09301108
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• An American novelist and journalist
• An outstanding representative of American naturalism

• Family background
• Educational experience
• Marriage experience

• Theodore Dreiser (August 27, 1871-
December 28, 1945) was born in Terre
Haute, Indiana.
• He was the ninth of ten surviving children
(three others died as infants) of Säräh
Schanab and John Dreiser.
• Dreiser's childhood coincided with the family's hard times.

• He was a German immigrant;
• He was a catholic farmer.
• He treated children severely, only to make them distant from him.

Säräh Schanab
• She was from a farming community,
• She was illiterate.
• She was earnest a christian, but disowned for marrying John and converting to Roman
Catholicism

• Two of his sisters were seduced.
• Paul Dresser was a songwriter.

Before
1889
• He graduated from high school and worked on his own.
1889-
1890
• He attended Indiana University but dropped out one year later.
From 1892
• He was independently reading and thinking

• Sara White:She was a school teacher. Their marriage was unhappy. Dreiser separated permanently from her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a divorce.

• She was an American artist and book illustrator.
• They exchanged letters with each other until Dreiser's death.

• Dreiser lived with her.
• She was an actress and painter, and much younger than him.

• She was the cousin of
Theodore Dreiser.
• She became his mistress from 1919 until in 1944.
• After his first wife died, she married him.

• Sister Carrie (1900)
• Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
• The Financier (1912)
• The Titan (1914)
Trilogy of
Desire
• The Genius (1915)
An autobiographical work
• An American Tragedy (1925)
• Dawn (1931)
• The Bulwark (1946)
• The Stoic (1947)

• His first novel, Sister
Carrie , was published in
1900.
• The book has since acquired a considerable reputation.
• It has been called the
"greatest of all
American urban novels."

• His first commercial success was An
American Tragedy , published in 1925.
• In 2005, the book was placed on Time
Magazine' s list of the top 100 novels.

• His second novel Jennie Gerhardt , was published in 1911.
• Jennie Gerhardt, the character, was influenced by Dreiser's sisters,
Mame and Sylvia.

• Jennie Gerhard meets Senator George Brander, while working in a hotel. He declares his wish to marry her. Jennie agrees to sleep with him, but Senator dies, leaving her pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Vesta.
• She moves to Cleveland where she finds work as a lady's maid. She meets
Lester Kane. Jennie falls in love with him.
• Kane wishes to marry her, but his family disapprove. But Kane does not yield to his family's pressure to leave Jennie.
• Kane's father died. He will not inherit a substantial part of the family business unless he discards her.
• Kane, marries Letty and resumes his former social status.
• Kane becomes ill. He tells Jennie he still loves her, and she tends him until his death, mourning secretly at his funeral.

Senator
George
Brander sleep with him
Jennie
Gerhardt
Vesta become his mistress
Letty
Gerald
Lester
Kane get married

• Dreiser has been a controversial figure in
American literary history.
• It is in Dreiser’s works that American naturalism is said to have come of age.

09301108
赵琦