Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser (1900)
“Published in 1900, suppressed by its own publisher, and banned for decades -- because it dared to let a 'fallen woman' succeed and feel no guilt about it.”
Why This Book Matters
Sister Carrie is the founding text of American literary naturalism -- the novel that made it possible for American fiction to describe desire, poverty, and sexuality without moral judgment. Its 1900 publication (and immediate suppression by Doubleday) marked the beginning of a decades-long battle between American naturalist writers and the censorship regime that governed what could be said in print. The novel was not properly available until 1907 and not widely read until the 1920s, but its influence was immediate among writers: Theodore Dreiser became the model for Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and every American novelist who wanted to describe how people actually lived rather than how moralists said they should live.
Firsts & Innovations
First major American novel to present a sexually 'fallen' woman without condemning her or requiring her punishment
First American novel to treat consumer desire as a legitimate subject of philosophical analysis rather than a vice to be condemned
Pioneering use of documentary detail -- wages, prices, working conditions -- as the material of literary fiction rather than journalism
First major American novel suppressed not by the government but by its own publisher on moral grounds, making censorship itself part of the literary argument
Cultural Impact
Established American literary naturalism as a viable tradition, directly enabling Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, and James T. Farrell
Influenced F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby -- the same anatomy of desire, the same recognition that the American dream is a mechanism of wanting rather than achieving
The Doubleday suppression became a cause celebre in the fight against literary censorship, cited in arguments against the Comstock laws for decades
The rocking chair became one of American literature's most recognized symbols -- the image of desire without fulfillment, motion without arrival
Rehabilitated by H.L. Mencken and others in the 1910s-1920s, eventually canonized as one of the essential American novels
Banned & Challenged
Suppressed at publication by Frank Doubleday, whose wife found the novel immoral -- Doubleday printed 1,008 copies to honor the contract but refused to distribute or promote the book. Dreiser received $68.40 in royalties. The novel was effectively unavailable until the 1907 B.W. Dodge edition. It was later banned or challenged in various cities and school districts for its treatment of sexuality, its refusal to condemn a 'kept woman,' and its perceived amorality. The 1981 Pennsylvania edition restored Dreiser's original text, which Doubleday's editors had cut by approximately 36,000 words -- much of the restored material dealt explicitly with Carrie's sexual relationships and Hurstwood's physical deterioration.