Consumer Culture in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.docVIP

Consumer Culture in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie 　　Helen Ouliaei Nia1; Fatemeh Torki Baghbaderani2,* 　　1 Assistant Professor of English Literature, University of Isfahan, Iran. 　　2 MA in English Literature, University of Isfahan, Iran. 　　* Corresponding author. 　　 　　Received 22 December 2011; accepted 19 February 2012. 　　Abstract 　　Theodore Dreiser, the American novelist (1871-1945), was a keen witness of the huge industrial changes in America. Dreiser minutely portrayed the lives of the poor in society because he had experienced poverty both as a child and an adult and he could also depict the lives of the rich as he was a journalist who was in everyday contact with the facts of such people’s life. In one of his novels, Sister Carrie, Dreiser, impersonally, represents the struggles of a poor girl who finds her way up the social scale. Carrie, the protagonist of the story, lives in an industrial and commodified society in which people find their identity in items of consumption. In this article, the researchers attempt to examine the dexterity of Dreiser in portraying the inner and outer lives of characters in such a society and in the light of Baudrillard’s theory of consumerism and the way this portrait approximates real life. 　　Key words: Sister Carrie; Dreiser; Commodified Society; Baudrillard; Consumerism 　　Helen Ouliaei Nia, Fatemeh Torki Baghbaderani (2012). Consumer Culture in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Studies in Literature and Language, 4(1), -0. Available from: URL: /index.php/sll/article/view/j.sll.1923156320120401.498 DOI: /10.3968/j.sll.1923156320120401.498 　　INTRODUCTION 　　Theodore Dreiser, the naturalist novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America, witnessed and consciously understood the great changes happening in this country and recorded them, in minute details, in his novels. Among the changes in this period are the vast production and consumption of goods, the opening up of huge factories, th