Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie, by Theordore Dreiser, tells the story of Carrie Meeber, a country girl from Columbia City who moved to Chicago in search of her dream of fortune and social identity. To achieve this, first, she became the mistress of two wealthy men who were uncontrollably obsessed with her that it threatened to destroy the careers of both men. She eventually obtained her dream and identity by becoming an affluent and famous actress who was desired by all men but ultimately ends up alone. Dreiser was born in 1871, the twelfth of the thirteen children of Sarah and John Paul Dreiser. He used experiences of his siblings to construct Sister Carrie.

“The exploits of Dreiser’s sister, Emma, supplied the basic framework for a great deal of the novel. Emma moved from the Dreiser home in rural Warsaw, Indiana, to Chicago, Illinois, after a falling-out with her fanatically religious father, John Paul Dreiser. In Chicago, Emma lived under an assumed name and fell in love with L.A. Hopkins, a suave forty-year-old, then discovered he was married” (Source 2).

“Much like Carrie in the novel, his older brother Paul had an aptitude for the stage. Paul worked his way up from traveling minstrel shows, becoming a national celebrity through his winning stage performance and sentimental ballads” (Source 2). Theodore Dreiser’s novel parallels late 19^th century industrial America, where social status was revealed through a person’s leisure activities. Dreiser’s story was told with an overwhelming sense of realism that depicts each characters’ search for their own American Dream.