Sister Carrie and the Prospects for Individualism in the Capitalist Modern America

Abstract

Validating the cultural centrality of questions of individuality in Sister Carrie, Dreiser highlights the key psychological concepts of the general process of social development and the individual’s self construction in the modern urban world. As he intensively visualizes new conditions of modern urban society and its cultural facts which modified in myriad ways the cognitive and desiring capacities of the individuals, Dreiser attempts to rehabilitate the idea of individualism within the context of modern urban society. Posing a significant challenge to the idea of the autonomous or intrinsic self, Dreiser illuminates a radical re-conception of the new process of identity in the modern city and the contradictions embodied in that identity, whose self-expression turns into a ceaseless succession of illusory images in the visual structure of the spectacle. This paper will analyse how Dreiser characterizes these new forms of self-construction and the new mode of existence and social intercourse in modern America, and how he demystifies the possibility for individual’s social and psychological growth and self-actualization in the capitalist urban world.