(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 25, several of Dreiser’s romantic relationships began with “letters that soundly criticized one of his
books.” Richard Lingeman observes that “From the start, [Dreiser’s] creative
drive was powered by erotic energy” ( Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, 1871–1907 [New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986], p. 126). Accounts of Dreiser written by women who knew him as lovers, editors, collaborators, and family
members are cited in the Bibliography for this volume.
7 Donald Pizer (ed.), Sister Carrie (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1970), p. 53.
Subsequent references are taken from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
8 The Financier (reprinted New York: Signet, 1967), p. 145. Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
9 Stuart P. Sherman, “The Barbaric Naturalism of Mr. Dreiser”; reprinted in The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, ed. Alfred Kazin and Charles Shapiro (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), p. 78.
10 The Titan (reprinted, New York: Signet, 1965), pp. 192, 193. Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
11 I borrow the phrase “sexual subjectivity” from Karin A. Martin, who argues in Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self: Boys and Girls at Adolescence (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 10, 13, that “sexual subjectivity is an important component of agency[;] feeling like one can do and act . . . is necessary for a positive sense of self.” Sexual subjectivity is more difficult for women to experience, Martin explains, for they “often come to feel, consciously or unconsciously, as if they are not agents, not sexual subjects.”
12 The Stoic (reprinted, New York: Signet, 1981), p. 11. Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
13 An American Tragedy (reprinted, New York: Signet, 2000), p. 96. Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
14 James L. W. West III, ed., Jennie Gerhardt (Pennsylvania Edition; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 17, 3. Subsequent references are
from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
15 The “Genius” (1915; reissued, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923), p. 183.
Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. An earlier draft of the novel completed in 1911 presents Angela more sympathetically, women in general (including Angela) as more sexually desirous, and Eugene as
more passive and reactive than does the familiar version published in 1915. Thus Dreiser’s conception of women’s power seems both sharper and more affirmative in the earlier version of this semi-autobiographical novel. The 1911 version, presently available only in manuscript in the Dreiser papers at the University
of Pennsylvania, serves as copytext for the forthcoming Dreiser Edition of The
“Genius” .
16 Tom Lutz provides an illuminating explanation of the sexual basis of Eugene’s (and Dreiser’s) neurasthenic breakdown in American Nervousness 1903: An
Anecdotal History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
158
Dreiser and women
17 “Dreiser in 840 Pages,” reprinted in Riggio, ed., Dreiser–Mencken Letters, vol. 2, p. 797.
18 Dawn (New York: Horace Liveright, Inc., 1931), p. 142.
19 Dreiser struggled with his own anxiety that he would be impotent and (a somewhat different matter) unable to satisfy women sexually. These anxieties are most fully elaborated in the Pennsylvania Edition of Newspaper Days, ed. T. D. Nostwich (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
20 “‘Oh, you pity sing!’” Hortense addresses the coat; “‘Oh, if I could only have
‘oo’” (102).
21 Irene Gammel, Sexualizing Power in Naturalism: Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994), p. 94; Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Dreiser and the Discourse of Gender,” in Theodore Dreiser: Beyond Naturalism, ed. Miriam Gogol (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp. 11, 10.
22 A Gallery of Women (reprinted, New York: Fawcett Publications, 1962), p. 207.
Subsequent references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.
23 Mencken, “Adventure Among the New Novels,” reprinted in Riggio, ed.,
Dreiser–Mencken Letters, vol. 2, p. 796; Mencken, “Theodore Dreiser,” reprinted in Riggio, ed., Dreiser–Mencken Letters, vol. 2, p. 787; Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (rev. edn., New York: Stein and Day, 1966); Michael Davitt Bell, The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 53.
G U I D E T O F U RT H E R R E A D I N G
Banta, Martha. Imaging American Women: Ideas and Ideals in Cultural History.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. “Dreiser and the Discourse of Gender.” Theodore Dreiser: Beyond Naturalism, ed. Miriam Gogol. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
Gammel, Irene. Sexualizing Power in Naturalism: Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994.
Gelfant, Blanche H. “What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Ways of Consuming
Women.” The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism, ed.
Donald Pizer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 178–210.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Knopf, 1985.
West, James L. W. III, ed. Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt: New Essays on the Restored Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Wolstenholme, Susan. “Brother Theodore, Hell on Women.” American Novelists
Revisited: Essays in Feminist Criticism, ed. Fritz Fleischmann. Boston: G. K.
Hall, 1982, pp. 243–264.
159
10
C H R I S T O P H E R G A I R
Sister Carrie, race, and the World’s
Columbian Exposition
In July 1893, as a correspondent for the St. Louis Republic, Theodore
Dreiser accompanied a group of young female schoolteachers to the World’s
Columbian Exposition. Commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of
Columbus’s arrival in the New World, the Exposition, or World’s Fair, was
held on a 686-acre site in Jackson Park, seven miles south of downtown
Chicago, between May and October 1893. Visited by around twenty mil-
lion people, it served to express dominant ideas about American and global
cultures. Exhibits were divided into two separate sections: the White City, a
collection of neoclassically fronted buildings containing the “best” of con-
temporary art and technology, displayed an official version of “progress”
and the limitless possibilities for material and spiritual improvement opened
up by the emergence of the United States as a world power. The Midway
Plaisance, a mile-long strip that led up to White City, combined popular
amusements, such as the Ferris wheel, with ethnological displays of other,
explicitly “primitive,” cultures.
Dreiser was fulsome in his praise for what he witnessed in the official
section of the Fair. He enthused:
The White City is grand. It is beautiful by day, with the blue sky above, the
changing colors of the waters of Michigan to the east of it and the glorious
sunbeams flooding its arches and spires, its pillars and domes, as they stand so distinct and clear, out against the sky . . . Then it is that one is reminded of what the ancient Athenian capital must have been like. How its temples and public
buildings, its statuary and its public ways must have adorned the ancient hills of Hellas. One can understand, looking at the group of buildings so gracefully sweeping away on every hand, why the Grecians were proud and how
it came that men could meditate the sublime philosophies that characterized
that mythic age.1
For the young journalist, the White City is significant in a manner that
transcends its mere beauty. Not only is the design magnificent in itself; it is 160
Sister Carrie and race
also suggestive of ancient Athens, a time and place in history that, for many
Americans in the 1890s, represented the pinnacle of human achievement.
Implicit in the account is the sense that visiting the White City can have
a transformative effect on its American visitors, inspiring them to match,
or even surpass, the accomplishments of Athenian culture. The buildings
assume significance because of their ability to inspire or uplift the nation,
offering a moral and intellectual lesson to all who see them.
Equally, however, although Dreiser makes clear throughout his reports
that this is a triumph for modern, white America, and reflects its best prac-
tices, there are indications that the White City bears little similarity to much of the world outside which, as his description of the group’s arrival in
Chicago illustrates, is dominated by “long lines of warehouses and tall build-
ings” ( Journalism, 122). Despite the imperialist associations evoked by the comparisons with ancient Athens, Dreiser’s description of the White City
concentrates on its aesthetic significance to American culture. In contrast,
his view of Chicago highlights the dominance of commerce over high culture
in the world beyond the Exposition’s gates, and implies that the White City’s
message is much needed.
Importantly, these feelings were not passing, but rather remained with
Dreiser throughout his life. A brief look at some of his later writing illus-
trates the extent to which his journalistic comments on the Fair are repre-
sentative of his thinking on culture, and demonstrates that the White City