Subject of the out-of-class:
Discuss Carrie’s feelings about and conceptions toward material culture. Do her attitudes change toward her material world?

Sister Carrie was written in 1900 by Theodore Dreiser, who was born in 1871 and died in 1945. He was a famous American writer who wrote under the influence of naturalism. Sister Carrie is his first novel: it’s about a girl, named Carrie, who moves from her parents’ home to start a new and better life in the city. Life won’t be easy for her, she will have to face many barriers and disappointments of the city itself but at the end, her obstinacy will bring results and she will reach the top of the society.
Materialism, including the desire for and the dependence of money, is a very important theme in Sister Carrie. Theodore Dreiser wrote in his novel:
“A man’s fortune or material progress is very much the same as his bodily growth. Either he is growing stronger, healthier, wiser, as the youth approaching manhood, or he is growing weaker, older, les incisive mentally, as the man approaching old age. There are no other states”
The human nature is not anymore shaped by love, feelings or reason. Instead it’s the material culture and the need to consume which explains a Man’s behaviour. Materialism is mostly shown through Carrie’s character and her evolution all over the novel. It will be relevant to determine what are Carrie’s feelings about and conceptions toward material culture? And does her attitude evolve in consequence of the material world she lives in?
In a first part we will analyze the point of view of Carrie, according to what in her society a person is defined and recognized by the money he has. Money seems to be the key word of identity, the city and also relationships. Then, in a second part we will study Carrie’s fight for a better place in the society, her success in reaching the top of the social ladder and her disappointment remaining even after that.

Carrie Meeber, the heroine of