Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (best book clubs .TXT) ๐
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Caroline Meeber, known as Sister Carrie to her family, moves to Chicago at the tender age of eighteen to try to make something of herself. Living with her sister and brother-in-law, she quickly finds that life, and work, are hard in the big city. She soon takes up with a traveling salesman she met on the train into town. Months later her eye is turned by one of the salesmanโs acquaintances, George Hurstwood, and vice-versa. A series of events lead Carrie and Hurstwood to New York City, where both struggle to live out the aspirations that brought them there.
Theodore Dreiser was one of the earliest naturalist writers, but he wrote Sister Carrie while the United States was still very Victorian in its morals. The book therefore caused a stir from the beginning: Carrie Meeber was clearly, even in the disguised language of the time, a sexually active, unmarried female, who wasnโt made to suffer for her indiscretion to the extent considered necessary at the time. Dreiserโs depiction of rough language merely added to the controversy. The first printing sold only 456 copies in two years; it was to be another five years before Dreiser could convince another publisher to carry the book. Today itโs considered a classic and one of the โgreatest of all American urban novels.โ
The text of Sister Carrie was unchanged until 1981, when the University of Pennsylvania Press published a new version with 36,000 words restored. The edition was not without controversy: the cuts were originally made before the first printing at the suggestion of Dreiserโs wife, or his friend Arthur Henry, and Dreiser had approved all of them. Although the new Pennsylvania Edition, as it is called, made a good case for restoring the changes, it is the 1907 text that remains the most widely available today, and it is that text in this edition.
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- Author: Theodore Dreiser
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By Theodore Dreiser.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint I: The Magnet Attracting: A Waif Amid Forces II: What Poverty Threatened: Of Granite and Brass III: We Question of Fortune: Four-Fifty a Week IV: The Spendings of Fancy: Facts Answer with Sneers V: A Glittering Night Flower: The Use of a Name VI: The Machine and the Maiden: A Knight of Today VII: The Lure of the Material: Beauty Speaks for Itself VIII: Intimations by Winter: An Ambassador Summoned IX: Conventionโs Own Tinderbox: The Eye That Is Green X: The Counsel of Winter: Fortuneโs Ambassador Calls XI: The Persuasion of Fashion: Feeling Guards Oโer Its Own XII: Of the Lamps of the Mansions: The Ambassadorโs Plea XIII: His Credentials Accepted: A Babel of Tongues XIV: With Eyes and Not Seeing: One Influence Wanes XV: The Irk of the Old Ties: The Magic of Youth XVI: A Witless Aladdin: The Gate to the World XVII: A Glimpse Through the Gateway: Hope Lightens the Eye XVIII: Just Over the Border: A Hail and Farewell XIX: An Hour in Elfland: A Clamour Half Heard XX: The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit XXI: The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit XXII: The Blaze of the Tinder: Flesh Wars with the Flesh XXIII: A Spirit in Travail: One Rung Put Behind XXIV: Ashes of Tinder: A Face at the Window XXV: Ashes of Tinder: The Loosing of Stays XXVI: The Ambassador Fallen: A Search for the Gate XXVII: When Waters Engulf Us We Reach for a Star XXVIII: A Pilgrim, an Outlaw: The Spirit Detained XXIX: The Solace of Travel: The Boats of the Sea XXX: The Kingdom of Greatness: The Pilgrim Adream XXXI: A Pet of Good Fortune: Broadway Flaunts Its Joys XXXII: The Feast of Belshazzar: A Seer to Translate XXXIII: Without the Walled City: The Slope of the Years XXXIV: The Grind of the Millstones: A Sample of Chaff XXXV: The Passing of Effort: The Visage of Care XXXVI: A Grim Retrogression: The Phantom of Chance XXXVII: The Spirit Awakens: New Search for the Gate XXXVIII: In Elf Land Disporting: The Grim World Without XXXIX: Of Lights and of Shadows: The Parting of Worlds XL: A Public Dissension: A Final Appeal XLI: The Strike XLII: A Touch of Spring: The Empty Shell XLIII: The World Turns Flatterer: An Eye in the Dark XLIV: And This Is Not Elf Land: What Gold Will Not Buy XLV: Curious Shifts of the Poor XLVI: Stirring Troubled Waters XLVII: The Way of the Beaten: A Harp in the Wind Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
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I The Magnet Attracting: A Waif Amid ForcesWhen Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sisterโs address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her motherโs farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hoursโ โa few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sisterโs address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of
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