Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie

by

Theodore Dreiser

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Urban Life and Decay Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Urban Life and Decay Theme Icon
Morality and Instinct Theme Icon
Wealth and Class Theme Icon
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 Theme Icon

At its core, Sister Carrie details a young girl’s transition from provincial to city life. Caroline “Carrie” Meeber moves from rural Columbia City, Wisconsin, to Chicago and then to New York. Each move shows Carrie the complexities of living in a larger, more urban sphere. With each of these transitions, Carrie is eager to adapt and conform to her new environment, and, consequently, grows increasingly sophisticated as she moves from one cosmopolitan city to another. At the same time, Carrie’s growth in sophistication parallels her fall from innocence, as she goes from an enthusiastic girl from the country to, ultimately, a jaded city woman. In this way, Dreiser suggests that while urbanization may be conflated with progress, it also leads to decay—of innocence, morals, and spirit. As Carrie learns in the story, the trappings of urban life don’t lead to a genuine increase in happiness.

Towards the beginning of the novel, Dreiser briefly theorizes as to what dangers may befall a young woman when she moves from the countryside to the city, painting the city as a dangerous place brimming with temptation and corruption. According to Dreiser, only two things can possibly happen when a young woman leaves her home: “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 idea of having a “cosmopolitan standard of virtue” seems positive; such an idea connotes diversity, sophistication, and experience. However, Dreiser frames it as something that causes people to “[become] worse.” This hints that Dreiser views the city as a place that causes degeneration despite the semblance of growth. Dreiser relates that “the city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter.” The language in this sentence recalls the language typically used to describe the devil. The city’s devilish nature is reinforced by an idea from the previous quotation, namely, that a young girl who travels to the city will necessarily “[become] worse” unless “she falls into saving hands and become better.” In this way, Dreiser portrays the city as an alluring but destructive force. It is not the civilized place that many, including Carrie, believe it to be.

Upon moving from the countryside to Chicago, Carrie notices the cosmopolitan mannerisms of the people surrounding her and feels an urge to conform to city culture. However, even though she succeeds, she feels a sense of moral deficiency. Upon seeing department stores and the well-dressed women frequenting them, Carrie feels an instant desire to blend in: “A flame of envy lighted in her heart. She realised in a dim way how much the city held—wealth, fashion, ease—every adornment for women, and she longed for dress and beauty with a whole heart.” Carrie’s longings are reasonable and hardly morally reprehensible, considering the scanty and difficult life she leads in her sister Minnie’s household. When Drouet, a financially stable salesman, asks Carrie to be his mistress, Carrie agrees, seeing it as a natural step towards gaining the “dress and beauty [she longed for] with a whole heart.” Under Drouet’s care, Carrie becomes “comfortably established—in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she [is] safe in a halcyon harbour.” In this way, Carrie becomes comparatively well off compared to people of lesser means, including Minnie and Hanson. But despite this, Carrie does not believe her life has progressed and feels “mournful misgivings” about her transformation from being an honest worker to a kept woman. Carrie has advanced in socioeconomic status yet still feels a sense of decline: “She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse.” Becoming more cosmopolitan, Dreiser suggests, has led Carrie to moral decay.

Then, after moving from Chicago to New York, Carrie sets her sights on fame—another marker of cosmopolitan success—in addition to wealth. However, even though she becomes an actress and achieves stardom, her newfound celebrity strips her of her vitality and zest for life. When Carrie and her second lover, Hurstwood, run out of money in New York, Carrie looks to the stage for a job, “consider[ing] the stage as a door through which she might enter that gilded state which she had so much craved.” Carrie quickly rises from chorus girl to lead actress, “getting in the metropolitan whirl of pleasure.” As a burgeoning star, she receives letters from many suitors and admirers but this “incite[s] her only to coolness and indifference.” Having had her fill of cosmopolitan men, Carrie simply dismisses them with weariness: “I don’t want to go [out] with these people who write to me. I know what kind they are,” she says in exhaustion. Even though being famous and surrounded by adoring suitors may seem exhilarating, it leaves Carrie empty and unsatisfied.

