Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Theodore Dreiser

“Who is it?” said the other.

  “Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a dandy time. I was just looking for you.”

  “Supposing we get ‘em and take ’em out to dinner?”

  “Sure,” said Drouet. “Wait’ll I go upstairs and change my clothes.”

  “Well, I’ll be in the barber shop,” said the other. “I want to get a shave.”

  “All right,” said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever.

  On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related.

  “First call for dinner in the dining-car,” a Pullman servitor was announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and jacket.

  “I don’t believe I want to play any more,” said the youngest, a black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a euchre hand away from her.

  “Shall we go into dinner?” inquired her husband, who was all that fine raiment can make.

  “Oh, not yet,” she answered. “I don’t want to play any more, though.”

  “Jessica,” said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing can do for age, “push that pin down in your tie—it’s coming up.”

  Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even cold, is fascinating from one point of view.

  “Well, we won’t have much more of this weather,” he said. “It only takes two weeks to get to Rome.”

  Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man—one whose financial state had borne her personal inspection.

  “Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?” asked Jessica, “if it keeps up like this?”

  “Oh, yes,” answered her husband. “This won’t make any difference.”

  Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker’s son, also of Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied.

  At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four-story building in a side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men—a crowd which had been, and was still, gathering by degrees.

  It began with the approach of two or three, who hung about the closed wooden doors and beat their feet to keep them warm. They had on faded derby hats with dents in them. Their misfit coats were heavy with melted snow and turned up at the collars. Their trousers were mere bags, frayed at the bottom and wobbling over big, soppy shoes, torn at the sides and worn almost to shreds. They made no effort to go in, but shifted ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets and leering at the crowd and the increasing lamps. With the minutes, increased the number. Three were old men with grizzled beards and sunken eyes, men who were comparatively young but shrunken by diseases, men who were middle-aged. None were fat. There was a face in the thick of the collection which was as white as drained veal. There was another red as brick. Some came with thin, rounded shoulders, others with wooden legs, still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them. There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red, blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance.

  In the drive of the wind and sleet they pushed in on one another. There were wrists, unprotected by coat or pocket, which were red with cold. There were ears, half covered by every conceivable semblance of a hat, which still looked stiff and bitten. In the snow they shifted, now one foot, now another, almost rocking in unison.

  With the growth of the crowd about the door came a murmur. It was not conversation, but a running comment directed at any one in general. It contained oaths and slang phrases.

  “By damn, I wish they’d hurry up.”

  “Look at the copper watchin’.”

  “Maybe it ain’t winter, nuther!”

  “I wisht I was in Sing Sing.”as

  Now a sharper lash of wind cut down and they huddled closer. It was an edging, shifting, pushing throng. There was no anger, no pleading, no threatening words. It was all sullen endurance, unlightened by either wit or good fellowship.

  A carriage went jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of the men nearest the door saw it.

  “Look at the bloke ridin’.”

  “He ain’t so cold.”

  “Eh, eh, eh!” yelled another, the carriage having long since

  passed out of hearing.

  Little by little the night crept on. Along the walk a crowd turned out on its way home. Men and shop-girls went by with quick steps. The cross-town cars began to be crowded. The gas lamps were blazing, and every window bloomed ruddy with a steady flame. Still the crowd hung about the door, unwavering.

  “Ain’t they ever goin’ to open up?” queried a hoarse voice, suggestively.

  This seemed to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered, now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the snow whirled and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and peaked shoulders it was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves and no one brushed it off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth and steam melted it, and water trickled off hat rims and down noses, which the owners could not reach to scratch. On the outer rim the piles remained unmelted. Hurstwood, who could not get in the centre, stood with head lowered to the weather and bent his form.

  A light appeared through the transom overhead. It sent a thrill of possibility through the watchers. There was a murmur of recognition. At last the bars grated inside and the crowd pricked up its ears. Footsteps shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: “Slow up there, now,” and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a minute, with grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it melted inward, like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats and wet shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in between bleak walls. It was just six o’clock and there was supper in every hurrying pedestrian’s face. And yet no supper was provided here-nothing but beds.

  Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept off with weary steps to his allotted room. It was a dingy affair—wooden, dusty, hard. A small gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a comer.

