Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

This book was first published in 1900.  The print edition that the Moore Memorial Public Library has is the same book that came out in 1900, with the addition of background notes and criticism.  “Sister Carrie” was Dreiser’s first novel.  The story takes place in Chicago and New York, cities in which Dreiser had had experience writing and reporting for different publications.  Carrie, a young 18 year old from Columbus, Ohio, comes to Chicago to live with her older married sister and to find work in the huge bustling city that people were pouring into at the rate of 50,000 people each year. 

Dreiser knew these statistics from his work in journalism, and his familiarity with the social economic classes at the time helped his novel writing.  But he is first and foremost a great storyteller.  While critics at the time found his writing clumsy or ponderous, the reader is conscious of nothing else but his or her interest in the character, and in anticipating what will happen.  Dreiser takes his narrative slowly, and we thoroughly experience the drabness and restriction of Carrie’s sister’s apartment that she shares with her husband.  As part of the struggling lower class, in 1889, they can’t look much farther than getting their wages –her husband cleans refrigerator cars in the stockyard – and paying their food and rent. 

Carrie got a glimpse of another kind of life when she met Drouet, a salesman, on the train on her way to Chicago.  He is a success at his work, and shows it in his dress and in his ability to pay his way in theaters and hotels, and to dine in restaurants with handwritten menus and red carpets. After she has tried to make her way alone, and gotten bruised in the process, Carrie encounters Drouet again.  He offers her a way into this big city, and all that it offers. 

While “Sister Carrie” brought censure on itself by having as its heroine a “fallen woman”, Dreiser saves Carrie from that censure by showing us her modesty, her desire to be married, and her own self-reproach for her actions.   We can see hers and the other characters’ limitations.  Dreiser lets us see their dreams, and how little import in their lives those dreams actually had.  This is his contribution as a “naturalist” writer. 

While reading Dreiser may make you somewhat melancholy, the steady growth of Carrie makes the book worth reading.  She is a woman in a man’s world, but a woman with aspirations, and with tenacity. 

You can find the book here in our catalog.

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat

I’m happy to review this book, since I’m related to the author. It’s a bit difficult, however, because the book’s subject matter encompasses some very weighty material, and as well as generating praise and attention, it has also garnered some dismissive, out-of-hand evaluations from reviewers. (But I can, thankfully, offer some summation and pointers without having to settle all such controversies.)

Douthat deliberates that the decline in membership of Protestant mainline and Catholic churches in America is not from simple disenchantment with old fashioned rituals, but instead represents a shift in our allegiance from Christianity to other religions.  These religions may call themselves Christian but they have actually mixed and matched strands of self, power, and nationalism.  Tea party politics are singled out, as is Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love, and Joel Osteen’s prosperity preaching. 

Douthat faults many Protestant and Catholic leaders for being too accommodating to modern sensibilities, softening Jesus’ hard core teaching with regard to sacrifice, morality, pain and suffering.  Implicit in these alternative religions, or heresies, is that happiness, material comfort, self actualization, an end to the separation of church and state - whatever is promoted, is what we were meant to have.  In today’s world, an admonition to “pick up your cross” can sound like giving in to difficulties instead of actually looking for new life and meaning in painful situations.

Some critics argue that rather than there being a rise in alternative spiritual beliefs, that heresies exist in every age.  Douthat does not dispute that, but he instead notes how gradually our culture and our sensibilities have become immersed in these concepts.  He mentions the mystical “Force” in Star Wars, among other examples. That made me think of the instance of Professor Dumbledore suggesting to Harry Potter that if their post-Earthly encounter was just happening inside Harry’s head, that it could still be “real”.

In reading this book, it’s a good idea to have a dictionary close by, or better yet, reading on a device that gives you a word’s meaning at the touch of a finger.  I found the book slow going, whether from Douthat’s complex reasoning or simply from the depth of the issues presented.  Maybe that’s more evidence of what Douthat calls ‘accommodation’ in today’s world, where ease and ready access are so highly prized.   But whatever the reason, the extra effort involved was worth it for me, and I recommend our readers to take up that challenge.

To see the book in our catalog, click here. 

Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era by D’Ann Campbell

Dr Campbell, a historian and currently a faculty member at Culver-Stockton College in Missouri, has a special interest in the history of women in the military services. Her book offers some food for reflection concerning how women’s lives in the United States were affected by World War II. For its background, she relied heavily on surveys taken by government and organizations at the time, and cites studies which quantify the percentages of women and their status before, throughout and after the war years.

Because of the nature of her data, the book at times seemed dry, full of statistics, which were not always easily translated (for me) into living and breathing scenarios. However, a good part of these “facts” did give me a detailed picture of what life must have been like in those days. Some of the general themes could be anticipated, i.e., how reluctant our armed forces was to admit women to their ranks. There were ups and downs for women in the military, with some branches more welcoming than others (the Navy was the best, evidently) and it was interesting to note that women’s salaries overall were improved by entering the service; while men on the whole were paid less in the military compared to their salaries before the war. Campbell is at pains to dissemble the idea that women weren’t working before the war – actually a good part were, at least until they got married. Unlike other countries, the United States government was firmly against the idea of women seeing combat. Even nurses in the military, who were more accepted by the public in general, did not tend to the wounded in the field.

While “Rosie the Riveter” is a popular image, Campbell informs us that there were some negative aspects of women’s venture onto the assembly line. With virtual segregation still in effect, African-American women, for the most part, were not hired in factories. Job segregation still existed, with many companies determining which fields a woman could work in. Unions were likely to be leery of women joining their ranks, since the implication was that women’s first priority was their family, and they would not be long-term employees.

Campbell takes pains to illustrate her thesis – that the government at war had its objectives that it wanted women to help with, yet at the same time not wanting to endanger their primary status as the keeper of hearth and home. There was a serious backlash to women’s military enrollment which England experienced as well: around 1943 a substantial number of enlisted soldiers began calling all female military sexually promiscuous. This discouraged many women from enlisting, and discouraged their families from giving them support or permission to enlist.

The book gives you a lot to absorb and with so many ideological tussles going on, it’s no wonder that it’s hard to decide how women’s status improved during war time, if at all. One thing at least is certain, is that it decidedly changed.

Click here for the catalog listing.