Sister Carrie (1900) is Theodore Dreiser’s first and most read novel. The heroine, no nun, is a woman from Wisconsin: Caroline Meeber, known to her family as “Sister Carrie”. At eighteen, she travels to Chicago to stay with older sister Minnie and brother-in-law Hanson. She’s “pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period,”; a stranger, Charles Drouet, begins chatting to her on the train. He’s a traveling salesman and persistent enough to exchange information with her. Once in Chicago, she works in a shoe factory but loses that job and eventually becomes involved with Drouet. Through him she meets an older man and manager, George Hurstwood. She appears at Drouet’s urging on the amateur stage for his Elks club, and Hurstwood is taken enough by her performance to seize her from Drouet. There’s some stolen money involved and they are to elope to New York where they live as George and Carrie Wheeler. She remembers her success on stage in Chicago and tries Broadway. As Hurstwood goes from saloon runner to streetcar driver to beggar, she rises from chorus girl to minor character to star.
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