Rating: 
Summary: A Classic Yes, but not the Greatest One
Review: Sister Carrie is a serious, thoughtful look at the role of money in the lives of men and women at the turn of the century. It delves into a number of serious themes: poverty, loss of wealth, role of women in society, urban culture. The characters, particularly Carrie herself, are well drawn and memorable.
However, the book is not the easiest read nor is the language the most elegant. An important, if not imperative, read-
Rating: 
Summary: Sister Carrie
Review: Classic story of small town girl comes to the big city to make her fortune. Written in the same realistic style that Dreisser used in An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie offers more for the reader to digest.Carrie arrives in Chicago to stay with a sister and her family and quickly realizes that the city is not as galmorous and she had dreamed. Fortunately for Carrie she possesses characteristics that will help her-charm and beauty. She is immediately sought out by a fast talking salesman who takes Carrie in and introduces her to a glimpse of the good life. Through Charley Druitt, Carrie meets and becomes romantically involved with George Hurstwood, a successful yet married, businessman. George gives up all for Carrie and spirits her away from Chicago; eventually to New York where they settle. In New York Carrie and Hurstwood's lives spiral in oppossite directions. While Carrie embarks on a successful stage career, Hurstwood suffers a series of bad luck and is undone by it.Even with her professional success, true happiness alludes Carrie.
Rating:
Summary: After you think about it
Review: I finished it last weekend, it is not that difficult to read word wise but after you read it you have to digest all they Dreiser is saying. He is sending many messages through the plot that I realized at the end, you could really discuss the book forever because (published in 1900) it deals with all of the many changes in society. Some think of Carrie as a heroine but I dont think so. I did not really like her throughout the book until the end because she is sort of punished in a way (dont want to spoil it). She really was not proactive and destoryed almost everyone in her path. I like how sometimes at the end of chapters and at the ednd of the tome Dreiser will generally speak about the message he is deliverering. IF YOU ARE VACILLATING on wether (sp?) to read this or not, question your motives and what type of lit you like. It was interesting becuase I haven't read much from this time period. I would say if you have free time or are trying to educate yourself because the catholic school you attend is terrible and cenosred then go ahead. It is like an ice cream sunday compared to the junk that is forced down your throat in my school. Indulge.
Rating: 
Summary: Only 1/2 Way done....
Review: When reading booklists (one of my fav. hobbies) I came across this title and the review was somthing like a lover's life rises as her partner (Drouet) declines. I am only about 220/473 pgs. I was quite dissapointed at first but now there is immense action that is quite enthralling. I can't wait to finish, partly so I can read another novel.
Rating:
Summary: Our Depressing Fiasco of a Country
Review: When I finished reading Theodore Dreiser's 1900 novel, "Sister Carrie," I wrote in the margin, "We live in a depressing fiasco of a country." This is to detract nothing from Dreiser's novel - it's just that the problems Dreiser outlines in "Sister Carrie" are problems, material and epistemological, that remain with us, unabated, over a century later. If contemporary novels like Wharton's "The Age of Innocence," Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," and Butler's "The Way of All Flesh" signal the end of the Victorian era, Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" certainly foreshadows the preoccupations of the 20th century. Dreiser's narrator has a detachment and yet a cynicism which inflects the story of a young girl from rural Wisconsin trying to find happiness in Chicago and New York. "Sister Carrie" begins as the eponymous heroine, Caroline Meeber, hurtles forth on a train from Waukesha, Wisconsin, to her sister in Chicago. Ostensibly, she is going to find a menial job and support herself under the protection of her sister and her sister's husband. On the train, she meets a young salesman, Charles Drouet, who is captivated by her. Arriving in the growing metropolis, Carrie has a world of difficulty adjusting to the drudgery of working and living with her joyless relatives. As the novel gets underway, with industry too consumptive of her individuality and her ideals, Carrie is swept off by Drouet, becoming his mistress, and leaving her sister. Through her association with Drouet, and subsequently, his friend, the respected resort manager, George Hurstwood, Carrie struggless to negotiate her ambitions and desires in the context of these two promising, but unfulfilling relationships. One thing permanently at the forefront of Dreiser's novel is money - how one gets it, who has it, what they do with it, and all the complications and frustrations that come from having too much or barely enough to survive. Dreiser opens up to us a world of widely varied economic circumstances, from the utterly abject homeless, to the 'scab' day-laborers during a public transit strike, to factory-girls, to resort managers, business owners, and seemingly everything in between. He also underscores the perceptible, and growing, disparity between subsistence and success, between respectability and celebrity. The differences that Carrie and Hurstwood, in their adventures together in Montreal and New York, perceive between getting by and really living, are some of the most excruciatingly rendered