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The year before Carrie hit the theaters, George Stevens premiered his successful adaptation of a Dreiser novel with the celebrated A Place in the Sun (1951), based on An American Tragedy (1925); it featured superstars Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Director Josef von Sternberg had made the first film version of An American Tragedy in 1931.

Comments and Questions

In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Sister Carrie through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

Comments

THEODORE DREISER

Well, the critics have not really understood what I was trying to do. Here is a book that is close to life. It is intended not as a piece of literary craftsmanship, but as a picture of conditions done as simply and effectively as the English language will permit. To sit up and criticise me for saying “vest,” instead of “waistcoat”; to talk about my splitting the infinitive and using vulgar commonplaces here and there, when the tragedy of a man’s life is being displayed, is silly. More, it is ridiculous. It makes me feel that American criticism is the joke which English literary authorities maintain it to be. But the circulation is beginning to boom. When it gets to the people they will understand, because it is a story of real life, of their lives.

—from the New York imes (January 15, 1901)

DENVER REPUBLICAN

The chief merit of [Sister Carrie] is its photographic descriptions of character. Scenes and incidents are freely localized. The book is unhealthful in tone, however, and its literary quality is not high enough to cover its faults of theme. -January 20, 1901

—January 20, 1901

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The philosophy of [Sister Carrie] is very clear and very interesting. Its incidents, the squalid plane upon which its development takes place, will naturally prevent it from achieving a marked popularity. Even Mr. Dreiser’s antiseptic style cannot make it anything but a most unpleasant tale, and you would never dream of recommending it to another person to read.

—January 20, 1901

LONDON DAILY MAIL

At last a really strong novel has come from America; a novel almost great because of its relentless purpose, its power to compel emotion, its marvellous simplicity. If Mr. Theodore Dreiser obtains the success he deserves, then “Sister Carrie” should make the book not of one but of many seasons.

—August 13, 1901

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN

Rarely, even in modern work, have we met with characters so little idealised, so patiently presented. There is nothing of the showy development of the worse kind of psychological novel ... Mr. Dreiser impresses us by his truthful sequence of events. He is strictly normal, and no fantastic light is shed on the credible steps of vice and crime. He is a faithful student, but his eyes are not fixed dully on the model. He might be called unimaginative by those who see no imagination in the insight which makes its deductions from experience nor in that illuminating intelligence which controls a design.... The effect of the whole is perhaps a little depressing, and Mr. Dreiser has not much charm of style. He has many happy phrases, but we are occasionally oppressed by such “Americanisms” as “eyes snapping” or “when he went home evenings the house looked nice.” His work is faithful, acute, unprejudiced, and it should belong to the veritable “documents” of American history.

—August 14, 1901

THE ACADEMY

Sister Carrie has opened our eyes. It is a calm, reasoned, realistic study of American life in Chicago and New York, absolutely free from the slightest trace of sentimentality