  “Hm!” he said, clearing his throat and locking the door.

  Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door. His vest he arranged in the same place. His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon the table. Then he pulled off his shoes and lav down.

  It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.

  “What’s the use?” he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.

  And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life’s object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of their original desires. She could look about on her gowns and carriage, her furniture and bank account. Friends there were, as the world takes it—those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success. For these she had once craved. Applause there was, and publicity—once far off, essential things, but now gr
own trivial and indifferent. Beauty also—her type of loveliness—and yet she was lonely. In her rocking-chair she sat, when not otherwise engaged—singing and dreaming.

  Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional nature—the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels. Of one come the men of action—generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreamers—artists all.

  As harps in the wind, the latter respond to every breath of fancy, voicing in their moods all the ebb and flow of the ideal.

  Man has not yet comprehended the dreamer any more than he has the ideal. For him the laws and morals of the world are unduly severe. Ever hearkening to the sound of beauty, straining for the flash of its distant wings, he watches to follow, wearying his feet in travelling. So watched Carrie, so followed, rocking and singing.

  And it must be remembered that reason had little part in this. Chicago dawning, she saw the city offering more of loveliness than she had ever known, and instinctively, by force of her moods alone, clung to it. In fine raiment and elegant surroundings, men seemed to be contented. Hence, she drew near these things. Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood; the world of fashion and the world of stage—these were but incidents. Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for. Time proved the representation false.

  Oh, the tangle of human life! How dimly as yet we see. Here was Carrie, in the beginning poor, unsophisticated, emotional; responding with desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as by a wall. Laws to say: “Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely, but draw not nigh unless by righteousness.” Convention to say: “You shall not better your situation save by honest labour.” If honest labour be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast the first stone? Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more often directs the steps of the erring. Not evil, but goodness more often allures the feeling mind unused to reason.

  Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy. As when Drouet took her, she had thought: “Now am I lifted into that which is best”; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way: “Now am I happy.” But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake of its folly, she now found herself alone. Her purse was open to him whose need was greatest. In her walks on Broadway, she no longer thought of the elegance of the creatures who passed her. Had they more of that peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be envied.

  Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more. Of Hurstwood’s death she was not even aware. A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others, his nameless body to the Potter’s Field.at

  Thus passed all that was of interest concerning these twain in their relation to her. Their influence upon her life is explicable alone by the nature of her longings. Time was when both represented for her all that was most potent in earthly success. They were the personal representatives of a state most blessed to attain—the titled ambassadors of comfort and peace, aglow with their credentials. It is but natural that when the world which they represented no longer allured her, its ambassadors should be discredited. Even had Hurstwood returned in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have allured her. She had learned that in his world, as in her own present state, was not happiness.

  Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day when she should be led forth among dreams become real. Ames had pointed out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if accomplished, would lie others for her. It was forever to be the pursuit of that radiance of delight which tints the distant hilltops of the world.

  Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward, onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o’er some quiet landscape, or the glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

  Endnotes

  1 (p. 3) Columbia City: Columbia City, Wisconsin, is a fictional town. In 1887 the sixteen-year-old Dreiser went to look for work in Chicago; he took a train from his home in Warsaw, Indiana, a town 20 miles west of Columbia City, Indiana.

  2 (p. 21) At that time the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation: Department stores were an important commercial innovation of the mid-1880s. Their success helped fuel the rise of advertising and, with their fixed pricing, speeded the demise of negotiation and barter, thus democratizing the marketplace. Chicago boasted four: Marshall Field, The Fair, The Boston Store, and Carson, Pirie, Scott.

  3 (p. 37) The new socialism ... had not then taken hold upon manufacturing companies: Settlement houses and unions lobbied for improved workplace conditions—shorter workdays, clean toilets, fresh air and natural light, longer lunch breaks, and the installation of safety devices on machines—but the corporations and large business owners resisted these changes and often made concessions only after a long, costly, sometimes violent, strike.

  4 (p. 45) “That’s Jules Wallace, the spiritualist”: Wallace apparently used his spiritualism sessions to seduce women for his sexual pleasure; his landlady accused him of enticing women to his room for group sex. Dreiser, who investigated Wallace on assignment for the St. Louis Republican, took a dim view of Wallace’s spiritualism, calling him a charlatan.

