Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Sister Carrie

When we first meet Carrie (Meeber/Wheeler/Madenda), she isn't terribly likeable. There are shades of a Pretty Woman storyline, and the pace is rather slow. Stick with it--there's a lot here. The innocent Carrie, treated by the men in her life like an orphan without agency, quickly learns how to forge her own path, and this will include learning to play her own games. The story itself is quite miserly--definitely a tale of fortune's wheel. Dreiser has a gift for revealing the twists and turns of the darker bits of our souls, but in such a way that it is in fact part of our mundane existence, rather than dramatic depravity. The narration is exceedingly clever--sometimes sympathetic, sometimes sardonic commentary. The descriptions of city life and class structure are rich and dimensional and we come to feel a refreshing ambiguity about our heroine at the end.

Content Warnings

amkclaes's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

this is a masterpiece. i can't give it 5 stars because it's just not as momentous as American Tragedy, but the way Dreiser captures and critiques capitalism and the shift to an industrialized society is, for me, so far unmatched. We can genuinely see and understand in Carrie, and then in ourselves, the "magic" appeal of capitalism as Weber describes. Maybe my favorite aspect is how Dreiser writes women and Carrie's story in particular: she isn't punished for her caprices, as is common in older literature as well as modern.. she doesn't even particularly struggle internally with it, and in the end she has a kind of success, even if the writer leaves us with an extraordinarily haunting last sentence implying that she won't ever really be happy - it has nothing to do with her would-be "moral failures" and all to do with simple human condition.
Another message masterfully conveyed is the arbitrary cruelty of our capitalist system, and how easily it can seal fates, based on the superficial. Dreiser captures so well how outward symbols and signifiers and even just beauty are imputed onto us and become us, through the gaze of our peers, who use them to assess worth and assign value. It's so real, so true to life, 123 years later.

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brennach's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Content Warnings

bluejay21's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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