By the end of the novel, Carrie leads a thoroughly cosmopolitan life. Rich, beautiful, and famous, Carrie is the envy of all—except for herself. She has begun to see that nothing the city offers can make her happy: “Even had Hurstwood returned in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have allured her. She had learned that his world, as in her own present state, was not happiness.” With this, readers realize that when Dreiser states that a “cosmopolitan standard of virtue” causes young women to “[become] worse,” he does not necessarily refer to just moral degeneration; rather, it is a sort of decay of the spirit, whereby the young woman falls into a sort of despondency upon realizing the city will never bring genuine improvement to her life. Despite the glowing promises that a cosmopolitan life seems to offer, this lifestyle ultimately rings hollow.

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Urban Life and Decay Quotes in Sister Carrie

Below you will find the important quotes in Sister Carrie related to the theme of Urban Life and Decay.
Chapter 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

On the first morning it rained [Carrie] found that she had no umbrella. Minnie loaned her one of hers, which was worn and faded. There was the kind of vanity in Carrie that troubled at this. She went to one of the great department stores and bought herself one, using a dollar and a quarter of her small store to pay for it.

“What did you do that for, Carrie?” asked Minnie, when she saw it.

“Oh, I need one,” said Carrie.

“You foolish girl.”

Carrie resented this, though she did not reply. She was not going to be a common shop-girl, she thought; they need not think it, either.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber (speaker), Minnie Hanson (speaker)
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“Where do you suppose she’s gone to?” said Minnie, thoroughly aroused.

“I don't know,” a touch of cynicism lighting his eye. “Now she has gone and done it.”

Minnie moved her head in a puzzled way.

“Oh, oh,” she said, “she doesn't know what she has done.”

“Well,” said Hanson, after a while, sticking his hands out before him, “what can you do?”

Minnie’s womanly nature was higher than this. She figured the possibilities in such cases.

“Oh,” she said at last, “poor Sister Carrie!”

Related Characters: Minnie Hanson (speaker), Sven Hanson (speaker), Caroline “Carrie” Meeber
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free of certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her, laden with many new ones which were of a mental order, and altogether so turned about in all of her earthly relationships that she might well have been a new and different individual. She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse. Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber
Page Number: 65-66
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Whatever a man like Hurstwood could be in Chicago, it is very evident that he would be but an inconspicuous drop in an ocean like New York. In Chicago, whose population still ranged about 500,000, millionaires were not numerous. The rich had not become so conspicuously rich as to drown all moderate incomes in obscurity. […] In Chicago the two roads to distinction were politics and trade. In New York the roads were any one of a half-hundred, and each had been diligently pursued by hundreds, so that celebrities were numerous. The sea was already full of whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view—remain unseen. In other words, Hurstwood was nothing.

Related Characters: George W. Hurstwood
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 204
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

[Carrie] could not, for the life of her, assume the attitude and smartness of Mrs. Vance, who, in her beauty, was all assurance. She could only imagine that it must be evident to many that she was the less handsomely dressed of the two. It cut her to the quick, and she resolved that she would not come here again until she looked better. At the same time she longed to feel the delight of parading here as an equal. Ah, then she would be happy!

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber, Mrs. Vance
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

In all Carrie’s experience she had never seen anything like [Sherry’s]. In the whole time she had been in New York Hurstwood’s modified state had not permitted his bringing her to such a place. There was an almost indescribable atmosphere about it which convinced the newcomer that this was the proper thing. Here was the place where the matter of expense limited the patrons to the moneyed or pleasure- loving class.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber, George W. Hurstwood
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 223
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 39 Quotes

Her need of clothes—to say nothing of her desire for ornaments— grew rapidly as the fact developed that for all her work she was not to have them. The sympathy she felt for Hurstwood, at the time he asked her to tide him over, vanished with these newer urgings of decency. He was not always renewing his request, but this love of good appearance was. It insisted, and Carrie wished to satisfy it, wished more and more that Hurstwood was not in the way.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber, George W. Hurstwood
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 271
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

[Carrie] had learned that men could change and fail. Flattery in its most palpable form had lost its force with her. It required superiority—kindly superiority—to move her—the superiority of a genius like Ames.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber
Page Number: 300-301
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

It seemed as if he thought a while, for now [Hurstwood] arose and turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.

“What’s the use?” he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.

Related Characters: George W. Hurstwood (speaker)
Page Number: 350
Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward, onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o’er some quiet landscape, or the glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

Related Characters: Caroline “Carrie” Meeber
Related Symbols: The City
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis: