Women characters in Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt. Contents Introduction

Women characters in Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I. Theodore Dreiser his life and work.
1.1. Theodore Dreiser his life.
1.2. Theodore Dreiser his literary career
Chapter II. Women characters in Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt.
2.1. Analysis of Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt.
2.2. Female heroes in Theodore Dreiser's novels.
Conclusion.
Reference.


INTRODUCTION
The actuality of the topic. The American Dream, the major myth of the American society, has a great impact on American literature in is represented within the movement of urbanization that characterized the epoch. Authors, such as Theodore Dreiser, presented in their works an American Dream based in the city and pursued by young characters seeking success within the urban environment characterized by industry, business and modernity. Within this environment, they followed the vague of materialism that accompanied the industrial life of the city. As such, they found themselves determined by the philosophies of Social Darwinism and Pragmatism, forgetting about the moral codes of their ancestors.
The aim of the topic. In his Sister Carrie, Dreiser reflects on the female experience of the American Dream through the Character of Carrie Meeber that is caught in the same trap of Materialism and Social Darwinism. The author wrote his novel under the literary current of Naturalism and presented the main character as being determined by the environment in which she is put. The plot deals with the dreams of a young woman in the turn of the twentieth century. It narrates the story of a beautiful, smart and ambitious girl, who lives in poverty in her parent’s home in the countryside. Being full of talents, she decides to leave her parents’ home to join her sister in Chicago and make her dream of success and wealth come true. During her voyage to the city, Carrie is described as being full of ambition and happy dreams about her future in this marvelous urban milieu. But, once there, she is confronted with a new reality, which is different from the one she dreamed of, and she begins to feel disillusioned about her personal dream in particular and the American Dream in general.
In his review of Sister Carrie, Robert McCrum argues that the novel addresses the American Dream in a adical spirit of naturalism that rejected the Victorian spirit of morality. In it, “Dreiser paints an intensely detailed, compelling and closely observed portrait of urban America at the turn of the 20th century” (McCrum, 2014). In fact, it is considered that the novel is the first American work to be written under the current of Naturalism. Rudolf Bader, from the university of Berne, argues that “there is a general agreement that Theodore Dreiser’s first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), is the work of an American Zola” (Bader, 1985:74). Naturalism in the novel, according to him, is not only depicted through the realistic portrayal of city life at that time but also through its strong reliance on Determinism (Ibid.). Within the same perspective, Richard Lehan emphasizes the element of chance and the characters’ lack of control in the novel. He states:
Given their respective temperaments, given the setting and the situation they find themselves in, what occurs to characters in Sister Carrie happens with inevitability, with a predictability, beyond their control. Behind the appearance of chance in this novel is a necessary relationship between scenes, a realm of causality, a river running from its source to a destined end. Carrie, Hurstwood, and Drouet are compelled to acts they do.
The protagonist of Jennie Gerhardt, Dreiser’s second novel, is Carrie’s natural sister or, perhaps, her alter ego. Jennie is also the product of Dreiser’s early family life, of his sisters’ fatal attraction to men and the natural result. When Dreiser turned to Jennie Gerhardt while still embroiled in the publication problems of Sister Carrie, he drew upon the events in the life of his sister Mame, who was seduced, abandoned, and ended up living successfully with another man in New York City. From this basic material, Dreiser created a girl much like Carrie in origin, who has the same desires for material ease, but who has none of the instincts Carrie possesses or who has the same instincts channeled into a different mode of expression.
Jennie Gerhardt is divided into two parts. In the first part, as the daughter of a poor washerwoman, Jennie is noticed by Senator George Sylvester Brander, another older man attracted by youth and vitality; he is kind, tips her heavily for delivering his laundry, and eventually seduces her. Brander is, however, more than a stereotype. He has a real need for Jennie and a fatherly attachment to her. Jennie, who is more than the “fallen angel” as some have seen her, responds in kind. Surrounded by conventional morality and religious prohibitions, represented by Old Gerhardt and others, Jennie, unlike Carrie, has a desperate need to give in order to fulfill herself. Despite the veneer of indebtedness Jennie brings to her seduction by Brander (he arranges the release of her brother from jail, among other things), there is a surprisingly wholesome atmosphere to the affair. Brander is solicitous and protective, and Jennie is loving and tender. When Jennie becomes pregnant, Brander plans to marry her, put her parents in a more comfortable situation, and, in short, do the right thing. Brander, however, dies, and Jennie gives birth to his illegitimate child; she is condemned by her parents and society, and her previous joy and prospects dissolve before her eyes.
