河北师范大学
高等教育自学考试本科
毕业论文
题目：嘉莉妹妹，一部自然主义杰作
考生姓名： 李冰冰 考生所在单位：石家庄学院 准考证号： 016908100219 导师姓名： 李新春 专业： 英语
完成日期： 2010年8月19日
SISTER CARRIER: A NATURALISTIC NOVEL
BY
LIBINGBING
Prof. Li XinChun, tutor
Submitted to the B.A. Committee in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Of Bachelor of Arts in the English department
of Hebei Teachers University
Aug.19, 2010
摘要
德莱塞是美国自然主义文学家的杰出代表，他用自然主义的文学创作手法开创了美国文学史的一个新时代，影响了一大批同时代及后来的作家。他视客观真实为创作的最高手法，强调环境遗传因素对主人公命运的决定作用。嘉莉妹妹，德莱塞的处女之作，因无情的揭露资本主义下社会的阴暗本质，遭到出版商的拒绝，但这并未阻止全世界人民的诵读以及不断地被评论家从新的角度进行研究并赋予新的诠释，即使是在一个世纪之后的今天。现在通过阅读我们依然可以在那里学习到许多的东西并且利用他们更好的反省自己。本篇论文探讨什么是自然主义及自然主义的发展自然主义如何形成及自然主义如何在嘉莉妹妹中表现出来而环境和遗传因素如何又一步步对主人公命运的产生影响。通过这种方法更加有利于我们更好地理解自然主义的其他巨作。
关键词:自然主义，客观，环境，遗传。
Abstract
Dreiser is an outstanding representative figure in the American naturalist literature. With his naturalist style, he creates a new era of American literature and influences a great many contemporary writers as well as his followers. He regards objectivity and realism as the best creative rule and emphasizes the effects of environment and heredity factors to the fate of heroin and hero. Sister Carrie，the first masterpiece of Theodore, which is popular with ruthless exposure of the dark side of the life under capitalism, later is refused by the publisher. However, this didn’t prevent it from being read by the people all over the world and constantly appreciated by critics in other new perspectives and endowed with new connotations even after a century. Today, we still can learn quite a lot from this novel and introspect ourselves after reading it. This thesis intends to deal with the birth、development and formation of naturalism, how naturalism expressed in Sister Carrie and how environment and heredity factors have the influence on the fate of the heroine. Through this, we can have a better understanding of naturalistic masterpieces in general.
Key words: naturalism, objectivity, environment, heredity.
Contents
Introduction„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„1
ChapterⅠ Theodore Dreiser and His Literary Achievements„2-3 ChapterⅡ What is the Naturalism
A.The birth, development and formation of
naturalism„„„„„„„„„„„„„„4-5
B. The features of naturalism„„„„„„„„5-6 C. Theodore’s view on naturalism and naturalism
reflected in Sister Carrier„„„„„„„6-8
Chapter Ⅲ The Effects of Naturalism on the Fate of Heroine A. Environment factors „„„„„„„„„„8-10 B. Hereditary factors„„„„„„„„„„„10-12 C.
determinism„„„„„„„„„12-13
Conclusion „„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„„13 Notes
Bibliography
Pessimistic
Introduction
After the Civil War, great changes have quietly happened in the American. Monopoly capitalism instead of free competition, American had transformed itself into an industrialized and commercialized society. More and more labors rushed into big cities to earn their fortune, but the wealth was only gathered to business tycoons and buccaneers and the gap between the rich and the poor was getting larger and larger, the polarization began to show up. Traditional value system had tremendous shaken. “God is dead. The universe is cold and indifferent. Man has to survive by himself.” was turning on. The masses struggled to live. Then, with the evolution theory of Darwin and “human beast” thought of Zola popular, the school of naturalism sprang up. It originated from French in 1960s. In le roman experimental, Emile Zola presented the fundamental naturalist doctrine and ever claimed that human existence is determined by environment and heredity. Later, naturalism spread widely into America in 1990s and had heavily influence on the American’s society and economics. Sister Carrie faithfully reproduces the urban life of American in the
early 20th century, is known as a representative naturalistic
novel.
