本科毕业论文---浅析《嘉莉妹妹》中的消费文化.doc

本科毕业论文

中文题目： 浅析《嘉莉妹妹》中的消费文化

外文题目：A Study of the Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie

院 系 英 语 学 院
专 业 英 语（翻译方向）
年 级 xxxx级
学 号 xxxxxxxxxxxx
学生姓名 xxxx
指导教师 xxxxxxxx
结稿日期 2014年5月7日

浅析《嘉莉妹妹》中的消费文化

摘要：十九世纪末二十世纪初，美国社会经历着一场急剧变革，正在从以生产型为主的社会转变为一个以消费型为主的社会。西奥多·德莱塞的处女作《嘉莉妹妹》真实地反映了这一时期美国兴起的消费热及由此带来的人们意识形态的转变。本文尝试研究消费文化在《嘉莉妹妹》中的体现以及它对个人与对美国社会的影响。论文引言部分介绍了作者西奥多·德莱塞的生活背景，回顾了国内外对《嘉莉妹妹》的研究成果，同时介绍了国内外学者对消费文化的研究并在此基础上提出论文选题理由和意义。
论文主体共两章，第一章介绍消费文化的概念、美国现代消费文化的产生及其在《嘉莉妹妹》中的体现，另外还介绍了《嘉莉妹妹》中的社会需要如何激发消费欲望膨胀及消费带来的悲剧的幻灭感。第二章论述《嘉莉妹妹》中消费文化在物质消费、情感消费、身体消费三个方面的特征。受消费文化影响的女性打破了如嘉莉的姐姐明妮般的女性贤妻良母的传统身份定位，她们渴望用自己的方式成为消费者。同时作者也在消费文化的背景下关注嘉莉与德鲁埃的关系，嘉莉与赫斯特伍德的关系，赫斯特伍德的家庭关系以及嘉莉与姐姐姐夫的关系。由此更好地解释了消费文化对各种关系而言是冷漠与残酷的。同时还阐述了在男性掌控的消费社会中女性寻求自我发展所面临的困境，即她们想成为拥有较高社会地位的消费者，但同时又被男人消费着。论文结尾部分对中心思想做了概述，消费文化和消费意识形态在这部作品里表现得淋漓尽致，但文中的消费是一种炫耀式的消费，归根到底，是为了证明其社会地位和身份，以及这种地位所带来的声望和荣誉。嘉莉最终沦为消费的牺牲品，强烈的消费欲望指引着她的人生方向，并且在某种程度上决定了其最终命运.

关键词：消费文化；物质消费；情感消费；身体消费；意识形态；
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A Study of the Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie

Abstract

At the turn from the l9th century to the 20th century, American society was undergoing a radical social change, turning into a spendthrift and consumptive commercial society. Theodore Dreiser’s first novel, Sister Carrie, actually reflects the consumption craze prevalent in America during this era as well as the resultant change of people’s ideology. This thesis tries to make a research of the reflection of consumer culture in Sister Carrie and its influence for individual as well as the whole American society. The introductory part introduces the background of the author, Theodore Dreiser; a brief review of the research achievements on Sister Carrie and on consumer culture at home and abroad. And then ,it further illustrates the reason and significance for choosing this topic .
The body of the thesis includes two chapters. Chapter One introduces consumer culture, followed by a review of the emergence of modern consumer culture in America as well as its reflections in Sister Carrie. What’s more, how is consumption desire stimulated by the needs of society at that time and the tragic result--disillusionment brought by consumption. Chapter Two discusses the The Features of Material Consumption, Emotion Consumption and Body Consumption in Sister Carrie. Influenced by consumer culture, women at that time are eager to be a consumer in their own ways,which breaks the traditional female identity as “mother and wife”as Carrie’s sister Minnie．It also focuses on the relationship between Carrie and Drouet and Carrie and Mr. Hurstwood’s , and the relationship between Mr. Hurstwood and his family as well as the relationship between Carrie and her sister’s family under the context of consumer culture which further explains the indifference and cruelty of consumer culture to all kinds of relationships, while the same time explains women’s dilemma during their pursuit of self-development in a male-dominated consumer society—they want to be consumers with relatively high social status whereas they are consumed by men at the same time.The Conclusion part summarizes the main idea. Consumer culture and consumption ideology are thoroughly showed in this novel. However, consumption in this novel is actually a kind of flamboyant consumption to prove one’s social status and identity, as well as prestige and honor brought by status. Carrie ultimately becomes a victim of consumption. Her life direction is mainly drawn by the strong desire of consumption; and to some extent, this desire decides her ultimate fate.

