Sister Carrie and The House of Mirth

Two reflections from the first year of the Decade Project

Book covers from the Library of America press: Dreiser and Wharton

I intended to write something about The Master and Margarita this week, but I need to give it some more thought. Rather than simply skip a week, I’ve resurrected two short posts from the first year of the Decade Project. These reflections emerged from a conversation with my faculty colleague Dr. Colette Daubner. In those early reflections, I did not give much of a plot summary.

Sister Carrie—Theodore Dreiser

She’s not MY sister! 
(First posted July 19, 2008)

I read Sister Carrie this week, and have ordered copies of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. They should arrive next week, and I’ll get to The House of Mirth right away.

Until then, here are some thoughts about Sister Carrie. I was surprised as things started to go her way and things started to go from bad to worse with Hurstwood. And the conclusion was devastating. In fact, I was pretty surprised at the way that just about everything turned out. The robbery, the marriage(s?), Carrie’s stage debut (in Under the Gaslight)—yeah, just about everything.

Can't say anything about Wharton yet, but it seems to me in retrospect that the worldview underlying the book includes the belief that hard work, humility, plus a little luck brings financial success, while laziness guarantees poverty regardless of whether luck runs good or bad. Carrie’s seduction or drifting into a “life of sin” was not related to her fate, as it would have been in the hands of some other author. So Dreiser is labeled an American naturalist—an apostle of the tell-it-like-it-is. And he was clearly influenced by Darwinian ideas.

The thing that struck me most forcefully and that I found most depressing was that the entire book, from page one to the end, revolved around the mechanics of satisfying desires. To give a subjective estimate, I would say 40% of everyone’s thoughts were about what they wanted to buy, 40% were about how to make enough money to buy those things, and the remaining 20% were about how to gratify sexual desires. This relentless bombardment of shallow consumption-driven calculations just wore me down, so that by the end, I was saying, along with Hurstwood, “Oh, what's the use?”

Dreiser portrays Carrie as having no depth at all. She is like a moth that flutters around any glittering trinket. And in the end, though the means to acquiring those trinkets opens up for her, there is no hope of her reaching any satisfaction—for endless desire is the core of her self. The narrator addresses the final lines to Carrie herself: “Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.”

Here’s a passage that sums her up:

Carrie was an apt student of fortune’s ways—of fortune’s superficialities. Seeing a thing, she would immediately set to inquiring how she would look, properly related to it. Be it known that this is not fine feeling, it is not wisdom. The greatest minds are not so afflicted; and, on the contrary, the lowest order of mind is not so disturbed. Fine clothes to her were a vast persuasion; they spoke tenderly and Jesuitically for themselves. When she came within earshot of their pleading, desire in her bent a willing ear. The voice of the so-called inanimate! Who shall translate for us the language of the stones?

“My dear,” said the lace collar she secured from Partridge’s, “I fit you beautifully; don't give me up.”

“Ah, such little feet,” said the leather of the soft new shoes; “how effectively I cover them. What a pity they should ever want my aid.”

(Opening lines of chapter XI).

So, even though the book is named “Sister Carrie,” it seems to me that George Hurstwood is the most memorable character, if not the central one. It is through his eyes that we see the gritty side of money. Carrie only works, gets paid, and spends money. Hurstwood works, sure, but at one time or another he gambles, embezzles, filches, and begs. It’s only through Hurstwood’s eyes that we see the impact of an economic downturn on human beings. It’s through Hustwood’s eyes we see the desperation of striking workers and scabs. Only Hurstwood understands the meaning of winter.

Anyway, I don’t know if any of this is helpful. There’s a lot more to say, but I’ll pause now.

The House of Mirth—Edith Wharton

Get me outta this funhouse!!
(First posted July 27, 2008)

I can honestly say that The House of Mirth is a book I never would have read, were it not for the Decade Project. And with equal honesty I can say I'm very glad I read it. It is an American novel of manners, and though I DO love Jane Austen, and though I DO love Henry James, I just can't see myself ever picking up such a thing on my own.

