4 (p. 45) “That’s Jules Wallace, the spiritualist”: Wallace apparently used his spiritualism sessions to seduce women for his sexual pleasure; his landlady accused him of enticing women to his room for group sex. Dreiser, who investigated Wallace on assignment for the St. Louis Republican, took a dim view of Wallace’s spiritualism, calling him a charlatan.
5 (p. 84) the liberal analysis of Spencer: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was an English philosopher and pioneering sociologist who helped popularize Darwin’s theory of evolution; in fact, he originated one of his own prior to Darwin’s. Dreiser’s literary .naturalism was strongly influenced by some of Spencer’s ideas. Spencer believed that individuals were conditioned by heredity and environment, but that some people could flourish apart from the group and achieve greater freedom. The latter view was more optimistic than Darwin’s or Dreiser’s.
6 (p. 84) Ogden Place: Dreiser had lived on this street in the summer of 1892. It was in a middle-class neighborhood, near Union Park.
7 (p. 94) She amused herself with ... a book by Bertha M. Clay: This was the nom de plume of best-selling author Charlotte M. Brame (1836-1884), whose mediocre, sentimental romance novels often concerned a girl from a poor family who becomes romantically entangled with a nobleman and ends up disappointed and unhappy. On p. 287 Carrie refers to Brame’s best-known work, Dora Thome. For Dreiser, the popularity of such fiction was indicative of America’s debased literary taste.
8 (p. 138) Under the Gaslight: This is a reference to a wildly successful play by Augustin Daly, first produced in 1867. Its climax became a staple of melodramas and early films: The hero, tied to a railroad track, is rescued by the heroine just as a train approaches. Dreiser lifted the excerpts from Under the Gaslight verbatim from the 1895 Samuel French acting edition. Laura, Carrie’s role, finds happiness in Daly’s play, but not in Dreiser’s version.
9 (p. 192) became entangled with a bunco-steerer: “Bunco-steerer” was another name for a con man who lured naive country visitors to places in the city where they could be swindled or robbed. Con men abound in nineteenth-century American fiction. Herman Melville and Mark Twain wrote comic fables about such crooks and the gullible people they duped.
10 (p. 262) an average, and yet exorbitant, rent for a home at the time: The rent is average for the neighborhood, but out of proportion to rents for the same amount of space in other cities. The Upper West Side of Manhattan was just beginning to be built up as a more middle- to upper-class residential neighborhood. In 1907 Henry James, in The American Scene, jeered at the new apartment houses that lined Riverside Drive near Carrie and Hurstwood’s flat. He thought them an “artless jumble,” ugly, vulgar, and lacking in architectural distinction, unlike the elegant scale of the houses in the Washington Square of his childhood.
11 (p. 280) We’re going down to Sherry’s for dinner: Louis Sherry was an opulent restaurant where fashion-conscious people and celebrities dined and gathered to be gawked at. Ames points out to Carrie a vulgarly bejeweled woman whom he castigates as typical of her class’s ostentatious, wasteful spending. Dreiser is particularly disgusted by such lavish restaurants.
12 (p. 292) The poisons generated by remorse ... produce marked physical deterioration. To these Hurstwood was subject: Anastates and katastates were metabolic terms used in the 1890s by physiologists. Katastates break down complex organisms in the body, but in the process a person’s metabolism goes awry. Anastates keep energy levels balanced during metabolism and therefore a person remains emotionally stable. Dreiser’s understanding of these substances comes from the largely discredited psychosomatic theory (an explanation of manic-depression) of the scientist Elmer Gates, about whom he was writing in early 1900.
13 (p. 296) The new flat ... contained only four rooms: This is a stage of downward mobility for Hurstwood and Carrie, a shrinkage of space and of prospects that Hurstwood accepts and Carrie frets at. Dreiser’s sister Emma (on whom Sister Carrie was based) and L. A. Hopkins lived in this neighborhood, and Dreiser visited them there in the mid-1890s.
14 (p. 360) the various trolley companies refused: The long, bitter Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895, in which 4,000 workers walked off their jobs to fight for better wages, was marred by frequent violence. The 7,500 National Guardsmen who were called in to escort scabs often attacked crowds with guns and bayonets, and ultimately killed two bystanders. The strike was front-page news for months and ended with a public boycott of the scab-driven trolleys, forcing the trolley companies to re-hire the strikers.
15 (p. 403) “I’m living at the Chelsea now”: This apartment building on West Twenty-third Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, later became a somewhat seedy landmark residence hotel for poets, composers, artists, and assorted bohemians.
16 (p. 416) second-hand Hester Street basement collection: This shopping street on the Lower East Side, lined with tenements, was home mainly to Jewish immigrants; its shops sold cheap goods, and the area’s primary food market was located there. Photographs of the period often show the street teeming with pushcarts, horse carriages, and a sea of humanity.
17 (p. 438) “Pere Goriot,” which Ames had recommended to her: Balzac’s famous novel of 1834 is about a father who sacrifices all for his two selfish, ingrate daughters. That Carrie is reading Père Goriot rather than Dora Thome is proof of her desire to improve herself culturally. The influence of Balzac’s writing on Dreiser is something he referred to often.
Inspired by Sister Carrie
The 1950s are regarded as the golden age of melodrama in American cinema, a time when such legendary directors as Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli produced some of their best work. In 1952 William Wyler released his superb Carrie, an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s novel of urban plight, and it resonated strongly with contemporary moviegoers.
Carrie stars Laurence Olivier as Hurstwood, Jennifer Jones as Carrie, and Eddie Albert as Drouet. Even though Dreiser named his novel after its female protagonist, critics have always found the author’s rendering of Hurstwood’s tragic downfall the most masterful portion of the book. The same sentiment has been expressed regarding Olivier’s brilliant, show-stealing performance as the disgraced restaurant owner; he portrays Hurstwood’s deep loneliness with grace and subtlety, his sad eyes and desolate expression reflecting his pain and despair. As Carrie, Jones gives a multifaceted performance that only gets better as the movie progresses. Jones shows vulnerability as well as hardness, revealing the emotional development Carrie undergoes during her difficulties and subsequent swift rise. Albert turns in a brilliant performance as Drouet, conveying the fundamental irresponsibility of the man while keeping him, despite his machinations, charming, friendly, and even likable. Miriam Hopkins is also excellent as the shrewish Julie Hurstwood. Carrie capably recreates the atmosphere of the growing cities of Chicago and New York at the turn of the twentieth century. Wyler’s direction is quiet and fluid, allowing the stories and characters to speak for themselves. The film earned Oscar nominations for art direction and costume design.
For Carrie, Wyler teamed with screenwriters Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz. The trio had earlier created an outstanding adaptation of Henry James’s novel Washington Square entitled The Heiress (1949), starring Olivia de Havilland in the title role and Montgomery Clift as her penniless suitor. Carrie was Wyler’s fourth effort at bringing a classic novel to life. In 1936 he had adapted Dodsworth, based on the novel by Dreiser’s fellow naturalist Sinclair Lewis, and in 1939 his famed version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights appeared, starring Olivier as the doomed Heathcliff opposite Merle Oberon’s Cathy.