Clementine Classics: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

thoughts of her sister to some other topic.

      “We’ll go some other time,” she said at last, finding no ready means of escape. Carrie sensed the root of the opposition at once.

      “I have some money,” she said. Homegirl hasn’t even started her factory gig yet, and she’s already going to the damn theater? I’d hate her if I couldn’t stop imagine Dreiser pulling her strings like the misogynistic puppet master that he is. “You go with me.” Minnie shook her head.

      “He could go along,” said Carrie.

      “No,” returned Minnie softly, and rattling the dishes to drown the conversation. “He wouldn’t.”

      It had been several years since Minnie had seen Carrie, and in that time the latter’s character had developed a few shades. Naturally timid in all things that related to her own advancement, and especially so when without power or resource, her craving for pleasure was so strong that it was the one stay of her nature. She would speak for that when silent on all else.

      “Ask him,” she pleaded softly.

      Minnie was thinking of the resource which Carrie’s board would add. It would pay the rent and would make the subject of expenditure a little less difficult to talk about with her husband. But if Carrie was going to think of running around in the beginning there would be a hitch somewhere. Unless Carrie submitted to a solemn round of industry and saw the need of hard work without longing for play, how was her coming to the city to profit them? If Carrie wanted a vacation, she should’ve gone to fucking Cabo instead of the heart of industrialized Chicago in 1890. I hate to sound like a mother, but she needs to get her shit in order. These thoughts were not those of a cold, hard nature at all. They were the serious reflections of a mind which invariably adjusted itself, without much complaining, to such surroundings as its industry could make for it.

      At last she yielded enough to ask Hanson. It was a half-hearted procedure without a shade of desire on her part.

      “Carrie wants us to go to the theatre,” she said, looking in upon her husband. Hanson looked up from his paper, and they exchanged a mild look, which said as plainly as anything: “This isn’t what we expected.” Don’t invite your sister-in-law to live with you when you really just want a boarder. I say, start charging her for meals and see how much she wants to go to the theater after that. Tough love, tough shit, like I always say.

      “I don’t care to go,” he returned. “What does she want to see?”

      “H. R. Jacob’s,” said Minnie.

      He looked down at his paper and shook his head negatively.

      When Carrie saw how they looked upon her proposition, she gained a still clearer feeling of their way of life. It weighed on her, but took no definite form of opposition.

      “I think I’ll go down and stand at the foot of the stairs,” she said, after a time. An early alternative to television or radio. My whole life consists of staring at the empty void around my cage, so for once, I can relate to homegirl.

      Minnie made no objection to this, and Carrie put on her hat and went below.

      “Where has Carrie gone?” asked Hanson, coming back into the dining-room when he heard the door close.

      “She said she was going down to the foot of the stairs,” answered Minnie. “I guess she just wants to look out a while.”

      “She oughtn’t to be thinking about spending her money on theatres already, do you think?” he said.

      “She just feels a little curious, I guess,” ventured Minnie. “Everything is so new.”

      “I don’t know,” said Hanson, and went over to the baby, his forehead slightly wrinkled.

      He was thinking of a full career of vanity and wastefulness which a young girl might indulge in, and wondering how Carrie could contemplate such a course when she had so little, as yet, with which to do. Hanson was never a boy. He came out of his mother with a shag carpet of chest hair and a stoic Scandinavian frown under his beard.

      On Saturday Carrie went out by herself—first toward the river, which interested her, and then back along Jackson Street, which was then lined by the pretty houses and fine lawns which subsequently caused it to be made into a boulevard. She was struck with the evidences of wealth, although there was, perhaps, not a person on the street worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. She was glad to be out of the flat, because already she felt that it was a narrow, humdrum place, and that interest and joy lay elsewhere. Her thoughts now were of a more liberal character, and she punctuated them with speculations as to the whereabouts of Drouet. She was not sure but that he might call anyhow Monday night, and, while she felt a little disturbed at the possibility, there was, nevertheless, just the shade of a wish that he would.

      On Monday she arose early and prepared to go to work. She dressed herself in a worn shirt-waist of dotted blue percale, a skirt of light-brown serge rather faded, and a small straw hat which she had worn all summer at Columbia City. Her shoes were old, and her necktie was in that crumpled, flattened state which time and much wearing impart. She made a very average looking shop-girl with the exception of her features. These were slightly more even than common, and gave her a sweet, reserved, and pleasing appearance. Surprise, surprise: our girl is a looker. I would’ve preferred that she was average looking or even a troll. Then she’d really be an underdog. The world has enough attractive heroes. Even Sonic the fucking Hedgehog was photoshopped into oblivion. Where does it end, people?

      It is no easy thing to get up early in the morning when one is used to sleeping until seven and eight, as Carrie had been at home. She gained some inkling of the character of Hanson’s life when, half asleep, she looked out into the dining-room at six o’clock and saw him silently finishing his breakfast. By the time she was dressed he was gone, and she, Minnie, and the baby ate together, the latter being just old enough to sit in a high chair and disturb the dishes with a spoon. Her spirits were greatly subdued now when the fact of entering upon strange and untried duties confronted her. Only the ashes of all her fine fancies were remaining—ashes still concealing, nevertheless, a few red embers of hope. So subdued was she by her weakening nerves, that she ate quite in silence going over imaginary conceptions of the character of the shoe company, the nature of the work, her employer’s attitude. She was vaguely feeling that she would come in contact with the great owners, that her work would be where grave, stylishly dressed men occasionally look on.

      “Well, good luck,” said Minnie, when she was ready to go. They had agreed it was best to walk, that morning at least, to see if she could do it every day—sixty cents a week for car fare being quite an item under the circumstances. Duh doy. I’m surprised they’re not doing more to save a few bucks. Child labor laws were still pretty lax around this time, so you could totally get away with hocking an infant at the rubber tire plant.

      “I’ll tell you how it goes tonight,” said Carrie.

      Once in the sunlit street, with laborers tramping by in either direction, the horse-cars passing crowded to the rails with the small clerks and floor help in the great wholesale houses, and men and women generally coming out of doors and passing about the neighborhood, Carrie felt slightly reassured. In the sunshine of the morning, beneath the wide, blue heavens, with a fresh wind astir, what fears, except the most desperate, can find a harborage? In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day, fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death. British publisher Rupert Hart-Davis once said, “If [Dreiser] is the great American novelist, give me the Marx Brothers every time.” Dreiser was in dire need of a Gordon Lish to cut him down to size. Passages like this make me nod in agreement while simultaneously barfing my brains out.

      Carrie went straight forward until she crossed the river, and then turned into Fifth Avenue. The thoroughfare, in this part, was like a walled canon of brown stone and dark red brick. The big windows looked shiny and clean. Trucks were rumbling in increasing numbers; men and women, girls and boys were moving onward in all directions. She met girls of her own age, who looked at her as if