《嘉莉妹妹》-一个十九世纪末二十世纪初美国消费文化的文本,英美文学论文_28.docVIP

《嘉莉妹妹》:一个十九世纪末二十世纪初美国消费文化的文本,英美文学论文 Sister Carrie ：A Novel of America Consumer Culture at the Turn of the 20th century Abstract:Theodore Dreiser is the most famous American writer of naturalistism in America.? His first novel, Sister Carrie, deliberately describes transgression on human desires and consumption, and social immorality with a sharp style.?As a result, most critics regard Sister Carrie as an advocate of moral corruption and degeneration.?And Dreiser is also criticized as a cruel exposer of American social darkness, in bourgeoisie society, who wants to stain his country.?However, these traditional critiques ignore the independence of works, and they cannot see the relationship among the works, the writer抯 ideas and the dominant social ideology. This paper, different from the traditional criticism, puts Sister Carrie into the context of America consumer culture at the turn of the 20th century and focuses on the aspect of culture criticism to explore the writer抯 mentality in the new consuming ideology. In this culture, commodity is not merely the necessity used to satisfy human抯 basic need, it has risen to the symbol of status and dignity.?Consequently, people should obey their instinct and as consumers, they should regard enjoyment as their duty, as a kind of undertaking.?In a word, consumer culture claims satisfaction, treasure and hedonism, and makes people believe that they have left the heroic producing sector for the hedonic sector for expenditure. Dreiser shows his dissatisfaction and criticism on social system by displaying vulgarity and moral laxity.?However, he is not a dangerous critic who wants to stain his country and its ideology. So in Sister Carrie, he through an overwhelming mass of detail棗of clothing, money, manners, and actual new items棗that Dreiser creates a mosaic of experience of the two central characters in a specific time and place. Though Carrie抯 desire, we can say she is a representative of the new ideology, and devote