Clementine Classics: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

COUNSEL OF WINTER—FORTUNE’S AMBASSADOR CALLS

      In the light of the world’s attitude toward woman and her duties, the nature of Carrie’s mental state deserves consideration. This should be good. Let the witch hunt begin. Actions such as hers are measured by an arbitrary scale. Society possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things. All men should be good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed?

      For all the liberal analysis of Spencer and our modern naturalistic philosophers, we have but an infantile perception of morals. There is more in the subject than mere conformity to a law of evolution. It is yet deeper than conformity to things of earth alone. It is more involved than we, as yet, perceive. Answer, first, why the heart thrills; explain wherefore some plaintive note goes wandering about the world, undying; make clear the rose’s subtle alchemy evolving its ruddy lamp in light and rain. In the essence of these facts lie the first principles of morals. Anyone get that? I tend to doze off when Dreiser puts on his fucking philosopher robes.

      “Oh,” thought Drouet, “how delicious is my conquest.”

      “Ah,” thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, “what is it I have lost?”

      Before this world-old proposition we stand, serious, interested, confused; endeavoring to evolve the true theory of morals—the true answer to what is right.

      In the view of a certain stratum of society, Carrie was comfortably established—in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon harbour. Drouet had taken three rooms, furnished, in Ogden Place, facing Union Park, on the West Side. Fun fact: William B. Ogden was the first mayor of Chicago. He ran his family’s lumberyard when he was 16 years old, moved Chicago out of the swamps, and helped expand the transcontinental railroad. But despite all of this, the man could not for the life of him grow a fucking beard. That was a little, green-carpeted breathing spot, than which, today, there is nothing more beautiful in Chicago. It afforded a vista pleasant to contemplate. The best room looked out upon the lawn of the park, now sear and brown, where a little lake lay sheltered. Over the bare limbs of the trees, which now swayed in the wintry wind, rose the steeple of the Union Park Congregational Church, and far off the towers of several others.

      The rooms were comfortably enough furnished. There was a good Brussels carpet on the floor, rich in dull red and lemon shades, and representing large jardinieres filled with gorgeous, impossible flowers. There was a large pier-glass mirror between the two windows. A large, soft, green, plush-covered couch occupied one corner, and several rocking-chairs were set about. Some pictures, several rugs, a few small pieces of bric-a-brac, and the tale of contents is told. What a gaudy mess. My cage is a study in minimalism, and you humans would be better off emulating it. Who needs a fucking Brussels carpet when you can have nontoxic, low dust bedding material instead?

      In the bedroom, off the front room, was Carrie’s trunk, bought by Drouet, and in the wardrobe built into the wall quite an array of clothing—more than she had ever possessed before, and of very becoming designs. There was a third room for possible use as a kitchen, where Drouet had Carrie establish a little portable gas stove for the preparation of small lunches, oysters, Welsh rarebits, (Apparently this is just a namby pamby name for cheesy toast. Bitch moved into a mansion and is making grilled cheese? If I wasn’t lactose intolerant, I’d be on that like brown on mites.) and the like, of which he was exceedingly fond; and, lastly, a bath. The whole place was cozy, in that it was lighted by gas and heated by furnace registers, possessing also a small grate, set with an asbestos back, a method of cheerful warming which was then first coming into use. By her industry and natural love of order, which now developed, the place maintained an air pleasing in the extreme.

      Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free of certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her, laden with many new ones which were of a mental order, and altogether so turned about in all of her earthly relationships that she might well have been a new and different individual. She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse. This book is begging to be made into a Lifetime movie—not a Hollywood blockbuster, like the 1952 adaptation starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier. I’m talking about a low-budget, trashy as fuck affair. I want bad CGI and ten-minute monologues decrying her downfall. Of course, Sister Carrie would be played by Lindsay Lohan. Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.

      “My, but you’re a little beauty,” Drouet was wont to exclaim to her.

      She would look at him with large, pleased eyes.

      “You know it, don’t you?” he would continue.

      “Oh, I don’t know,” she would reply, feeling delight in the fact that one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she really did, that she was vain enough to think so much of herself. All this self-doubt is exhausting. I’ve never experienced it myself since hedgehogs have obscenely high confidence levels. We’re covered with goddam spines, after all. How could we not think we’re the shit?

      Her conscience, however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise. There she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused. It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its last analysis. It was only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it, the voice of the people was truly the voice of God.

      “Oh, thou failure!” said the voice.

      “Why?” she questioned.

      “Look at those about,” came the whispered answer. “Look at those who are good. How would they scorn to do what you have done. Look at the good girls; how will they draw away from such as you when they know you have been weak. You had not tried before you failed.” Shut the fuck up, conscience. Let the girl have some fun. Yeah, she’s going to pay for it in the end, so let her enjoy it while it lasts. This isn’t even the ’20s. The most fun she’ll have is riding a horse bareback or some tasteful shit.

      It was when Carrie was alone, looking out across the park, that she would be listening to this. It would come infrequently—when something else did not interfere, when the pleasant side was not too apparent, when Drouet was not there. It was somewhat clear in utterance at first, but never wholly convincing. There was always an answer, always the December days threatened. She was alone; she was desireful; she was fearful of the whistling wind. The voice of want made answer for her.

      Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on that sombre garb of gray, wrapt in which it goes about its labors during the long winter. Its endless buildings look gray, its sky and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the general solemnity of color. There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men. Speak for yourself, Dreiser. Hedgehogs are smart enough to roll into spiky balls of pain and launch themselves at their predators. Let’s see you fucking try that one. These feel as much as the poet, though they have not the same power of expression. The sparrow upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray horse tugging his weary load, feel the long, keen breaths of winter. It strikes to the heart of all life, animate and inanimate. If it were not for the artificial fires of merriment, the rush of profit-seeking trade, and pleasure-selling amusements; if the various merchants failed to make the customary display within and without their establishments; if our streets were not strung with signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with hurrying purchasers, we would quickly discover how firmly the chill hand of winter lays upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during which the sun withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth. We are more dependent upon these things than is often thought. We are insects produced by heat, and pass without it. All the better for me and my insect-based diet.

      In the drag of such a gray day the secret voice would reassert itself, feebly and more feebly.

      Such