作家，也

是美国当代小说的开拓者。他不带偏见地如实描写美国城市新生活，为美国文学

做出了杰出的贡献。他不仅极大地影响了他的同时代作家，对后辈作家也有着深

远的影响。1930 年，辛克莱.路易斯在他的诺贝尔奖答谢词中声称德莱塞才是荣膺

此项殊荣的最佳人选。

《嘉莉妹妹》是德莱塞的第一部小说。它不仅是一部重要的艺术作品，而且是

美国现代文学的一座重要的里程碑。二十世纪之交，女性主义的第一股浪潮将“新

女性”推上了历史的舞台。她不满足于社会强加给她的社会及家庭角色，从而进

一步步入了贯常属于男性的活动领域。当时很多遵循优雅传统的作家尤其是一些

男性作家竭力在自己的作品中攻击“新女性”，然而在这部小说中，德莱塞不顾

主流意识形态对“真女性”的推崇，大胆地打破了豪威尔斯的优雅传统，对其主

人公嘉莉.米贝，一个到芝加哥碰运气的女孩，抱以极大的同情，并最终确立了她

的“新女性”身份。“身份”在本文中是指在二十世纪之交美国“新女性”的出

现这个大背景中“新女性”的存在或资质。嘉莉“新女性”身份的建立经历了一

个过程，并主要通过以下四个方面显示出来：她的性解放，她的经济独立，她的

精神独立以及她最终在婚姻和家庭之外的自我实现。嘉莉的“新女性”身份不仅

威胁了男性特权，同时也极大地挑战了传统的两性关系和家庭观念。但与此同时，

德莱塞在把嘉莉塑造成“新女性”的同时也表现出了其女性观的两面性。一方面，

他把嘉莉塑造成一个成功的“新女性”；另一方面，他似乎不能容忍男性在女性

面前所表现出的软弱，尽力维护男性的尊严。这种两面性一方面与德莱塞的自身

经历有关，另一方面也与当时的主流意识形态有关。

该论文试图在二十世纪之交美国“新女性”的出现这个大背景中分析和阐释

嘉莉的“新女性”身份。同时，该论文也试图通过研究德莱塞与当时主流意识形

态的复杂关系来研究其女性观的两面性。

关键词：《嘉莉妹妹》，“新女性”，两性关系，主流意识形态，两

面性

Contents

Acknowledgements

ABSTRACT(English)

ABSTRACT(Chinese)

Introduction .......................................................................................................................1

Chapter One The Identity and Significance of “New Woman” ........................................8

§1.1 What is “New Woman”? .................................................................................... 8

§1.2 The Meaning of the “New Woman” and the Turn-of-20th-Century American

Literature .................................................................................................................. 10

§1.2.1 The “New Woman” and Her Supporters ................................................ 11

§1.2.2 The “New Woman” and Her Critics .......................................................13

§1.3 Dreiser and the “New Woman” ........................................................................16

Chapter Two The Process of Establishing Carrie’s Identity as a “New Woman” ..........21

§2.1 The Sexually Liberated Carrie ......................................................................... 23

§2.2 The Economically Independent Carrie .............................................................27

§2.2.1 The Meaning of Money .......................................................................... 28

§2.2.2 From Economic Dependence to Economic Independence ..................... 29

§2.2.3 Carrie’s Imitative Talent .........................................................................33

§2.3 The Spiritually Independent Carrie .................................................................. 35

§2.4 Carrie: Self-Fulfillment out of Family and Marriage .......................................37

Chapter Three A Critique of Patriarchalism: Confirming Women’s Identity ................ 41

§3.1 Bitter Satire on Drouet and Hurstwood ............................................................41

§3.2 Carrie’s Subversion of the Gender Relations and Conventional “True Family”

..................................................................................................................................43

Chapter Four Conscious or Unconscious: The Ambivalence in Dreiser’s View of

Female Identity ............................................................................................................... 46

§4.1 Carrie, Hurstwood and Dreiser .........................................................................46

§4.2 The Strong Power of the Main-stream Ideology .............................................. 48

§4.3 The Manifestations of Dreiser’s Ambivalence .................................................49

§4.3.1 His Sympathy for Carrie .........................................................................49

§4.3.2 His Defense of Masculinity .................................................................... 50

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 54

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 58

Publications .....................................................................................................................62

Introduction

The first half of the 20th century witnessed the golden era of American literature,

during which many reputed novelists and poets glittered with their notable work.