and pathos-riddled passages in the novel. The understated sexual relationships in the novel, and Carrie's status through most of the novel as a kept-woman/mistress, first to Drouet, then to Hurstwood, was of course shocking to the novel's first readers. However, as there is nothing explicit in the novel, we must read beneath the surface, seeing the novel's relationships, as both the narrator and Carrie see them - as means to an end, to fiscal comfort and social respectability. Also in these relationships, we can gauge the dynamics of gender relations in the first years of the 20th century - the narrator's insistence throughout the novel on "how women are" or references to individual characters as "types" of universal categories. Through all of this, we come to suspect the narrator, and must learn to judge Carrie and her escapades with those she encounters (Mrs. Vance, Lola Osborne, Robert Ames) on how Carrie herself might view them. Despite the wholeheartedly depressing tone of the novel as a whole, I think one positive, though qualified, means of redemption Dreiser leaves us with is the possibly transformative effects of journalistic and artistic production. Reading is something the characters in the novel do a lot of, and here too, there is a distinction drawn between what we can get from the written word. Dreiser seems to imply throughout the novel that through the word, written and performative, some greater relationship can be established between people - that something truly apocalyptic can be brought about by reading the right books or seeing the right plays. This is one of Dreiser's great achievements as far as I am concerned - "Sister Carrie," if we can read beyond the devastating hopelessness of it all, is a work that desperately wants us to connect with those around us, especially since Dreiser's own characters seem fundamentally unable to do so.
Rating:
Summary: The hills of affluence and the valleys of poverty
Review: Dreiser was only in his 20's when he created "Sister Carrie" - that is what, perhaps, amazes me the most. At such a young age he has already learned what many take much longer to surmise (e.g. the characters in this book), and some never learn for as long as they live. It's difficult to consider Carrie the protagonist in my view, as her shallowness was the main contributer to the utter and complete downfall one of the more likable characters in the book: George Hurstwood, whose love of her let to ultimate poverty. That is, in fact, my one complaint and what has prevented this work from being a "5 star" novel. I simply had trouble believing that the cunning, charming, affluent, and brilliant Hurstwood would not only rob Fitzgerald and Moy, but that he would eventually dissolve into utter laziness, as if a man of his worldliness couldn't have overcome the relatively benign obstacles placed before him. He was a horse one chapter, and a lazy mutt the next. There needed to be a longer and more believable transition period, but beyond that - this is an enjoyable yarn, a "must" for those whose interest lies in turn of the century literature.
Rating:
Summary: Not exactly revolutionary but still very good
Review: Sister Carrie is more a book of its times than universal appeal. The descriptions of Chicago and New York in turn of the 19th century are fascinating, and the industrial lens through which we see Chicago and the dazzling glamour through which we see New York mirror well Carrie's journey. From small town girl to brief hard labor to kept woman to playing at housewife to famous stage actress, Carrie is at times the protaganist but most often than not the passive participant that life and those around her act upon. You can almost see Dreiser's fearsome awe of the big city, Chicago, and later especially New York, through Carrie's eyes. And Carrie's evolution from country girl to renowned actress somehow had to start in Chicago and end up in New York. Chicago is depicted as a maturing city where young men and women in search of "bigger things" are often swallowed up by the industrial complex of the city. But at the same, Chicago is still small and collegial enough that a few bright luminaries can congregate at posh bars and dominate the social scene. In Chicago, Carrie rejects hard, manual labor and essentially allows herself to be bought by Drouet as pampered mistress. For a couple of years, as Carrie refines her graces, she gradually realizes that not only will Drouet never marry her but that she doesn't want him to marry her. She has grown beyond him and grown weary of her living situation with him. Enter Hurstwood, a more sophisticated man who unbeknownst to Carrie is married with two children. Hurstwood had lived all his life by the rules, acquiring status marrying an attractive woman having two promising children and slowly amassing wealth -- all goals pursued and attained. He meets Carrie, who makes him realize how unhappy his marriage is and how unnecessary his presence at home is. His children barely respect him, let alone love him. They start a love affair that is discovered accidentally by Mrs. Hurstwood and Drouet. Once Drouet tells Carrie Hurstwood is married, she's hit by the harsh reality of her unhappy situation with the feckless Drouet and the lying Hurstwood. She yearns to leave Chicago to start again. In a sense, Hurstwood and Carrie are each other's impetus for eventually fleeing for New York. But whereas the young and vital Carrie ultimately finds independence and success in New York, the much older Hurstwood discovers belatedly that New York the beginning of a physical and mental decline for him. There are many explorations of intriguing human foibles in this novel: ego (Carrie's ego tells her she is "better" than the factory girls she worked with, better than her