Desires and Wealth in Sister Carrie and The Age of Innocence

【Abstract】 Both Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence are novels depicting the relationship between men and women at the background of late 19th century New York City, U.S.A. This article will mainly discuss the desires and wealth of the major male characters in both novels.

【Key words】desires; wealth; Sister Carrie; The Age of Innocence

【作者簡介】姚刚，上海政法学院语言文化学院。

Historically the 1861-65 American Civil War paved the way for the industrialization of the nation. Together with this national industrialization came the urbanization and modernization, which caused the boom of big cities like Chicago and New York City in the U.S.A. Big capitalist business like department stores became prosperous. “Conspicuous consumption” became a social standard to distinguish between the upper, middle and the lower classes. Money came to take control over people’s lives; everything, even every person seemed to have its or his price label on the forehead. At this time in America, life was dominated by invincible material forces. People held unsatisfied desires towards money, power and sex. Sex and the relationships between men and women were solely based on finances, just as Carrie’s relationships with Drouet and Hurstwood. Even Dreiser himself expects Carrie to do nothing more than rely on a man. “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”. This statement also implies that Carrie (or women in general) uses seduction to get what she wants. In his book Sister Carrie, Dreiser first describes his heroine Caroline Meeber not by her opinions or actions, but by what she owns: “a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, ...and a small yellow snap purse”.

Hanson and his wife Minnie are Carrie’s brother-in-law and older sister in Chicago. Hanson is a dull but hard-working man who believes in hard work and frugal spending, mostly due to their poor economic condition. Hanson represents that kind of men, who are from the lower class and lead a meager life, but dominate inside their families. He has deep affection towards his child who is his great and only hope. He witnesses the booming and fast development of the city Chicago, and is full of hope of his own future. But the cruel and gloomy reality of his own situation is against his wish. He implicitly recognizes this, but is unable to make a decisive change in his life. Hence Hanson wants his sister-in-law Carrie to leave their flat when Carrie fails to earn her own board and no longer brings profit to the family. Poverty can make kinsmen strangers. We should not blame Hanson for being cold to Carrie. It is for the financial reason that he treated her like that. If the capitalist American society is a pyramid as described by Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence, then people like Hanson and Minnie are at the bottom of it. Contrast to Hanson’s attitude towards Carrie, Newland treats Ellen much sympathetically and pleasantly. He sends beautiful flowers to cheer up Ellen and also manages to ask his honorable friends to hold magnificent social party to help stop the gossip. What prevents Hanson to treat Carrie well is mainly his lack of money. What enables Newland Archer to help Ellen is his sufficiency of money. If Newland Archer were as poor as Hanson, he might lose the ability to help others and the help he might offer would be powerless. While if Hanson were born with a silver spoon in his mouth like Newland Archer was, Carrie might not need to move out soon after her unemployment. Thus we can see that money is mostly often used by people to identify each other in a consuming society. Money makes the mare go.

Drouet is a traveling salesman who leads a mobile life. His encounter with Carrie on the train is not absolutely coincident. The life he favors is a variable and free one, just like his job. This explains why he shows so much reluctance to get married with Carrie and is always eager to flirt with various girls. He also represents the commercialization of the human being. He sells his goods with himself; his appealing appearance and manners make what he sells the same attractive to the consumers. He himself is an excellent actor in his private life as well as a successful salesman in his career. He goes to the expensive restaurants and saloon frequently to pretend to be wealthier than he really is. He puts himself among the rich and is eager to imitate them. It is just through him that Carrie learns the decent ladies’ manners. Drouet, being a salesman and consumer at the same time, sells his goods to earn his money. Then he uses his money to buy what he desires. What he desires from poor Carrie is body. Compared to Drouet, Newland Archer is really wealthy and belongs to the upper class. He has also traveled a lot, but mostly for fun instead of bread. What he can enjoy is a stable life in reality. He does not need to travel around the country for a living. Being a member of the upper class, although he longs for freedom as much as the lower-middle-class Druet does, his identity and social status has been bond to his family’s wealth and reputation. Thus he has to follow the social codes and mind his own personal life more carefully than Drouet does. Although he has lots of money and a high social status, he has to suppress his desire for Ellen. He is wealthy but he is neither happy nor free. What he desires from Ellen is just what he badly needs --- true love and the freedom to obtain it.

George Hurstwood and Newland Archer make different moral decisions when they meet two different women. But both of them end up with a tragic outcome to some extent. Middle-aged George Hurstwood is the manager of Fitzrald and Moy’, a saloon in Chicago. At the beginning of the novel, he is a wealthy, important man. He has a comfortable home, a wife, a couple of grown daughter and son. But all of the family members are not on his side or in his favor. His wife is in menopause and his children are in rebellious period. While the thirty-year-old Newland Archer holds lawyer as his job and is a promising young man in the upper class. He has his fiancée —May Welland—from his own class , who has the both side families at her back. And Newland  is lonely among them.