ChapterⅠTheodore Dreiser and His Literary
Achievements
Theodore Dreiser is generally regarded as one of the most significant American’s literary naturalists, who launches a new period of naturalistic literature at the end of nineteenth century in America. He was born in Terre Hante, Indiana, on August 27 ,1871 and lived in a poor and intensely religious family .He had some educations in his childhood and was ever financed by a teacher to spent a year at Indiana University. Besides this ,he read widely by himself and greatly influenced by Emile Zola，Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer and lent support to the view that nature and society had no divine sanction. When he was fifteen, he began to afford himself and did lots of odd jobs, the experience of working for Chicago Globe,New York World made great contribution for him to be an
outstanding writer.
Dreiser is also a productive writer. He composes lots of masterpieces in his life. Most of his books refer to the description of naturalism and deal with social inequality as well as other dark sides of the life under capitalism, his first masterpiece --- Sister Carrie published in 1900 is one of them
2
which is ruthless exposure of the dark side of the life under capitalism. Then, with the success of Jennie Gerhardt published in 1911, Dreiser devoted himself to work as a full-time writer. After that, his distinguished trilogy including The Financier (1912) The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947) were appearing. In 1925 An American Tragedy got published, it won him millions of glory and an incorrigible position in literature. During the last two decades of his life Dreiser turned away from fiction and involved himself in political activities. He ever joined the Communist Party shortly before his death in 1945. It is Dreiser who broke the genteel tradition of literature and dramatized the life in a very realistic way.
One of Dreiser’s strongest champion even declared: “That he is a great artist and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped.\" I think this comment can precisely summarized Dreiser’s remarkable position in American literature.
3
ChapterⅡ What is the Naturalism
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest social conditions, heredity and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It is the outgrowth of realism.
A. The birth, development and formation of naturalism “Naturalism, a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human being as passive victims of natural forces and social environment.”⒈which originated in France
in 1960s and be led by Emile Zola, who claimed a “scientific” status for his studies of impoverished characters miserably subjected to hunger, sexual obsession, and heredity defeats.
⒉
and then it spread into American in 1990s. The effects of
Charles Darwin evolutionary theory and the English philosopher Herbert Spenser’ manifesto “society had operated like a jungle, in which only the strongest and best adapted---the fittest---survived.” All of above thoughts
⒊
have heavily influence on the American’s society and economics. Naturalistic writers use a scientific method to write their novels and believe the human being should be
4
studied impartially, without the morality interfering. They hold the belief that the forces which govern the hero and the heroine’s fates are none other but something like instinct, heredity, and environment. They also lay stress on the pessimistic determinism, especially chemical determinism.
B. The features of naturalism
Naturalism is a hasher and extreme realism. It holds heredity and environment as important deterministic forces in shaping individualized characters whose are presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life is shown to be ironic and tragic. Naturalistic writers often used a version of the scientific method to write their novels, they write about war, prostitution, and crime. The words in books are usually unpolished in language, lacking in academic skills awkward in sentence structure, massive detailed description and the tone in writing tends to be more ironic and more pessimistic. They advocate the protagonists subject to the environment, heredity, desire, instinct and chance. Living in such a misery and poverty life, they are the victims of society and nature. Man can not fully control himself, but by a harsh and formidable force, he is left with no freedom of choice. The
5
leaders of novels frequent but not always are lower ranks of society whose fates are in charge of a kind of mysterious and irresistible force which controls the development of the plot and the fate of the characters. It is this force that turns Carrie, a youth, ignorance，a pure girl into popular actress, it is also this force that results a respectable saloon manager Hursthood falling down to a beggar in spite of his ability and competence. Besides, Dreiser wants to tell the readers the success or failure is not determined by the hardworking or ourselves but by the unexpected chance and some external factors. The heroine and hero are hopeless and insignificant. However, no matter they succeed or fail, they are the victims of this irresistible force. Like all naturalists, although Dreiser gives great sympathy to his characters, he was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings.
C. Theodore’s view on naturalism and naturalism reflected in Sister Carrier
In the early life, Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spencer were learnt from reading by Dreiser
6
and have great impact on him. He supports the belief that the world is a jungle, where “kill or to be kill” is the law, only the fittest can survive.
