从女性主义的角度解读《嘉莉妹妹》

A Feminist Reading of Sister Carrie

摘要

西奥多·德莱赛的作品《嘉莉妹妹》自诞生之日起就褒贬不一。作者以生动的笔触描绘了20世纪初以嘉莉为代表的美国女性走出家庭，开始在社会上寻求自身价值。女主角嘉莉一路走来从一个默默无闻的农村女孩到最后成为熠熠生辉的大明星，因其在追求自己理想时，采用的种种有违传统道德的手段，一度成为了道德败坏虚荣物质的代名词。本文将从女性主义的角度出发，结合当时的社会环境对嘉莉的人物形象进行分析，探索欲望背后女性在男权社会的艰难奋斗，并在此基础上得出嘉莉妹妹对当今社会女性主义发展的现实意义。

关键词：《嘉莉妹妹》；女性主义；男权社会；欲望；奋斗

Abstract

Theodore Dreiser’s famous novel Sister Carrie has drawn mixed response since the day it was published. The writer shows us a vivid picture of women who live in the beginning of the 20th century. They started to leave their family and took part in social work to achieve their own value. Like many other women Carrie chose to find a new life in Chicago. From an unknown rural girl to a successful big star, Carrie is synonymous with vanity and desire because her success was built on taking advantage of two different men. This thesis discusses the characteristics of Carrie from the standpoint of feminism. Combined with the social environment of that time, this paper explores the struggle of women in a patriarchal society and gains some enlightenment to feminism these days.

Keywords: Sister Carrie; feminism; patriarchal society; desire; struggle