sister and brother-in-law, and thus her belief that she should not be forced to do hard labor; to some extent Drouet's ego which occasionally deludes him into thinking he will do the honorable thing and marry Carrie but which ultimately convinces him that he is too charming to settle down with just one woman; Hurstwood's ego which stops him from seeking work beneath his dignified position in Chicago and leads him to lingering unemployment and finally poverty and despair), the fascinating mental descent of, happiness and the moving goalpost by which happiness is defined. Also interesting is Carrie's singlehood after achieving independence. She has at this point found her ideal man, but Dreiser doesn't allow his heroine to find love at the end of the story. Why? Is Carrie afraid that she'll be disillusioned yet again by her latest idea of the perfect man or is she somehow not allowed to find happiness? What many have declared as revolutionary is Carrie's success (but not happiness) at the end of the book despite her amorality as defined by 19th century society. I guess Dreiser's refusal to punish Carrie, as Tolstoy does to Anna Karenin, is a major departure from literature as the final judgment on failed characters. However, the story is almost too indifferent to societal criticisms. A modern reader of today wouldn't be shocked terribly by Carrie's decisions. So in order to understand fully how revolutionary, the reader has to keep in mind the times in which the book was written. What would have been more effective was for Dreiser to heap occasional societal scorn on Carrie but ultimately allow her to succeed despite society's disapproval. Overall though, the book is very well written and completely engaging.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed Sister Carrie very much!
Review: After reading a few Edith Wharton novels and becoming interested in late Victorian literature, I found Sister Carrie and decided to buy it based on the reviews here - I'm so glad I did. This is a truly fascinating story of the decline of one person and the ascent of another. I guess the fact that after 100+ years it is still so riveting is the reason it's a classic. This is by far the best book I've read recently. I guess if I were to offer one complaint, it would be the amount of theorizing and postulating that Dreiser does concerning human nature - it bogs the story down a bit at times, but this is a minor annoyance for me. It's one of the few books that I know I'll read again. Definitely worthwhile!
Rating:
Summary: Que Sera Sera
Review: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it is an old
saying that everyone should take heed of. Carrie is a girl who desires money and new apparel. She comes from an average financial family and feels this isn't sufficient enough for her. She uses two men, Drouet and Hurstwood to achieve her dreams. All the characters of the novel were real and dealt with real life problems. Carrie, in the beginning, needed to pay board and get a job. Although she did not like the job, she still had to have the money to live. This was also true with most of the other
characters. They were very relatable because you can identify with their problems. Even though they had they share of predicaments, there was not any suspense or major problem that had to be dealt with. Basically, this
was a novel about the story of Carrie's life away from home. Sure, she had little troubles but nothing that would make you read on the edge of your seat. Even though at the end of the novel she was without problems and had what she wanted, she was not happy. She wished for money and to be like the upper class, and unquestionably she got it, but she didn't have anyone to share it with. Theodore Dreiser's, Sister Carrie, had no real plot or suspense in it. All in all, I enjoyed the novel, but he could have made it more interesting for the reader to read by putting in elements of suspense.
Rating:
Summary: American Naturalism
Review: Sister Carrie is probably best known for being the American example of the Naturalist school of writing. Centering around Carrie, a girl who comes to Chicago to live the good life in the big city, it follows her action from being a factory worker, to a 'companion', to a housewife, and finally to fame and fortune on the stage in New York City.
Dreiser sets the measure of the game early, on the first page, with the statement that all women are provided two options in life. One is to work hard, live, and have children. The other is to fall into a life of sin.
For those who don't hold with that line of reasoning, the book will be a bit hard to swallow. Dreiser operates along the same line of logic that Emile Zola set down when creating this genre. Every action Carrie makes is predestined, in Dreiser's eyes, by her surroundings. She will not and cannot make any decision contrary to her 'nature'.
While this is all very well and good for Dreiser, it is not so for Naturalism. Thomas Hardy's famous Tess, and Jude, make decisions contrary to their nature all the time, it is society that is at odds with the characters and not the other way around. Carrie's society seems perfectly willing to accept her, but it is her decisions that one finds appalling. The feeling is more like being on a careening freight train, with the outcome inevitable and predestined but terrible nonetheless. There is none of the same despair and void that one finds in Hardy, and somehow that is the books biggest flaw.
Hardy's novels, that were written a full forty years before Sister Carrie, explore naturalism in such a way as to make the character the hero and society the villain. Dreiser's Carrie is no such hero, she is just the unfortunate victim of circumstance.
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