Key words:consumer culture; material consumption; emotional consumption; body consumption; ideology
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Acknowledgments

My heartfelt gratitude is, first of all, delivered to my supervisor Professor Xu Tingting, for her unselfish and incisive guidance and professional advice in my study for Bachelor Degree, and for her elaborate reading and correcting of my earlier manuscript as well as her constant encouragement and guidance during the process of writing this thesis. I am also greatly indebted to all my teachers for their valuable teaching and guidance during the four years. Lastly, I would like to thank all my relatives and dear friends for their support and encouragement. To all those mentioned above and to any others who I may have failed to mention, I extend my sincere thanks.
Contents

中文摘要……………………………………………………………………………..i
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….ii
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….....iv
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...1
第一级编号
I.A Brief Review of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie…………………...….............3
A. Introduction to Consumer Culture …………………………………………...3
B. General Reflection of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie ……………….4
1. General review of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie……………………...4
2. Consumption Desire Stimulated by the Needs of Society in Sister Carrie...5
3. Disillusionment Brought by Consumption……………………….………...6
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第二级编号
II.The Features of Material Consumption, Emotion Consumption and Body Consumption in Sister Carrie……..….…….….……….....….……………....8
A.The Feature of Material Consumption…………………..………………….....9
B. The Feature of Emotion Consumption………………………………..……..10
C.The Feature of Body Consumption…………………………..……...……….12
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Conclusion……………………………………………………….………..……….....14
Notes……………………………………………………………………………….....15
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….....16
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A Study of the Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie

Introduction

Regarded as the pioneer of American modern novels as well as the first great writer in the twentieth century American literary history, Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945)broke through the afterwards dominant “genteel tradition” and took the initiative to describe the authentic urban life in America. Many of his contemporary writers as well as his followers in American literary history were greatly influenced by this theme.
Dreiser’s first novel，Sister Carrie，the story of a country girl’s rise to material success first as the mistress of two wealthy men and then as a celebrated Broadway actress, was published on November 8,1900 by Doubleday,Page&Company. When first published, it sold poorly and was not widely promoted largely because of moral objections to the depiction of a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame and fortune through relationships to men without suffering any consequences and it was criticized as an‘‘immoral book'’by many reviewers . In 1981, another edition of Sister Carrie was issued by Pennsylvania University Press. It ended with Mr. Hurstwood’s suicide instead of Carrie’s‘‘rocking and thinking'’in her rocking chair. Thus a tide of review and revaluation of Sister Carrie is promoted again by critics home and abroad. Sherwood Anderson wrote in his Dreiser that “The feet of Dreiser are making a path for us”and“They are tramping through the wildness making a path.” 1 However, for his opponents, Dreiser was more an agent of regression than a pathfinder because of his depiction of the triumph of man’s‘‘animal’’nature over his capacity for reason and moral choice. For example Stuart P. Sherman condemned Dreiser in his famous essay The Naturalism of Mr. Dreiser that Dreiser had eradicated“distinctively human values"’and had made“animal instincts the supreme factor in human life". 2 Since the middle 1980s, American critics have attempted to open new areas by laying importance to the relationship of Dreiser’s thought and work to large-scale social and cultural issues which arose from an urban society and consumer economy. For example, in Just Looking:Consumer Culture in Dreiser,Gissing and Zola, Rachel Bowlby has made a detailed research of the department store in Sister Carrie as a microcosm of the urban consumer culture devouring sister Carrie in Chicago.
Domestic study concerning Dreiser and his works started from the 1930s. From 1930s on, a series of Dreiser’s works have been translated into Chinese, attracting great attention among Chinese readers. But the criticism of his works started from 1978. Researchers have begun to explore Dreiser’s main novels from various perspectives like naturalism, feminism, Freudian Psychology as well as realism, making the study on Dreiser and his works popular. In recent years, Jiang Daochao has opened a new area by studying Dreiser’s works from a new perspective--the consumer culture. Since then, there have appeared many works about the consumer culture in Dreiser’s novels, and they mainly focus on the influence of consumer culture on Dreiser’ s writing whereas the important role of consumer culture in women’s identity construction and their social status. Before the 1980s, feminist scholars strongly criticized consumer culture, and they thought that women are the victims of the male-dominated consumer society during the process of their consumption and are consumed by men.
The body of this thesis contains two chapters. In chapter one, the author introduces the concept of consumer culture and its reflection and influence in Sister Carrie and American society.Chapter two discusses specific reflection including material consumption, emotion consumption and body consumption and their respective features in Sister Carrie. Both of the two chapters aim to reveal the final tragedy to Carrie, that is, she ultimately becomes a victim of consumption.

