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See The Color of a Great City.
----John C. Berkey, Alice M. Winters, Historical Editors, "Sister Carrie: Manuscript to Print," from
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), Neda M.
Westlake, Editor.
Dreiser arrived in New York in 1ate 1894, where he could not get work as a newspaperman. His
brother, Paul Dresser, who had become a successful songwriter, rescued him. Together they
successfully published Ev'ry Month, a monthly magazine featuring sheet music in 1895. (504)
In 1898 he married Sarah ("Jug") White, a former schoolteacher from Missouri. He began
writing Sister Carrie in 1899.
After the fashion of Balzac, Dreiser included specific names for places, plays, restaurants, and so
on. For Carrie's story he used the affair between his sister, Emma, and L.A. Hopkins, a married
man and a cashier in a Chicago tavern. He stole $3,500 and went to Montreal with Emma. He
returned most of the money and went to New York with Emma.
When Hurstwood was looking for work in New York, Dreiser cut out advertisements from the
classified sections of New York newspapers and put them into his manuscript. When Hurstwood
worked as a scab during the streetcar strike, Dreiser researched details in the New York Times.
(511) His final chapters draw on his own 1899 article, "Curious Shifts of the Poor," about the
desperate of New York, published in Demorest's. (511-512)
Frank Norris, author of McTeague, read the novel at Doubleday, Page and Company and was
enthusiastic to publish. No contract signed. Frank Doubleday, possibly influenced by his wife,
disliked the novel and asked Dreiser to release them from the unsigned agreement to publish it.
Dreiser demanded that they publish. Doubleday agreed, though the company demanded actual
names be fictionalized and curses be muted. Dreiser revised. Doubleday did not advertise the
novel. Despite Norris's help, only 456 copies were sold between Nov., 1900-Feb., 1902. (522529)
J.C.B., A.M.W., "Maps":
When Carrie moves to New York, Dreiser's scope encompasses virtually all of
Manhattan in the 1890s. Once again the novel covers the economic spectrum, as
Carrie and Hurstwood move from middle-class respectability and address to, for
Hurstwood, the very dregs of the Bowery and, for Carrie, the theater and
restaurant environment of the privileged classes. (543)
See pp. 546-547 for list of NYC places used in SC.
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See "Notes".
----Donald Pizer, ed., Theodore Dreiser: A Selection of Uncollected Prose (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1977).
"Reflections," from Ev'ry Month 2 (May 1896), 6. Here Dreiser, signing himself "The Prophet,"
sees, in this impressionistic response, the brief, temperate, romantic season of May in "the more
crowded quarters of a city like New York," between winter cold and summer heat.
The myriad shop lights, the patter of pedestrians upon the pavements below, the
lolling creatures, talking from out the windows, the thin smoke curling from
distant chimneys, the stars -- these, blended, blurred, merged until none are
distinct and all are softened, makes for them the city, such as it is, vast, sad,
romantic, the city as it is, in May. (56)
"Reflections," from Ev'ry Month 2 (June 1896), 5-6. Here "The Prophet" reflects upon those
driven to suicide by disappointments in the city. "Between the time when the voices of abundant
hopes call a young man to the city, and his later desponding self-sought death, God only knows
what may intervene." Then "suicide looms large." (68-69)
"The Literary Shower," from Ev'ry Month 2 (June 1896), 21-22. Here "Edward Al"
acknowledges the centrality of New York to literary aspirations. "If you have it in you to be
great you must come to New York." (72)
"Reflections," from Ev'ry Month 3 (October 1896), 6-7. Here "The Prophet" reflects on the city,
its attractions and its disillusionments, on the occasion of the strike of New York sweat-shop
workers in July and August of 1896. "To go to the city is the changeless desire of the
mind....There is a magnetism in nature that gives more to the many, and this you will see in the
constant rushing of wealth to those who have wealth..." (95) Attraction to city is beyond reason,
but the city hides its harder sides. "Like a sinful Magdalen the city decks herself gayly,
fascinating all by her garments of scarlet and silk, awing by her jewels and perfumes, when in
truth there lies hid beneath these a torn and miserable heart, and a soiled and unhappy conscience
that will not be still but is forever moaning and crying 'for shame.'" (97) City workers are
starving.
