SISTER CARRIE, Theodore Dreiser

Sister Carrie, is a novel telling the story of young girl, Caroline Meeber, who moves out from her family house in Columbia City to Chicago in order to join her sister and experience « life ». In Sister Carrie, Dreiser delivers a description of the late 19th century Chicago, for the novel is written in a realistic genre. Thus, we can see how he depicts the social classes and home of the time. We can also wonder how home and social classes are linked in the novel.
We shall answer this question by studying first the climbing of the social ladder by Carrie, then we shall see the fall of Hurstwood, and finally, we shall come to the conclusion that there is no difference between the two evolutions.

Firstly, throughout the novel, we can follow Carrie's climbing of the social ladder.
When she arrives in Chicago and move in Minnie's place, we can say that she is starting from scratch. Indeed, in the description of the flat in Carrie's point of view it is shown that she is strike by Minnie's way of life, and that she finds it quite poor. The neighbourhood Carrie is confronted to is not so developped as the appartment is on « West Van Buren Street » and « inhabited by families of labourers and clerks ». The area is full of trades, such as groceries, and noise which symbolises the activity their social class has to keep up. The part of the novel spent with the Hansons also show an image of the women condition at home in the working class. Minnie is submitted to her husband and obeys him. She also lives for him, as she goes to bed later in the evening (after she had finished her chores) and she wakes up earlier in the morning than her husband. Minnie's routine is introduced here and this is part of what Carrie woud not support. Carrie soon understands that living in the working-class offers no time for idleness seeing that her sister and brother-in-law are awaken far long before her and are already doing something (Sven already gone