Abstract:

Theodore Dreiser is the first prominent writer in the American literature history in the 20th century, as well as the pioneer of American modern fiction. Sister Carrie is Theodore Dreiser’s first novel. The novel describes the tragic destiny of a girl who comes from a poor family to metropolis. This paper analyzes both the internal and external factors which lead to Carrie’s tragedy. The author holds that the external factors include commercialism and the family environment and the internal factors include Carrie’s rebellious personality, her selfish characters, her intensive desires for material wealth and the fame as well as the lack of rational education. The paper concludes that both external and internal factors lead to her tragedy.

Key words: Sister Carrie; tragedy; the external factors; the internal factors

摘要：

西奥多•德莱塞是20世纪美国文学史上第一位杰出的作家，也是美国现代小说的先驱。《嘉莉妹妹》是德莱塞发表的第一部长篇小说。小说以美国大都市为背景，描述了资本主义社会中贫穷家庭女子的悲惨命运。本文分析了造成小说《嘉莉妹妹》中女主人公嘉莉悲剧命运的内外在因素。首先分析了消费经济的时代背景和家庭环境这两个外在因素对嘉莉妹妹造成的影响。接着又分析了嘉莉妹妹不断陷入堕落深渊的内在因素，这其中包括嘉莉自身叛逆的性格，自私自利，对物质财富和社会地位的强烈欲望，以及理性教育的缺乏这几个方面。嘉莉妹妹的悲剧命运正是内外在因素结合所产生的必然结果。

关键词：《嘉莉妹妹》；悲剧；外在因素；内在因素

1. Introduction 
Theodore Dreiser is a great American writer of naturalism and realism in the early 20th century. He came from a poor immigrant family, the 12th of 13 children. He had an unhappy childhood. Because of poverty, he touched upon rough work when he was a child and came across a variety of tasks and the dark side in the society. When he was 15 years old, he went to Chicago to make a living. During that time, Dreiser read plenty of works of Huxley and Darwin. At the same time, he wrote many articles about poor people’s life.