Throughout these columns Dreiser praises Herbert Spencer and Darwin's survival of the fittest
theory applied to human conduct. "It is only the unfit who fail -- who suffer and die." (110)
"Reflections," from Ev'ry Month 3 (February 1897), 4-5. Signed "The Prophet."
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"Curious Shifts of the Poor," from Demorest's 36 (November 1899), 22-26. Unsed in chapters
45-47 of Sister Carrie. Dreiser calls attention to the poor who stand in contrast to the rich along
Broadway. Traces "The Captain" in his route to a flophouse, somewhere below 10th Street. He
describes the line of poor outside a mission on 15th Street during a cold, January day -- a sketch
which owes much to Crane's "The Men in the Storm," first published in 1894. Dreiser goes out
of his way to mute his readers' symnpathies. "Their parade before us should not appeal to our
pity, but should awaken us to what we are -- for society is no better than itys poorest
type....Wealth may create an illusion, or modify a ghastly appearance or ingorance and error, but
it cannot change the effect. The result is as real in the mansions of Fifth avenue as in the
midnight throng outside a baker's door." (140)
"The Real Howells," from Ainslee's 5 (March 1900), 137-42 & Americana 36 (April 1943), 27582. Dreiser meets with Howells in his apartment overlooking Central Park. Howells reflects
sadly on the state of the city. "It is my belief that the struggle really does grow more bitter. The
great city surprises me. It seems so much a to-do over so little -- millions crowding into to
obtain subsistence in a region where subsistence is least....This little island is cold and bleak a
great many months of the year. Nothing is grown here." (143) Dreiser sees Howells's generosity
of spirit to other writers and his positive influence.
"The Loneliness of the City," from Tom Watson's Magazine 2 (October 1905), 474-75. Here
Dreiser bemoans "the utter isolation and loneliness of heart forced upon the average individual"
in the city. (157) At the time he and his wife lived on Mott Avenue and 144th Street, in the
Bronx, where neighbors did not know each other.
"At the Sign of the Lead Pencil," from Bohemian 17 (October 1909), 422-23. Written on the
occasion of a poor man who dropped dead in the Bowery. Flat, factual description. "I like, at
times, this brief way of recording the failure of an individual. It is so characteristic of the city,
and of life as a whole. Nature is so grim. The city, which represents it so effectively, is also so
grim. It does not care at all. It is not conscious. The passing of so small an organism as that of a
man or woman is nothing to it." (165-166) [Emerson's nature, as well as optimism, relocated in
urban bleakness.]
Then Dreiser recalls his own entry into the city, in February, 1903, when he wandered as a
derelict, until he was rescued by Paul. "I sank to the bottom of human misery." (166)
----Richard Lingeman, Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City 1871-1907 (New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1986).
New York for Dreiser seemed to be a place of extremes, but also a place of initiation,
knowledge. When Dreiser first went to New York in the summer of 1894, Paul showed him the
city. They visited their sister, Emma, who had gone off with Hopkins, who turned out to be
unfaithful. Paul and Theodore walked up Broadway, seeing the "parade" of wealth, Tin Pan
Alley, then to the shut-down Tenderloin area, to the Hotel Metropole at 42nd Street, where Paul
greeted cronies. Later in the week Paul took his brother to a "French" brothel, where he
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indulged, but felt guilty. During a Sunday stroll on Manhattan Beach, Theodore had an epiphany
of New York's wonder, spread out around him, a city lit by fireworks. He would remember
Paul's words as they first strolled up Broadway: "Sometimes you ought to writer about these
things, Thee....The people out West don't know yet what is going on, but the rich are getting
control. They'll own the country pretty soon. A writer like you could make 'em see that." (139141) [Again the knowledge theme. As the city brought him to a higher consciousness, so to
would he, in his writings, bring the nation.]
In Nov., 1984 Dreiser returned. After he was rebuffed at the World he sat beside the bums of
City Hall Park. There, he later wrote, "the idea of Hurstwood was born." Not so much the story
of Carrie Meeber but "the fate of Hurstwood," as Lingeman puts it. (150) Later he was hired at
the World. But he was haunted by the idea of failure. He gets Emma to leave Hopkins. He
quits.
New York...had the feeling of gross and blissful and parading selfindulgence....Here...were huge dreams and lusts and vanities being gratified
hourly. I wanted to know the worst and the best. -- from Newspaper Days, 1931.