Hurstwood is the representative of well-off upper-middle-class men. His identity is based on his role as manager of Fitzgerald and Moy’s. His personal life is subordinated to his public identity, not the other way around; he thinks of an indiscreet affair as a threat to his job, not his home life. Hurstwood regards his wife largely as one of his possessions, an ornament that he can show off as proof of his success. Because he believes that she is susceptible to flattery, and because he has little faith in her, he knows “something might happen” if he does not keep close watch over her. Although it is not put directly, it is clearly the extramarital affair. Hurstwood entertains fantasies of “pleasure without responsibility.” He does not think he is doing any harm to his life. Sister Carrie exposes the hypocrisy of the moral values of the middle class. For instance, Hurstwood does not disapprove of men’s extramarital affairs in themselves; he only disapproves if they are carried out indiscreetly. Hurstwood and his friends travel to Philadelphia to engage in forbidden pleasures because no one knows them there. Should any of Hurstwood’s friends get caught engaging in such pleasures in Chicago, the system of middle class morals would obligate him to either distance himself or lose respectability. The crime is thus, at least in Hurstwood’s eyes and the eyes of his friends, getting caught in the act--not the act itself.

When Hurstwood meets young and beautiful Carrie, he becomes fascinated with her charming appearance soon and cannot help himself in his relationship with Carrie. No respectable job, no handsome income, no “genteel” family, nothing could overcome his biological need and stop him from returning to savage unreason. Hurstwood is that kind of modern men who are impotent and unfit to survive due to their fatal defect. “His innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to freewill. His free-will not sufficiently develop to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance.” he thus hovers between being a man and a beast in his behavior. He finally chooses to elope with Carrie by cheating her. He has to do so because his wife has found out his relationship with Carrie and is ready to sue him for divorce. Divorce at that time is just like Wharton depicted in The Age of Innocence, is a very embarrassing thing. And also Hurstwood’s property is all under his wife’s name. Then his divorce may deprave him of all his wealth as well as his reputation. While his life with Carrie in New York city is not an ideal one, there he is lack of the social identity as in Chicago and has lost most of his property. He is no longer an important man.  But he repeats his former life when he begins to earn more. He began to come back home late and leave Carrie home alone. Without his former social relationship, Hurstwood unavoidably goes bankrupt and is shuffled off by Carrie. He then cowardly chooses to commit suicide. Driven by unsatisfied desire, Hurstwood is no more than one of the millions of men who cannot adapt to survive in the world with the deprivation of their social identity.

Spiritually the desire for freedom and true love has tortured Newland Archer a lot. But unlike Hurstwood, Newland, as a lawyer, is reasonable enough to suppress his desire towards another woman. Newland is a good reader and traveler; he has very wide intellectual interest in various fields like literature and anthropology, science and law. He likes to communicate with musicians, painters and poets and novelists. He also takes part in politics enthusiastically in order to bring some fresh air into the country. The appearance of Ellen brings him a wisp of fresh air. He sees many things of himself in common with Ellen. His feeling towards Ellen is beyond sympathy. In some degree, he finds in her a kindred spirit. Therefore he is not a mundane man like Hurstwood who cannot control his own biological impulse and acts lack of reason. He is a promoter of avant-garde causes like divorce, which is still an irregular and sensitive thing at that time. But he is only an advocator of these new ideas not a performer. Just like Wharton says he is only a “dilettante” instead of an expert. Therefore he avoids bringing a tragedy to his family and himself by letting go Ellen. The reason is that he knows it clearly that once he gives up May and takes Ellen. His class will shun him and leave him no position in their circle. His class will kill him not by guns but by gossips, gestures or contempt. Hence he may lose his future. Then to obtain the freedom for love will make him sacrifice the freedom for his original life. After weighing both sides, Newland takes great courage to give an end to the relationship between him and Ellen. He sacrifices himself to save himself as well as others at the same time.

While Ames is a cousin of Carrie’s friend Mrs. Vance. He represents a world of discerning artistic taste that attracts Carrie. Whereas Drouet and Hurstwood represent the wealth needed to regularly attend shows in the theater, Ames represents the artistic taste necessary to assume a critical attitude toward the entertainment. Carrie’s desire for Ames and her longing for freedom (although she herself cannot tell what it is) resembles with Newland’s desire for Ellen and his longing for freedom. If we say Hanson is driven by money. Then Druet and Hurstwood by sex. Newland by power.

References：

[1]Orlov, Paul A.. An Emersonian Perspective on Dreiser’s Characterization of Carrie[J]. Penn State University, Delaware County Campus,2001.

[2]Cynthia. Criff Wolff A Feast of words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton[M]. Oxford University Press, Oxford,1978.