Subscribe

Subscribe to our Newsletter and get informed about new publication regulary and special discounts for subscribers!

ILSHS > ILSHS Volume 84 > Desire and Dehumanization in Theodor Dreiser’s...
< Back to Volume

Desire and Dehumanization in Theodor Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

Full Text PDF

Abstract:

Theodor Dreiser's Sister Carrie dramatizes the unbridled greed for wealth and craze for status in an extremely commercialized world. It exemplifies the servitude of a society beholden to a consumerist market, where the affluent prey on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the poor. The novel captures human relations in their seismic change, where family bonds are breaking down and the family is losing its role as a basic social unit. This article will argue that human desire lies at the heart of family breakdowns in Sister Carrie. In doing so, it will provide an insight into the workings of the capitalist system, including its inroads into the shores of human desire – explaining how it robs individuals of their true essence and dehumanizes them. Finally, the article will call for checks and balances vis-à-vis our uncontrollable desires and recommend collective efforts in order to protect the institution of family and bring back commercialized societies from the brink.

Info:

Periodical:
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 84)
Pages:
14-21
Citation:
M. Hanif and H. Badri, "Desire and Dehumanization in Theodor Dreiser’s Sister Carrie", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 84, pp. 14-21, 2018
Online since:
October 2018
Export:
Distribution:
References:

[1] R. Shulman, Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, (1989).

[2] C. Harmon, Cuteness and Capitalism in Sister Carrie, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, (2000).

[3] D. Pizer, The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1995).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521433002

[4] A. Kaplan, The Social Construction of American Realism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1988).

[5] L. J. Hussman, Dreiser and His Fiction: A Twentieth-Century Quest, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, (1983).

[6] T. Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and the Body. Cambridge University Press, (1998).

[7] S. Hagen, Buddhism, Plain and Simple. New York: Broadway Books, (1997).

[8] G. Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, (1983).

[9] T. McGowan, Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, New York: Columbia University Press, (2016).

[10] H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, Boston: Beacon Press, (1955).

[11] S. McGregor, Rape, Pornography and Capitalism, London: International Socialism, (1989).

[12] K. Marx, The Communist Manifesto, London: Penguin Books, (1967).

[13] D. Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies, New Brunswick: Rutgers University, (1992).

[14] N. Schulz, Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Structure, Washington: American Enterprise Institute Press, (2013).

[15] R. Dalling, The Story of Us Humans, from Atoms to Today's Civilization, Indiana: iUniverse, (2004).

[16] F. Furstenberg, Industrialization and the American Family: A Look Backward, Washington: American Sociological Association, (1966).

[17] F. Dore, The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Modernism, California: Stanford University Press, (2005).

[18] C. Prebish, Buddhism - The Ebook, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, (2005).

[19] G. Deleuze, Les Cours de Gilles Deleuze: Cours Vincennes. 1971. Retrieved from https://www.webdeleuze.com/textes/116.

[20] F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, New York: Pathfinder Press, (1972).

[21] T. Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Auckland: The Floating Press, (2009).

Show More Hide
Cited By:
This article has no citations.