Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie is another of the books that I read long ago in graduate school but wanted to return to.  It was in a 20th century American literature course where I first read a lot of realism and naturalism and started to gain a taste for authors I had never read before.  I have mentioned American Naturalism here many other times and I know that I have mentioned Dreiser at least once before.
This novel holds up with what I remember.  The story itself is simple enough but I was more interested in Dreiser's approach.  In other naturalistic novels, the author tends more to present narrative without a lot of exposition or commentary.  Stephen Crane wrote spare novels that demonstrate the restricted choices that characters have and the outcome of their paths.  In one sense, Crane's novel Maggie accomplishes most of what Sister Carrie does in a fraction of the pages.  One of the things that Dreiser does differently is inject his own philosophy move overtly into the text.  There are many points at which the narrator will offer opinions on such topics as happiness, productivity, labor shortages and unionization, and art.  Rather than simply using the narrative to showcase the deterministic inevitability of decline, Dreiser opts to also build his case on top of this.
One of the more striking examples of this takes place late in the novel.  Carrie has become a comedic success and is finally making money and gaining recognition for her acting.  Dreiser pulls back the veil on the superficiality of her fame through the character Ames, a young potential suitor.  While Carrie had been content in the comforts her new fortune allows, Ames challenges her to take on more serious roles.  He tells her that he sees something in her acting, that her facial expression is a "natural expression of [the world's] longing."  He continues, "The world is always struggling to express itself ... Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings.  They depend upon others.  That is what genius is for.  One man expresses their desires for them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play." Ames sees artistic expression as a responsibility, he even calls it Carrie's burden.  Soon after this Ames disappears from the novel and Dreiser ends the novel with Carrie sitting on a rocking chair, dreaming of the happiness that she will never feel.
I like this notion of aesthetics, even if I cannot fully subscribe to it.  Essentially, what I take from this is that Ames (and possibly Dreiser, himself) sees art as methods of forging connections with the world.  The audience finds connection to the world and to their own emotions through the expressions of others.  If this is true, then it is a burden on the artist to vicariously emote for others.  I think that this is part of what art can do, but it also seems that Ames wants to romanticize the artist and the nature of genius.

McTeague by Frank Norris

Frank Norris died a young man, 32 if I remember correctly, but he left behind some memorable works, McTeague included.  Working in the tradition of American Naturalism, Norris created a work that was meant to reflect true aspects of the world and human nature, to be more real than realism.  This usually meant highlighting darker aspects of human nature and the social constraints that influence behavior.  The character McTeague is a hulking idiot-man who practices unlicensed dentistry in turn-of-the-century California.  His life and the lives of all around him are taken over with greed and envy.  Although there are a lot of poorly drawn characters and stereotypes in the novel, Norris does get to something fundamental about poverty in America.  His characters struggle to get by but are constantly thwarted.
Like others writing in the naturalistic vein, Norris wants to reveal more than just the pettiness of humanity, but to show the deterministic systems that work behind human desire and shape action.  The apartment flat where the primary characters live is a microcosm of this system.  Each character has his or her own defined desires and tendencies.  Even though each of them wants to act according to his or her own desires, sense of duty, etc., each of them is bound by their relationships to one another, their current positions in life, and their own limitations.  This is all meant to reflect the idea that, while we may have freedom of movement and individual agency, we are still hemmed in by the systems that are around us.  The strength of McTeague lies in Norris showing us that we are bound into these systems even when we work to create them.  McTeague's wife Trina wins a lottery for $5,000 which should set the two of them up in the early years of their marriage and provide them an ample buffer against the troubles they will face.  But winning the lottery propels Trina into a spiral of avarice in which she would prefer to live in penury and try to live on her meager earnings rather than shrink the windfall.  Prior to winning the lottery, Trina had not been avaricious because riches were abstract and money meant less.  McTeague likewise becomes obsessed with the winnings as Trina holds out on him, forcing them to live in ever-worse conditions until he eventually beats her to death to steal the money.
By the end of the novel the money is lost in Death Valley through a series of mis-adventures and all of the principal characters are dead.  To Norris, the steady unraveling of the good before death is all but inevitable.  McTeague, Trina, and the other characters find themselves within a socio-political web that existed before them but which they participate in and help to shape.  Norris and other naturalists do not write this way to blame the characters for their own suffering, but to show what they see as the inevitability of defeat and suffering.
McTeague appeals to the pessimist and cynic in me.  It appeals to the part of me that believes that it is possible to either succeed or fail through sheer luck rather than through any personal efforts.