摘 要

纵观中外文学史，男性成长小说比比皆是。与对男性成长的过分关注形成鲜明对比的是对女性成长的忽视,这是由于男权社会对女性的无视、不尊重与不理解,很少有人去关注女性成长，然而美国作家德莱塞的小说《嘉莉妹妹》一经发表，就受到了文学界的广泛关注。《嘉莉妹妹》讲述了一名来自乡村的女孩，如何通过独特的方式重塑自我的故事，从最初单纯的物质追求转向精神世界的追求，从依靠他人到经济独立，再到实现自己的人生理想，从女性主义的萌芽到其发展成熟，嘉莉妹妹最终成长为独立的新女性。本文将着重从女性主义角度出发进行研究，看这样一位世俗社会挑战者如何战胜传统男权社会，并通过发挥自己的才智以实现自我价值，从而引导读者关注女性成长。

关键词：女性主义 《嘉莉妹妹》 独立

1. Introduction

1.1 About the writer

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (August 17, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was born in Terre Haute, India in 1871. As the ninth child of German immigrants, he experienced too much unpleasantness in his childhood, and at the age of fifteen, he was forced to leave home to find jobs to make a living. After studying in Indiana University for one year, he found a job as a reporter on several newspapers. Later, he moved to New York where he attempted to establish himself as a novelist.

After his first novel Sister Carrie was published in 1900 with the help of Frank Norris, Dreiser continued to work as a journalist and as well as writing for mainstream newspapers. Sister Carrie is regarded as a naturalistic masterpiece and a milestone in the history of American history, which describes the social life of different classes vividly and truly for the first time.

His second novel, Jennie Gerhardt, was not published until 1911. The Genius was published in 1915, but it was another ten years before Dreiser’s greatest novel, An American Tragedy (1925) appeared, which brought him a degree of critical and commercial success he had never before attained.

He was one of the leading literary figures to explore naturalism, and was regarded as a profound and prescient critic of debased American values and as a powerful novelist. Early in his career, a lot of distinguished writers supported his works, like Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken, and Randolph Bourne. Dreiser had a unique style, which was characterized by his excessively long sentences that depict his scrutinizing attention to detail. However, his contemporaries overlooked his style, because his rich realism and naturalism were so powerful. His stunning character development and portrayal of rural and urban American life had an enormous influence on generations to follow.

1.2 About the novel

Sister Carrie was firstly edited in 1900. The publishers kept the cover intentionally blank in order not to promote what was seen as a controversial work. With its appearance, it sold poorly, but, fortunately, later, it acquired a considerable reputation. Throughout the Chinese and foreign literature, more bildungsroman could be found everywhere. By contrast, few people have paid attention to women’s growth and changes because of the denial, disrespect and misunderstanding to women in patriarchal society. Sister Carrie narrates the story of a country girl who struggles from relying on others to economic independence and ultimately realizing her dream. Dreiser depicts a woman in a secular society, who challenges the traditional secular patriarchal society. She wants to go outside and integrates into society to pursue her economic independence, and is eager to realize self-value with her talents.

This novel has guided generations after generations of readers with its unique charm of the growth of the female, the increase of independent consciousness, and then has awakened women’s subject consciousness.

1.3 Literature review

As the classic of female literature, academia had a considerable amount of researches of Sister Carrie. Among them, some came from the naturalistic perspective; some came from the view of consumer culture; while some were discussed from the perspective of characters. The present feminist research has mainly focused on women’s pursuit of independence, equality, freedom, and the awakening of feminine consciousness. There are also many feminist researches about Sister Carrie.

Zhang Li (2011) has analyzed the image of Sister Carrie from the perspective of feminine literature, and has highlighted the root causes in binary opposites within female images. Analyzing women from binary opposites as men’s opposite sides was a kind of gender discrimination, which has revealed the equality of male standard values, advocated civilized standard of literary criticism, and built a harmonious society. It requires eliminating the phenomenon of binary opposition between men and women, and between an unequal society and traditional prejudice. It also needs to establish a pluralistic society and set up progressive values, then to establish new female images.

Zhang Shuguang (2015) has analyzed the growth process of Sister Carrie from the point of feminine. She changed from the material pursue to the spiritual pursue and finally indulged in pursuit of the beauty of art. She turned from relying on others to reaching economic independence. From the budding to maturity of the feminine consciousness, Carrie finally became a modern independent woman.

Shi Yanying (2014) has analyzed the historical background and characteristics in daily life and work, which has reflected how did Carrie step into the society, and how did she become a new independent female representative.

Huang Qian (2013) has analyzed from the point of feminine. Carrie’s experience of changing from a country girl to a popular star has successfully shown the changes of females from others-thinking to self-thinking.

Jin Huaifang (2005) has tried to re-explore the new image of Carrie and pointed out the limitations of the culture roots by comparing with Simone de Beauvoir’s novel, The Millstone. At the same time, she has made an explanation of Dreiser’s internal contradictions from the angle of feminism.

Wang Yulian (2006) has given a preliminary discussion from the perspective of feminist criticism theory and analyzed emphatically the growth process of Carrie, which aimed to show that Carrie became from a country girl to an autarkical new woman after hesitation and confusion.

Predecessors have done some studies and comments on Sister Carrie, and have provided a lot of valuable information for later studies. Different perspectives of research have expanded the understanding of the novel, but in general, they have basically explained by comparing different characters or themes, which rarely systematically discussed the feminine reflected in Sister Carrie from the viewpoint of feminists. This paper will analyze the heroine’s change from work and life to the awakening of her self-awareness.

1. The Rise of Feminism

2.1 Definition of Feminism