The List

(page 2 of 10)

A MODERN WOMAN

Sister Carrie (1900), by Theodore Dreiser

"Here was the great, mysterious city which was still a magnet for her."

The story: Dairyland virgin Carrie Meeber escapes to Chicago, where she shacks up with a flashy traveling salesman before running off to New York with the manager of a posh Loop saloon.

Why the book resonates: Dreiser's first novel, Sister Carrie vividly re-creates two Chicagos: the vanishing early city and the nascent metropolis with its skyscrapers, department stores, and brightly lit theatres—all identified with travel-guide precision. It's a world obsessed with ostentatious materialism and the cult of celebrity—in other words, the same world we inhabit today. Though Dreiser was initially vilified for his realism and amorality (a heroine unpunished for living in sin!), those same characteristics became hallmarks of American fiction. "Those [writers] who follow will never have to face the road through the wilderness of Puritan denial," wrote Sherwood Anderson, "the road that Dreiser faced alone."

The author (1871-1945): Hoosier by birth; New Yorker by choice. Lived only briefly in Chicago, but began his career as a journalist with the short-lived Chicago Globe, where he encountered many of the ideas that would inspire his novels.
—G. J.

 
 

Advertisement