Abstract

Sister Carrie, written by Theodore Dreiser, depicts the different life paths of two main characters: Carrie Meeber, an ordinary country girl who rises from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress, and George Hurstwood, a member of the upper-middle class who degrades from his comfortable life to a life on the streets and to the eventual suicide. This thesis aims to analyze the causes, which include the different social and cultural backgrounds, different family backgrounds, different desires, disparate personalities and disparate recognitions and realizations of social identities of Carrie Meeber and George Hurstwood, leading to their different life paths in Sister Carrie.

Key words: Sister Carrie, Carrie Meeber, George Hurstwood, life paths, cause analysis
 
摘要

美国作家西奥多•德莱赛的小说《嘉莉妹妹》的主要讲述了男女主人公的不同人生轨迹。女主人公嘉莉•米伯从一个普通又贫穷的乡下姑娘晋升为百老汇名角；而男主人公乔治•赫斯特伍德则从过着舒适生活的中上阶级中的一员沦为乞丐直至自杀。本论文旨在通过探析嘉莉和赫斯特伍德这两个主要人物走过不同人生轨迹的诸多原因，向人们揭示这两个人物经历不同的人生旅程正是因为他们有着不同的社会文化背景和不同的家庭背景。他们受相异的欲望驱使，他们拥有不同的性格、对各自社会身份的认识不同，并且实现各自社会身份的方式也不同所致。

关键词：《嘉莉妹妹》；嘉莉•米伯；乔治•赫斯特伍德；人生轨迹；原因分析

1.    Introduction
Sitting in the rocking chair, Carrie dreams her future. Reading newspaper in the rocking chair, Hurstwood indulges himself in memories of past. This is the deep impression the novel Sister Carrie gives us, which is written by Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945), the great American realistic writer.
Sister Carrie is both a major work of art and an important landmark in the development of literary modernism. Dreiser’s work, and especially Sister Carrie, has been central to discussion of the nature of twentieth-century American life since his reputation as a leading American writer became established about the time of the First World War. With the publication of Sister Carrie in 1900, Dreiser became the first American author to step into the twentieth century, rejecting the old Victorian morality for what was considered to be a shocking new form of descriptive realism. As one of the principal American exponents of literary naturalism at the turn of the century, Dreiser led the way for a generation of writers seeking to present a detailed and realistic portrayal of American life.