Dreiser’s portrayal of Jennie does not allow the reader to feel sorry for her. Vesta, Jennie’s child, is not the product of sin, but the offspring of an all-suffering, all-giving earth mother. Dreiser’s depiction of Jennie as a child of nature verifies this impression. Despite society and its narrow views, Jennie is not destroyed or even dismayed. She is delighted with her child and thus snatches her joy and fulfillment from a seeming disaster. As long as she can give, be it to child or lover, she is unassailable.¹
The second seduction occurs when the Gerhardts, except for Old Gerhardt, move to Cleveland at the behest of brother Bass and supposedly at his expense. Bass is expansive and generous for a while, but then begins to demand more and more until Jennie must take a position as a chambermaid at the Bracebridge house, where she meets Lester Kane. Once again, as with Brander, the seduction wears the facade of obligation—this time because Lester Kane helps the family when Old Gerhardt suffers debilitating burns, which deprive him of his glassblowing trade, his sole means of support. Lester has pursued Jennie and his help fosters the ensuing affair. Like the first seduction, however, the second is not the simple matter it seems.
Lester Kane is Dreiser’s portrayal of the enlightened man—the man who has serious doubts about religion, morality, societal restrictions, and mores. He serves the basic needs of Jennie’s character; he also understands his own needs for the devotion, care, and understanding that Jennie is able and willing to give. With his willingness to make a more-or-less permanent commitment to Jennie, he seems to be match, but Lester also understands the restrictions of class that forbid him to marry Jennie and feels the strong pull of family duty, which requires that he play a vital part in shaping the family’s considerable enterprises. Lester, then, is caught with Jennie, as Dreiser puts it, between the “upper and nether millstones of society.”
When Jennie and Lester set up their clandestine apartment in Chicago, they are enormously happy until they are discovered by Lester’s family; the newspapers make front-page news of the discovery, and Jennie reveals to Lester that she has hidden the existence of her daughter, Vesta, from him. Amazingly, Lester weathers all these shocks and even brings Vesta and Old Gerhardt to share the apartment with them, but Lester’s “indiscretions” have allowed his less heroically inclined brother to take control of the family business, and when his father dies, his will decrees that Lester must make a choice. If he marries Jennie, he gets a pittance; if he leaves her, he gets a normal portion. At this point, Letty, an old flame of Lester—of the “right” class surfaces, and Jennie, fully recognizing the mutual sacrifices she and Lester will have to make whether he leaves or stays, encourages him to leave her. Lester eventually marries Letty and claims his inheritance. Jennie sacrifices Lester and in rapid succession sees Old Gerhardt and Vesta die. Deprived of her family, she manufactures one by taking in orphans. The device is not satisfying and the worldly refinement she has assimilated in her life with Lester is not enough to succor her, yet she survives to be called to Lester’s death bed. Lester tells her that he has never forgotten her and that he loves her still, and Jennie reciprocates. The scene brings together a man and a woman who have given away or had taken away everything they loved through no particular fault of their own.²
Lester is a weak man, like Hurstwood, but unlike Hurstwood he does not give up; he is beaten until he can no longer resist. Unlike Carrie, Jennie is not brought to the point of emptiness by achievements, but by losses. Her nature has betrayed her, and when one sees her hidden in the church at Lester’s funeral, unrecognized by his family, one senses the totality of her loss. One also senses, however, that she has emerged a spiritual victor. She seems to have grown more expansive and more generous with each loss. Her stature grows until she looms over the novel as the archetypal survivor. She has been bruised, battered, and pushed down, but she has not been destroyed. She cannot be destroyed so long as she can give.