Throughout the novel, Dreiser provides the reader with a vivid sense of local color by integrating the dialect of late 19th-century America into its dialogue. This is evident in several instances, particularly when Carrie interacts with factory workers:
"Hello," remarked one of the stout-wristed sole-workers to her at noon. "You’re a daisy."
He really expected to hear the common 'Aw! go chase yourself!' in return, and was sufficiently abashed, by Carrie’s silently moving away, to retreat, awkwardly grinning.
The dialect used in this passage contributes significantly to its realism. Dreiser gives the reader a sense of how interactions like this one might actually have played out. When one of the factory workers tries to flirt with Carrie, calling her a "daisy" to mean she's fresh and innocent, he’s surprised that she “silently” withdraws from him. He doesn't expect a meek response, but rather an expletive of the time like "Aw! go chase yourself!"
Later in the same day, a male worker touches a female colleague inappropriately, and the following interaction occurs:
"Aw, let me go," she exclaimed angrily. "Duffer."
He only grinned broadly in return.
"Rubber!" he called back as she looked after him. There was nothing of the gallant in him.
In this exchange, the shop-girl Carrie is watching calls the man who gropes her a “Duffer,” a mild expletive that means “stupid person.” As she looks back, at him, he calls her a “Rubber,” meaning someone who eavesdrops or can’t resist snooping. Through these interactions and others like them, the reader is transported to the factory floors of Chicago. They give a sense of the nuanced class differences between characters like Carrie and her new urban colleagues. Carrie could never imagine speaking to a man in this way, but the girls around her do it without any qualms.
Throughout the novel, Dreiser provides the reader with a vivid sense of local color by integrating the dialect of late 19th-century America into its dialogue. This is evident in several instances, particularly when Carrie interacts with factory workers:
"Hello," remarked one of the stout-wristed sole-workers to her at noon. "You’re a daisy."
He really expected to hear the common 'Aw! go chase yourself!' in return, and was sufficiently abashed, by Carrie’s silently moving away, to retreat, awkwardly grinning.
The dialect used in this passage contributes significantly to its realism. Dreiser gives the reader a sense of how interactions like this one might actually have played out. When one of the factory workers tries to flirt with Carrie, calling her a "daisy" to mean she's fresh and innocent, he’s surprised that she “silently” withdraws from him. He doesn't expect a meek response, but rather an expletive of the time like "Aw! go chase yourself!"
Later in the same day, a male worker touches a female colleague inappropriately, and the following interaction occurs:
"Aw, let me go," she exclaimed angrily. "Duffer."
He only grinned broadly in return.
"Rubber!" he called back as she looked after him. There was nothing of the gallant in him.
In this exchange, the shop-girl Carrie is watching calls the man who gropes her a “Duffer,” a mild expletive that means “stupid person.” As she looks back, at him, he calls her a “Rubber,” meaning someone who eavesdrops or can’t resist snooping. Through these interactions and others like them, the reader is transported to the factory floors of Chicago. They give a sense of the nuanced class differences between characters like Carrie and her new urban colleagues. Carrie could never imagine speaking to a man in this way, but the girls around her do it without any qualms.