Sister Carrie traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G.W. Hurstwood. Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be materialistic to the core. Living in a materialistic world,
⒋
the material enjoy is the core of life, the individual pursuits for money, position, fame, or sex, the desire is never-ending and unsatisfying. Carrie is only a pawn of life, she struggles to grasp the mysterious life to achieve her dream for social status and material comfort. The rise of Carrie is not an accidental，also the decline of Huratwood. Carrie is a representative proof that only the fittest can survive. She elopes to a new environment and succeeds to adapt to it. Unlike Hursthood is driven by instinctive passion and becomes a victim of capitalism at last. It is also an amoral work, Carrie is the mistress of Drouet, then Hurstwood which breaks the traditional rule, this conduct should be seriously condemned and punished at that time, however, she succeeds in her career and lives a comfortable life in the end. “Evil is rewarded with good”
7
instead of “evil will be rewarded with evil” ⒌ the result can not be accepted by the moral world, Dreiser describes human nature truthfully and objectivity without moral comments. His heroine is not moral but amoral. Chapter Ⅲ The Effects of Naturalism on the Fate of
Heroine
Naturalistic writers attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human being. They completely believe that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be their instincts and passions as well as heredity and environment. A. Environment factors
The environment factors which have great influence on man’s fate are an outstanding feature of naturalism. Darwin, in his The Origin of Species and Descent of Man, hypothesized that over the millennia man had evolved from lower forms of life. “Humans were special, not because God had created them in his image, but because they had successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and had passed on their survival-making characteristics genetically.”
⒍
The characters in his writing are insect-like animals, devoid of 8
moral consciousness, which are subjected to the mighty and inscrutable forces－especially these of circumstance and innate temperament.
⑦
Carrie--- bright, full of illusions of
ignorance and youth, in fact, her fate has determined the minute she leaves her rural home, as “When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under no circumstances, there is no possibility.” Apparently, she is the latter. She can not
⒏
resist the temptation of the metropolis----glittering theatres, imposing hotels, and fine buildings, all of those are just like magnet which has an irresistible attraction. It is the environment that pushes Carrie into the big city which is “a dose catalyst of wealth, elegance, power, and sex” On the
⒐
train, she by chance meets the traveling salesman Drouet who presents her “so much magnificence faintly affect her.”⒑ She begins to prospect and wonder dreaming “groveling at a woman’s slipper.”⑾ But the harsh life is entirely different
from her ideas. The exhausted work leads her to sick and the sister’s drives her to return home. Consequently, to stay and
9
gain a better living environment, the only way for her to stay in Chicago is to become the “the kept girl” of Drouet who offers the delicately drilled skirts, the remarkable trinkets and other material goods, also, it is he who helps her far away from the obscene labors, the dark, dirty working environment, the rough surroundings of the shoe company. She does not want to be poor any more, the strong desire of money in her mind can not be replaced by anything. As for Carrie, her thorough understanding of money is “something everybody else has and I must get,” ⑿ so, to get higher position, she breaks off with
Drouet without hesitation and elopes with a very successful and well-known married manager---- Mr.Hurstwood. However, with the decay of Hurstwood, Carrie discards him again. At last, Carrie climbs the social ladder smoothly and lives a luxurious life while Hurstwood falls down to a beggar and commits suicide. B. Hereditary factors
Another outstanding feature of naturalism is that it also emphasizes the influence of heredity factors upon man’s fate. It is clearly that Carrie’s rise is tightly bound up with her endowed
nature---“self-interest, youth, prettiness, shapeliness, intelligent”⒀ As we all know, she rise to a
10
prominent position comes actually from her superior appearance determined by her heredity and the external factors through which she lives. The simple nature and pretty appearance pave a solid way for her to capture Drouet first, then Hurstwood or even gets the chance to stand out in the stage to become a famous actress. She utilizes her seemingly good and innocent nature to raise her social position and achieve herself for a better life. Carrie is a born actress, because of “Carrie was possessed of that sympathetic, impressionable nature which, ever in the most developed form, has been the glory of drama. She possessed an innate taste for imitation and no small ability. Even without practice, she could sometimes restore dramatic situations.”
⒁
An eminently practical and yet an almost magical recourse. The endowed gift of nature guarantees her success on the drama.
⒂
In fact, she has no choice in her fate but only to be at the mercy of the nature. It is safe to say that judging from her outstanding hereditary disposition, she is the fittest, the selected one by nature, thus she is bound to survive and make a hit in the jungle-like metropolis. In spite of her immoral deeds, she finally realizes her dream and has the luxurious life she desires, fate has been determined by the nature and she
11
eventually attains it.