The book revolves around the half-hearted husband-hunting ventures of Lily Bart, a twenty-nine year old single woman whom the author repeatedly reminds us is stunningly beautiful. Despite Lily’s grace, wit, intelligence, humor, social malleability, and skillful manipulations of others, she has one fatal flaw that leads to her ultimate destruction: She has unshakable integrity. She has not the cynicism to marry entirely for money, to have an affair, to betray a friend, or to knowingly harm another person—even a self-appointed enemy.

Unfortunately for her, she lacks the means to support such a habit as integrity. And that ultimately seems to be the message of the whole book: for a woman with money, any indiscretion will be forgiven; but for a woman without money, though she may have floated in and out of rich circles for years, no friend will object when a sacrificial victim is needed and she is chosen.

Since most of the world lives happily outside this rarefied circle of the ultra rich, one would think Lily should just move on to find tasteful, intelligent people who would be a better fit. There is one such person in the novel, a Mr. Lawrence Seldon, with whom Lily could obviously live out her days in love and harmony. Unfortunately, she has not the stoicism to live within modest means. Her taste is refined and fashion marches relentlessly on. Further, she has no real place, since she cannot endure the company of “coarser” people, and she also cannot endure the superficiality of her “refined” companions. These latter Wharton portrays as fools—clearly the fools whose hearts are in the house of mirth: “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning: but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” (Ecclesiastes 7:4)

I found The House of Mirth to be witty, elegant, and delightful for the first two thirds. Wharton’s descriptions of the very very rich are quite funny and memorable:

Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he looked like a clever pupil’s drawing from a plaster cast—but Gwen’s countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.

At one point, when Lily Bart is trying to butter up Mr. Gryce, she shows a keen interest in hearing about his collection of Americana. His reaction:

He felt the confused titillation with which the lower organisms welcome the gratification of their needs, and all his senses floundered in a vague well-being, through which Miss Bart’s personality was dimly but pleasantly perceptible.

But Wharton started to lose me in the last part. As long as she spoke of the follies of the super-rich, her voice was steady and sure. But when she began describing Lily’s slippage down the social ladder into destitution, I got the feeling that Wharton’s information came from missionary tracts or encyclopedias. The details of mansions and elegant dinners were sharp and precise, but, well, the word “shabby” appears five times in the last sixteen pages of the novel. It’s as though Wharton’s gift of invention had failed her completely.

In contrast, Dreiser’s often clumsy and theoretical narration takes on a sharp edge of clarity when he describes breadlines, ratty hotel lobbies, and strike actions by trade unionists. I thought this difference between the two authors dictated the overall effect. Wharton’s voice drifted into vague generalities as Lily faded away, but Dreiser’s voice had grown clear, strident, and authentic by the time Hurstwood murmured his final “What's the use?”

So, as to Colette’s question about the difference between Dreiser and Wharton, it seems to me that they come from opposite ends of the social spectrum, and their fiction reflects this. Dreiser knows poverty and hard times, Wharton has read about them. Wharton knows frivolity and conspicuous consumption, Dreiser has read about them. To Wharton, abject poverty means having no jewelry and mending ones own clothes; to Dreiser, it means having no food and begging ten cents for a snowy night’s lodging. Wharton’s purpose seems to be to shake a finger at the noisy whitecaps of indolent rich, while Dreiser’s seems to be to make us contemplate the swelling sea of the working class. Why does Carrie succeed while Lily fails? I'm guessing that Carrie’s single-minded craving for material goods gave her the gumption to do whatever it took to gain them. Lily’s scruples reined in her craving for money, thus sabotaging her every scheme. Her heart was simply too wise to be in the house of mirth.

§ § §

I hope you enjoy these reflections from sixteen years ago. During that first year of the Decade Project, I floundered around quite a bit trying to figure out what to say about the books and how to say it. Next week, I’ll make good on my promise to say something about Bulgakov and his most famous work, The Master and Margarita.

Also coming up soon: I’ve started reading the unabridged The Mahabharata, as translated by Bibek Deproy. It runs to ten volumes, 5,933 pages to be exact, and I plan to slip in a post about each volume as I finish it.