  5 (p. 84) the liberal analysis of Spencer: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was an English philosopher and pioneering sociologist who helped popularize Darwin’s theory of evolution; in fact, he originated one of his own prior to Darwin’s. Dreiser’s literary .naturalism was strongly influenced by some of Spencer’s ideas. Spencer believed that individuals were conditioned by heredity and environment, but that some people could flourish apart from the group and achieve greater freedom. The latter view was more optimistic than Darwin’s or Dreiser’s.

  6 (p. 84) Ogden Place: Dreiser had lived on this street in the summer of 1892. It was in a middle-class neighborhood, near Union Park.

  7 (p. 94) She amused herself with ... a book by Bertha M. Clay: This was the nom de plume of best-selling author Charlotte M. Brame (1836-1884), whose mediocre, sentimental romance novels often concerned a girl from a poor family who becomes romantically entangled with a nobleman and ends up disappointed and unhappy. On p. 287 Carrie refers to Brame’s best-known work, Dora Thome. For Dreiser, the popularity of such fiction was indicative of America’s debased literary taste.

  8 (p. 138) Under the Gaslight: This is a reference to a wildly successful play by Augustin Daly, first produced in 1867. Its climax became a staple of melodramas and early films: The hero, tied to a railroad track, is rescued by the heroine just as a train approaches. Dreiser lifted the excerpts from Under the Gaslight verbatim from the 1895 Samuel French acting edition. Laura, Carrie’s role, finds happiness in Daly’s play, but not in Dreiser’s version.

  9 (p. 192) became entangled with a bunco-steerer: “Bunco-steerer” was another name for a con man who lured naive country visitors to places in the city where they could be swindled or robbed. Con men abound in nineteenth-century American fiction. Herman Melville and Mark Twain wrote comic fables about such crooks and the gullible people they duped.

  10 (p. 262) an average, and yet exorbitant, rent for a home at the time: The rent is average for the neighborhood, but out of proportion to rents for the same amount of s
pace in other cities. The Upper West Side of Manhattan was just beginning to be built up as a more middle- to upper-class residential neighborhood. In 1907 Henry James, in The American Scene, jeered at the new apartment houses that lined Riverside Drive near Carrie and Hurstwood’s flat. He thought them an “artless jumble,” ugly, vulgar, and lacking in architectural distinction, unlike the elegant scale of the houses in the Washington Square of his childhood.

  11 (p. 280) We’re going down to Sherry’s for dinner: Louis Sherry was an opulent restaurant where fashion-conscious people and celebrities dined and gathered to be gawked at. Ames points out to Carrie a vulgarly bejeweled woman whom he castigates as typical of her class’s ostentatious, wasteful spending. Dreiser is particularly disgusted by such lavish restaurants.

  12 (p. 292) The poisons generated by remorse ... produce marked physical deterioration. To these Hurstwood was subject: Anastates and katastates were metabolic terms used in the 1890s by physiologists. Katastates break down complex organisms in the body, but in the process a person’s metabolism goes awry. Anastates keep energy levels balanced during metabolism and therefore a person remains emotionally stable. Dreiser’s understanding of these substances comes from the largely discredited psychosomatic theory (an explanation of manic-depression) of the scientist Elmer Gates, about whom he was writing in early 1900.

  13 (p. 296) The new flat ... contained only four rooms: This is a stage of downward mobility for Hurstwood and Carrie, a shrinkage of space and of prospects that Hurstwood accepts and Carrie frets at. Dreiser’s sister Emma (on whom Sister Carrie was based) and L. A. Hopkins lived in this neighborhood, and Dreiser visited them there in the mid-1890s.

  14 (p. 360) the various trolley companies refused: The long, bitter Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895, in which 4,000 workers walked off their jobs to fight for better wages, was marred by frequent violence. The 7,500 National Guardsmen who were called in to escort scabs often attacked crowds with guns and bayonets, and ultimately killed two bystanders. The strike was front-page news for months and ended with a public boycott of the scab-driven trolleys, forcing the trolley companies to re-hire the strikers.