C. Pessimistic determinism
Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be pessimists, they accepted the more negative implications of Darwin’s evolutionary theory used to accounted for the behavior of those characters who were conceived as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces. In Sister Carrie, Dreiser exposes the purposelessness of life and the conventional moral standards. In his words, man is a “ life itself is a tragedy ”⒃“victim of forces over which he has no control” life is “so sad ,so strange, so mysterious and so inexplicable” “the earthly exist is a welter of inscrutable forces⒄Although Carrie
achieves fame, wealth and comforts that she is longing for, she is not happy in the end. With cold and detached, she has to leave her sister and live with Drouet who just considers her an entertainment tool. She has no choice but to surrender. “men and women overwhelmed by the blind forces of nature” ⒅ Then,
when a more wealthy man---- Hurstwood turns up, she elopes with him to pursuit higher life. It is obvious that there is no true
12
love between Carrie and two men. All her deeds are just to stay in metropolis and enjoy a luxurious life. She is “a wisp in the wind, not yet wholly guided by reason, she was as yet more drawn than she drew.”⒆ Man, at the very stage of the evolution
is a “dualistic creature”⒇ that is, man is a strange combination of human beat and human reason. she was conquered by desire and instinct, so does Hurstwood, whose fate is determined while he elopes with Carrie only for sexual appeal. Having competence and ability, Hurstwood comes down to a bagger while Carrie in her rocking chair, dream such happiness as she may never feel. Conclusion
All in all, Theodore makes a deeply investigation of how environment and heredity affects the fate of the hero and heroine. With the external forces, unexpected chance, and people’s amoral condition, Dreiser offers us a mirror of the contemporary America to tell us a true America by the aid of naturalism and profoundly reveals and criticizes the moral degeneration of the American society and the moral hypocrisy of the capitalism. It is he who breaks the conventional rules of Victorian time and reveals thoroughly the dark side of
13
the American society. It is a vigorous revolution in literature and lays great influence on American society. He is the most significant representative master in naturalists.
Notes
⒈ 赵红英 等, 美国文学简史 （中国传媒大学出版社，2006），107. ⒉ 赵红英 等, 美国文学简史 （中国传媒大学出版社，2006），107. ⒊ 赵红英 等, 美国文学简史 （中国传媒大学出版社，2006），108. ⒋ 万红艳 等, 英美文学选读 （海南出版社，2008.8）,345. ⒌
Dan
Li,
“Naturalism
Expressed
in
Sister
Carrie,”1672-8610(2007)08-0068-02
⒍ 张伯香 等, 英美文学选读 （外语与研究出版社 1999）,475. ⒎ Yaoxin Chang, A Survey of American Literature [M].
(Nankai University Press, 2002),197.
⒏ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (foreign languages press，
2008),8
⒐Cunliffe, Marcus The Literature of United States[M]
(Virginia R. R. Donnelley $ Sons Company, Harrisonbury, 1986), 244
⒑ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (Foreign Languages Press，
2008),12
⑾ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (Foreign Languages Press，
2008), 8
⑿ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (Foreign Languages Press，
2008),80
⒀ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (Foreign Languages Press，
2008),8
⒁ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (Foreign Languages Press，
2008),186
⒂ Hochman, Barward of Representation in Sister Carrie [M]
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), 55
⒃ Tao Yang, Naturalism of Theodore Dreiser’s Literature
NangJing JiangXi 330034
⒄ 张伯香 等, 英美文学选读 （外语与研究出版社,1999）,525 ⒅ 吴伟仁，美国文学史及选读 （外语与研究出版社, 2009）,8 ⒆ Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie (foreign languages press，
2008),94-95
⒇ Books, C. American Literature ( The Makes and Making [M]. New York : St, Matins’ Print 1973,), 775
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3 Cunliffe, Marcus The Literature of United States[M] (Virginia
R. R. Donnelley $ Sons Company, Harrisonbury, 1986
4 Dreiser Theodore, Sister Carrie Foreign Languages Press
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5.Dan
Li,
“Naturalism
Expressed
in
Sister
Carrie,”1672-8610(2007)08-0068-02
6. 赵红英等, 美国文学简史 中国传媒大学出版社，2006 7. 万红艳等, 英美文学选读 海南出版社2008.8
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Cambridge University Press, 1991
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