Theodore Dreiser, born in 1871, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of the most significant

writers of that time. He is not only one of the first significant writers of the 20th century

American literature, but also one of the pioneers of the American modern novels. In the

history of American literature, he is best known for his depicting realistically the new

city life of the United States without any prejudice. He influences considerably his

contemporary writers which include Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis and Dos

Passos among others, who know clearly about Dreiser’s helping them clear the way for

their composition. In 1930, on the occasion of becoming the first American writer to

receive the Nobel Prize for literature, Sinclair Lewis claimed in his acceptance speech

that Dreiser was the one who should have won the prize. He said: “Dreiser, more than

any other man, is marching alone. Usually unappreciated, often hounded, he has cleared

the trail from Victorian Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty,

boldness, and passion of life. Without his pioneering I doubt if any of us could, unless

we liked to be sent to jail, seek to express life, beauty and terror” (Kazin, Shapiro, 1955:

111-112). Lewis spoke for a generation of American writers when he extolled Dreiser

for his sweeping aside old models and providing American literature’s “first fresh air

since Mark Twain and Whitman” (Maule, Cane, 1963: 7-8). Dreiser also has an obvious

influence on the writers of later generations. For instance, the famous African-American

writer Richard Wright, best-known for his powerful and visceral depiction of the black

experience, respects Dreiser very much. His masterpiece Native Son, a story about a

young black man who works as a chauffeur to a wealthy white family and accidentally

kills the wild and crazy teenage daughter of the couple, is obviously influenced by

Dreiser’s great novel An American Tragedy.

During his lifetime, Dreiser published six significant novels, including Sister

Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), The

Stoic (1947) and An American Tragedy (1925). In all these works, Dreiser devotes

himself to depicting realistically the life that he has observed, aiming at exposing

Identity of “New Woman”: A Feminist Inquiry into Carrie’s Fate in Sister Carrie

different profiles of the American society to readers. It is his respect of social facts and

realities that constitutes his lifelong attitude toward writing.

Sister Carrie, Dreiser’s first novel, like Madame Bovary and The Waste Land, is

not only a major work of art but also an important landmark in the development of

American literary modernism. Due to its unfair treatment and tortuous experience soon

after its publication, it has remained a controversial issue among the critics and it has

continued to stimulate critical anxiety right up to the present. How to give a fair and

justified assessment is then a challenge to all those who intend to study this novel. Let

us start from Dreiser’s motivation.

It was one of Dreiser’s newspaper friends Arther Henry who first persuaded him to

try his hand at a novel and encouraged him to write Sister Carrie. Dreiser at first

protested that he couldn’t afford the time, that he was too busy earning a living, that no

novel of his would be published and that he didn’t have a plot; but still he kept

pleasantly brooding over the notion. Finally, one day in October, 1889, he found

himself writing two words on a clean sheet of paper: “Sister Carrie.” His mind was

blank except for the name, and he had no idea about who or what she was to be when he

finished the two words, but suddenly he pictured Carrie Meeber on the train to Chicago.

It was as if out of a dream, but the dream was also a memory, for much of his own life

went into the novel. In one sense Carrie is just Dreiser himself, just as Flaubert once

said that he is Mme. Bovary; the little Mid-western girl Carrie has not only Dreiser’s

mixture of passivity and ambition, but also his romantic love for cities ( Kazin, Shapiro,

1955: 175). Carrie’s character was also loosely based after one of Dreiser’s five sisters,

who had resented the restrictions of small town life and of their father’s strict religious

moralism and ran off to Chicago. It was there where she met a successful businessman,

a father of two or three grown children, and they eloped to New York. This parallels

Dreiser’s Carrie, who eventually meets the married George Hurstwood and begins their

love affair. Hurstwood’s degradation after losing Carrie is Dreiser’s another memory of

his misfortunes in 1895, after he lost his job on the New York World. Unable to find

another job, he had once lived in cheap lodging houses and —before he was rescued by

his brother Paul—had pictured himself as sinking toward squalor and suicide as well.

As soon as Dreiser completed Sister Carrie, both Carrie and Hurstwood become so

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摘要：

ABSTRACTTheodoreDreiser(1871-1945)isnotonlyoneofthefirstsignificantwritersofthe20thcenturyAmericanliteraturebutalsooneofthepioneersoftheAmericanmodernnovels.HiscontributiontoAmericanliteraturemostlyliesinhispioneeringthewayofdepictingfactuallythenewcitylifeoftheUnitedStateswithoutanyprejudice.Hisinf...

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