《【英语论文】《嘉莉妹妹》文学评论（英文）》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【英语论文】《嘉莉妹妹》文学评论（英文）（6页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、LITERATURE REVIEWAN ANALYSIS OF DREISERS SISTER CARRIE嘉莉妹妹文学评论An 18-year-old girl without money or connections ventures forth from her small town in search of a better life in Theodore Dreisers revolutionary first novel. The chronicle of Carrie Meebers rise from obscurity to fame-and the effects of
2、her progress on the men who use her and are used in turn-aroused a storm of controversy and debate upon its debut in 1900. The authors nonjudgmental portrait of a heroine who violates the contemporary moral code outraged some critics. A century later, Dreisers characters continue to fascinate reader
3、s. The protagonist Carrie is still a controversial character. Many critics regard Carrie as a “fallen woman”, and there are also some critics regard her as a “new woman”. Many people hold such an opinion that Sister Carrie is a tragedy, in which carrie is described as an immoral woman and she had an
4、 empty life though she succeeded as a famous player at the end of the novel. They conclude that “it is impossible to possess true happiness in a money-oriented capitalism society.”(Li qi-shan 45).Jiang yu-qin says that “the city changed Carrie,a once innocent country girl into a seemingly successful
5、 empty life.” (Jiang yu-qin 135)In her abstract she points out that Carrie represents the women who “experience desiring,chasing,struggling,falling and disillusioning.” Carrie was successful eventually from material aspect, but still unhappy spiritually.We can find such a paragraph in Peng dan-kuis
6、“Theodore and his Sister Carrie ”, “She(Carrie) has two persons to help her,but instead of getting better, she goes from bad to worse. Actually there is no one who can be the saviour for Carrie in the society. And she comes to realize it is impossible to be a success by working hard honestly.Carrie
7、is just one of the many victims of the citys influence and of the capitalist society.” (Peng dan-kui 75)From this passage, we can conclude that Mr. Peng takes Carrie as a traditional woman victim in a corrupted society. In other words, he denies that Carrie has her own motivates as an independent pe
8、rson. There are also many critics about the character carrie abroad.For example, in Sister Carrie and the Hidden Longing for Love: Sublimation or Subterfuge? Leon F. Seltzer says, “The thesis of this study is Carries longing is shown by Dreiser(though never clearly understood by him )to be a longlin
9、g for love and emotional relatedness. Such a longing, however, can never know fulfillment because, on one level, carrie is depicted as deficient in the capacity to love and, on far more essential level, her creator ( a man at once sterile and promiscuous, who.)was incapable of appreciating either th
10、e nature or possibiities of human intimacy.” (Leon F. Seltzer 192)We notice that seltzer descried carrie as a woman without the capability of love. Here he also attacked dreiser.From so many critics, we can see there are really many people they dont appreciate Carrie. They think she is degenerate, i
11、mmoral,cold-blooded, and without a lofty soul. But like everything has two sides, lots of other people have different viewpoints. They dont take carrie so simply, so traditionally. They argue that carrie, from some aspects, stands for “new woman”, which we can see in Wu hong-yuns Sister Carrie under
12、 the unconventional discourse of feminism. First she declares that “Carrie is not a victim ” of the captilist world, on the contrary, she is a victor, because “she (Carrie) proves her ability and realizes her value through her own efforts in the capitalist fatherhood society.”(Wu hong-yun 36) Then M
13、rs. Wu put forward the idea “Carrie is not a immoral woman”, and she admires Carrie highly with the words like “spirit independently”, “rational and witty”, “hard working”, “a new woman” from the feminist angle. She even justifies Carries desire for material gains. She insists that carrie shows a qu
14、ality of “modern females”. Its not superisingly that we can find almost the same words in Wang gang-huas article. He even puts Carrie to a new higher level. Here is a paragraph from his Carries desires and motives : “in short, carrie shaped her own perfect image through the reflection in mirror , th
15、e discernment and the confirmation of the surrounding people. This kind of self-shaping cultivated carries own consciousness, that is, she regards herself as an independent subject, and keeps an independent position in social activities. Thereafter, carrie gradully stepped into being active from pas
16、sive.” (Wang gang-hua 92)If we surf on the internet, we can find lots of critics about Sister Carrie. Clare Virginia Eby says in his Cultural and Historical Contexts for Sister Carrie, “Dreisers evolutionary treatment of ethics in Sister Carrie ultimately verges toward the revolutionary, in that he tries to get readers to suspend judgment on actions that would typically be condemned as immoral, such as Carries prem