(135)
Dreiser lived in Bowery, down and out, sleeping in flophouses, like those described in Riis and
Crane.
Then he becomes editor of Ev'ry Month, a magazine backed by Howley, Haviland, song
publishers, which focused on sheet music. Paul Dresser's career thrived with "On the Banks of
the Wabash," to which Theodore contributed.
Free-lance writing.
The New York of Carrie is cold and imperial. (265) Dreiser draws on his "Prophet" essays, his
first impressions.
Hurstwood and Carrie take flat on W78th Street. Having returned $1,300 of the stolen money, he
buys half interest in a saloon on Warren Street, but is eaten up by nostalgia and guilt. He is in
the city within the city.
He began to see it as one sees a city with a wall about it. Men were posted at the
gates. You could not get in. Those inside did not care to come out to see who
you were. They were so merry inside that all those outside were forgotten, and he
was on the outside. Each day he could read in the evening papers of the doings in
this walled city. (339, UP)
Hurstwood draws away from Carrie, or "Mrs. Wheeler." Her neighbor, Mrs. Vance, stirs
memory and desires in Carrie. She loses admiration and love for Hurstwood. Mrs. Vance
introduces Carrie to Bob Ames, inventor from Indianapolis, a disciple of Edison -- spokesman
for Dreiser. Hurstwood and partner lose lease on Warren Street saloon. He cannot find work.
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Carrie finds work in chorus line of comic opera. Hurstwood loses manhood. He briefly becomes
scab motorman during strike in Brooklyn. Now, taking on the values of losers, he identifies with
the strikers. Struck down by striker, Hurstwood quits.
Carrie becomes a success under the stage name of Madenda, a name Drouet had given her. With
her $150 a week salary, she moves to new apartment. Ames aims her high but she lacks
direction. Hurstwood, abandoned by Carrie, sells furniture and moves to Bowery. He sees
Carrie is inside the walled city within a city.
As Dreiser wrote, it is reported he would rock and sing "Wabash" or other popular songs.
"Wabash" evokes idealized, lost past, caught in Dresser's lyrics:
Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash,
From the fields there comes a breath of new mown hay.
Thro' the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming,
On the banks of the Wabash far away. (180)
Hurstwood gasses himself in flophouse.
In Ev'ry Month in 1896 Dreiser wrote of NYC:
It is bleak, dismal and isolated -- a spot at once mournful and grewsome....The
storm beats about it some nights, the moon floods about it on others, but always it
is forsake like, always sad. There are iron bars in the windows, idle guards in the
court, and far over the water, you can see the lights of the city, gleaming and
blazing and soft over the tide you can hear the murmur and gayety and life that is
there. (308)
----Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), Neda M.
Westlake, Editor.
As Hurstwood and Carrie enter New York in chapter XXXIII, Dreiser lectures on the fixity of
"the social atmosphere of the city." (304) "Whatever a man like Hurstwood could be in Chicago,
it is very evident that he would be but an inconspicuous drop in an ocean like New York." (304305) Chicago was an open ocean compared with New York. There "the sea was already full of
whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view, remain unseen. In other
words, Hurstwood was nothing." (305)
Flat at 78th and Amsterdam -- six rooms and a bath for $35 a month. Registered as "G.W.
Wheeler." Invests #1,000 in Warren Street saloon, though he thought it a come-down from
Hannah and Hogg's in Chicago.
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After two years Hurstwood's business picks up and he becomes distracted from Carrie. She
takes up with Mrs. Vance, "the typical New Yorker in many things, some of which were
dressiness, jollity, love of metropolitan life, crowds, theaters and gentlemen companions." (320)
The magic of the theater and rich crowds along Broadway stir Carrie's ambitions. Mrs. Vance
introduces Carrie to her husband, Ames. She is overwhelmed by the splendor of Sherry's, a
restaurant. There she senses Ames's superiority, his visionary quality.
They have to move downtown, to 13th, near 6th Avenue. Out of work, he sits in lobby of the
Broadway Central, watching the parade of the fortunate.
"What's the use," says Hurstwood, at the end. (499)
Dreiser changed the original ending, which concluded with Hurstwood's suicide and puts in an
up-beat exhortation to Carrie, relocated to end of chapter XLIX in UP edition.
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