Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sister Carrie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Urban Life and Decay
Morality and Instinct
Wealth and Class
Summary
Analysis
After achieving fame, Carrie finds her circumstances to be vastly different: she has a better dressing room and “she [is] no longer ordered, but requested, and that politely.” Carrie enjoys the audience’s applause but feels “mildly guilty of something—perhaps unworthiness.” The narrator relates that “it never once crossed her mind to be reserved or haughty.”
Carrie’s sense of unworthiness is ironic given the fact that she knew she had talent. In this way, this sense of guilt can only arise because Carrie became a sensation not necessarily through hard work, but through incident. Carrie already displayed an aversion to dishonest living during her time as a mistress. Thus, she wanted to attain recognition though hard work in her career.
Themes
Carrie begins to get letters and cards. A certain Mr. Withers offers Carrie an apartment at a hotel, costing usually three to fifty dollars a day, at any rate that she “could afford to pay.” Carrie is now a “patron,” one whose “name is worth something.” Carrie asks about bringing Lola and Mr. Withers agrees. The two visit the apartment, “a suite on the parlour floor” with “accommodations [that] would ordinarily cost a hundred dollars a week,” and decide to move in. The apartment is “such a place as [Carrie] had often dreamed of occupying.”
Carrie is now a celebrity and has everything that she once dreamed of, namely, fine clothes, a luxurious home, wealth, and recognition. Fame appears to be the most effective means to success in the city. Furthermore, fame appears to make one more attractive: where Carrie was once considered only a mildly attractive young women, she is now experiencing the passionate advances of numerous admirers.
Themes
One day, after a matinee, Mrs. Vance visits Carrie. Carrie warms up to her “in spite of her first troubled feelings.” Mrs. Vance “tactfully [avoids] the subject of Hurstwood […] No doubt Carrie had left him.” The two make plans to visit each other. Carrie realizes that “she [is] as good as this woman now—perhaps better,” and “something in the other’s solicitude and interest [makes] her feel as if she [is] the one to condescend.”
Mrs. Vance is a fair-weather friend—she did not visit Carrie when she was the obscure wife of an unkempt man, but does so now that Carrie is a famous actress. Carrie demonstrates her good nature through her immediate acceptance as Mrs. Vance and her lack of condescension. Carrie realizes that she is now, by the standards of New York, a fine woman.
Themes
Many gentlemen send letters to Carrie, hoping for “an engagement.” One man with “a million in [his] own right” begs her for “one half-hour […] to plead [his] cause.” Carrie “[smiles] to think that men should suddenly find her so much more attractive.” It only “[incites] her to coolness and indifference.” Carrie refuses to meet any of these men. She spends her time enjoying all “the luxuries which money could buy.”
Carrie is not deceived by the attentions of these men—she realizes that they only find her attractive because of her fame. Carrie has learned from her experience with Drouet and Hurstwood to be distrustful of men. Instead, she chooses to find pleasure in things she can do alone and buy with her own money.
Themes
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Carrie receives her first $150 paycheck. The cashier treats Carrie with much more friendliness than before. She perceives the world to be “so rosy and bright.” However, Carrie soon realizes the “impotence of money”: “If she wanted to do anything better or move higher she must have more—a great deal more.”
The world treats Carrie differently because of her newfound fame, yet Carrie is observant enough not to be deceived. Carrie begins to realize that money is not all that she thought it was—money will not bring her happiness.
Themes
Carrie begins to see that “life’s perfect enjoyment [is] not open.” A critic claims that Carrie is “merely pretty, good-natured, and lucky.” This “[cuts]” Carrie “like a knife” An author brings Carrie a play to produce, but “alas, she could not judge.” Carrie blames these things on the slowness of summer. She tells Lola about her loneliness, but Lola, “thinking of her own lightsome tourneys with the gay youths,” does not understand. Carrie doesn’t yet realize it, but “her idle hands were beginning to weary.”
Carrie learns that she is a popular actress, but not necessarily a skilled or critically-acclaimed artist. At this point, she does not crave simply recognition—she craves respect. Carrie also learns that she is not well-educated when it comes to art. In other words, though her appearance and manners are fine, her mind is still common. For the first time in the novel, Carrie begins to grow disillusioned with glamour.
Themes
