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1、The Embodiment of Consumerism in Sister Carrie摘 要 西奥多德莱塞是美国著名的作家之一。他的第一部长篇小说为嘉莉妹妹(1900)，通过农村姑娘嘉莉到芝加哥谋生而成为名演员的故事，揭露了资本主义社会繁荣外衣掩盖下的生存斗争，刻意地描写了人们在欲望和消费上的越界，以犀利的笔锋描绘了道德败坏。因而大多数批评家认为嘉莉妹妹宣扬的是道德败坏和人性堕落。这部小说因被指控“有破坏性”而长期禁止发行，但一些散发出去的赠阅本却引起了许多重要作家的注意。本文把嘉莉妹妹放到19世纪末二十世纪初美国的消费文化语境中来研究，从消费主义角度来探讨和分析作者在作品中所描绘的生动
2、场景。消费文化放在当时的背景来讲，它就意味着对物质财富的拥有和奢华的消费方式，商品不仅意味着满足人们的生活的基本需要，它已经成为身份和地位的象征，人们更加注重自身的享受，甚至是将享受当作自己所必须承担的一种责任。德莱塞的嘉莉妹妹通过大量的细节性描写，诸如人们对服饰，金钱，豪宅的欲望，尤其是通过对嘉莉妹妹消费欲望的塑造，我们可以看出嘉莉妹妹正是这种新兴消费文化的典型代表，并且深陷其中，作者通通过其作品大量写实性的情节向我们展示了一幅19世纪末20世纪初美国消费文化的真实景象。关键词：美国社会；消费主义；嘉莉妹妹；消费欲望 Abstract Theodore Dreiser is the most
3、 famous American writer of naturalistism in America. His first novel, Sister Carrie, deliberately describes transgression on human desires and consumption, and social immorality with a sharp style.This paper put Sister Carrie in the early twentieth century of the context of consumer culture in Ameri
4、ca, we explore and analyze a lively scene the author depicted in his works from the view of consumerism. On the background of consumer culture, it means that the owners of material wealth and luxury consumption style. Goods not only refers to the basic needs of peoples lives, it also has become a sy
5、mbol of identity and status. People pay more attention to their own enjoyment, and even consier this enjoyment as a responsibility they bear. In Dreisers Sister Carrie, we can see Sister Carrie is a typical representative one of consumer culture by a lot of the details of the description, such as pe
6、oples clothing, money, desire luxury, especially through the consumption culture of Sister Carrie desire to shape. The authors show us large numbers of realistic works of the circumstances in the late 19th century and early 20th century through the true picture of the U.S. consumer culture. Key word
7、s: American society; consumptionism; Sister Carrie; Consuming desires1. Introduction1.1 Auther Theodore Dreiser and His Literary AchievementsKnown to be significant as a founding influence on the latter American naturalist school, Theodore Dreiser was one of Americas greatest naturalist writers. He
8、was the leading figure in a national literary movement that replaced the observance of Victorian notions of propriety with the unflinching presentation of real-life subject matter. To a certain extent. His novels explored the new social problems that had arisen in a rapidly industrializing America .
9、Dreiser was bom in a large and poor family. So his education was irregular, but with the help of a sympathetic high school teacher, he spent two years at the University of IndianaAfter working as a journalist on several mid-western newspapers，in 1894 he went to New York, where he began a career in p
10、ublishing. In the summer of 1899 when at age of twenty-eight, he began his first novel，Sister CarrieIn writing form, his works were full of long sentences, and he paied a great attention to details. Due to its important descriptive technique in literature, the realism literature always created some
11、unexpected effectiveness.Qu Qiubai said that Theodore Dreiser was a genius, like white Venus in the boundless radiation. It was thus clear that, he was an outstanding writer, and his works were popular with others. Sister Carrie was in the treasure trove of American literature a bright pearl.1.2 The
12、 Story of Sister CarrieThe book described a story a rural girl Carrie went to Chicago because of pursuing metropolitan material life. She had gone through the hardships of job hunting, diseases and unemployment. In order to survive, she becamed a salesmans mistress, later eloped to New York with a h
13、otel manager. An accidental opportunity, he crowded into the upper society, it seemed that she had realized her desire, but at the end of the story, she still dreamed her own happiness in the rocking chair.In Sister Carrie, actually, Carrie was just like a sail in the sea that wanted to reach the sh
14、ore but was forced to float because of the great wind around her. Carrie was depicted a role who ran into the morass of desire, and human, like animals and insects, were driven by the desireWith extensive descriptions of department stores and working conditions in factory, conspicuous consumption an
15、d grinding poverty, and individual desire and class conflict, Theodore Dreier presented a world of American capitalism toward the end of the nineteenth century1.3 Social and Cultural Background of BookAs a writer coming from the bottom of the society, Theodore Dreiser always had the sympathy to the
16、weak and the poor. Jiang Jian (1986:32) argued that in his views, nothing was absolute and people were easy to get lost under various forces of the environment. American women had been effected by consumerism, and they began to challenge traditional moral Standard when Dreiser began to write Sister Carrie. The characters in his novels mostly came from the bottom of the society, and their
