Re-thinking Dreiserian Modern Tragedy in Sister Carrie

Abstract

Critical discussions on Dreiser’s tragic vision of the modern man in Sister Carrie have seemingly resulted in minimizing the significance of human aspirations and humanity in the novel, and accordingly, in maximizing the implausibility of its tragic qualities. Generally emphasizing Dreiser’s characters, who are victimized by the powerful forces of the modern capitalist social condition as the distinctive feature of the modern tragedy, they did not merely bring back the perennial debates over “the possibility of tragic art in modern times,” but also seriously disparaged his study of the modern man and human spirit in the novel. This paper aims to explore the plausibility of Dreiserian tragedy of modern times and his tragic vision of the modern man in Sister Carrie, which is far more complex than many critics have pointed out. I would argue that Dreiser’s protagonists do have great aspirations and sufferings for locating their individualities without being completely overwhelmed by the forces of the modern world. Moreover, Dreiser’s conceptualization of human subjects appearing in his detailed and intensive reports on his characters—their expansive, un-nameable desires, their desperate but futile aspirations for images, and their perilous states of mind—gives vital implications for the possibility of tragedy in modern times.