11 - Dreiser’s sociological vision

Summary

In 1906, the year before Theodore Dreiser reissued Sister Carrie, the American Journal of Sociology published University of Chicago sociologist W. I. Thomas’s “The Adventitious Character of Woman.” In the essay, Thomas contends that woman was originally dominant but gradually “dropped back into a somewhat unstable and adventitious relation to the social process” (32). In his effort to understand this evolution, he explains that modern women - especially American women - have become dependent on their communities for regulation. Noting that “an unattached woman has a tendency to become an adventuress - not so much on economic as on psychological grounds” (41), he contends that when “the ordinary girl … becomes detached from home and group, and is removed not only from surveillance, but from the ordinary stimulation and interest afforded by social life and acquaintanceship, her inhibitions are likely to be relaxed” (41-42).

The girl coming from the country to the city affords one of the clearest cases of detachment. Assuming that she comes to the city to earn her living, her work is not only irksome, but so unremunerative that she finds it impossible to obtain those accessories to her personality in the way of finery which would be sufficient to hold her attention and satisfy her if they were to be had in plenty. She is lost from the sight of everyone whose opinion has any meaning for her, while the separation from her home community renders her condition peculiarly flat and lonely; and she is prepared to accept any opportunity for stimulation offered her, unless she has been morally standardized before leaving home. To be completely lost sight of may, indeed, become an object under these circumstances – the only means by which she can without confusion accept unapproved stimulations – and to pass from a regular to an irregular life and back again before the fact has been noted is not an unusual course.

(42)