I. A Brief Review of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie

A. Introduction to Consumer Culture

Generally speaking, consumer culture is “a social arrangement in which the buying and selling of goods and services is not only a predominant activity of everyday life but also an important arbiter of social organization,significance and meaning.” 3 Until now, consumer culture has been applied to a variety of fields, including cultural studies, theology, sociology, psychology, marketing, anthropology, philosophy, etc. As a result, not only scholars in different fields but also those who are specialized in the same field tend to define consumer culture in different ways. Thus consumer culture theory has become a area to be studied from various perspectives which concentrate on the general idea that consumption has an essentially cultural structure in all human societies, and it is central to the cultural as well as the material reproduction of social lives and relationships.
The earliest research in consumer culture can be traced back to Q Simmel and Thorstein Veblen(1857-1929)，the American social critics and economists who put forward the famous concept of “conspicuous consumption'’in The Theory of the Leisure Class(1902). But as sociologists, they mainly studied consumer society from the perspective of sociology, etc. Since the 1980s, researchers from various fields, such as ethics, history, anthropology, feminism have begun to study every aspect of modem consumption. In a particular period, that is, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, women have played an important role in the development of modem consumer culture accompanied by the improved social status of them. Due to the fact that people from the lower class in America were not rich enough to participate in consumption, the female consumers mentioned in this thesis at the turn of the 20th century are mainly women from the middle or upper class.

B. General Reflection of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie

1. General review of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie
This novel gives a description of a girl called Caroline Meeber(Sister Carrie) from the countryside of the Columbia city in Wisconsin,who takes a train to Chicago without hesitance when she is eighteen because of her dream about the prosperous life in thriving metropolis. On the train, Carrie meets Charles Drouet, a traveling salesman, who is attracted to her because of her simple beauty and unspoiled manner. He describes a prosperous Chicago, an affluent metropolis, a big shopping mall to naive Carrie, which galvanized her. But upon discovering the "steady round of toil" and somber atmosphere at her sister's flat, she finds it is not as good as she'd expected. Carrie starts to look for a job, but is constantly rejected. Although she finds a job as a female worker eventually, she loses it because she is too tired to do the job. With all of these disappointments, Drouet’s temptation, and the expanding desire of Carrie herself, Carrie makes her final decision to live together with Drouet. However, she abandons Drouet then embraces Mr．Hurstwood , who has wife and children ,when her desire expands to the degree at which Drouet is not able to satisfy her any more.When Mr. Hurstwood is in terminal decline, Carrie starts to seek job again. The difference is that she turns into a famous actress by accident. As a result, she obtains the luxurious life she wanted for so long, while at the same time she falls into the emptiness inside. The story ends in Carrie’s‘‘rocking and thinking'’in her rocking chair savoring spiritual loneliness after she realized her dream.
Culture is a kind of social phenomenon, as well as a kind of historical phenomenon. Consumer culture consists of the consuming habit, the consuming concept, the consuming value and the consuming patterns which are revealed from people’s consumption activities in a certain stage of history. It is much influenced by many things, such as the political system, economic system, the development of economy, people’s values, customs, and the overall quality of residents, etc. At the turn of the 20th century, America shifted from“a productive society” to ‘‘a consumer society”. The satisfaction of material needs prompted people’s consumption consciousness. Consumption and possession of material based on hedonism were prevalent at that time, which meant a challenge to traditional moral standard “diligent and thrifty”. People’s possession of material symbolizes the identity and status. Carrie is convinced by consumer culture publicized by Drouet, then an inevitable tragedy is doomed.

2. Consumption Desire Stimulated by the Needs of Society
Carrie is attracted by dazzling goods for the first time she comes to a department store. “ Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new and pleasing in apparel for women.” 4 All these exquisite things are luring her so that she can not help being wildly jealous. She realizes in a dim way how much the city held--wealth, fashion, ease--every adornment for women, and she longs for dress and beauty with a whole heart. “ but she noticed too, with a touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her, brushing past in utter disregard of her presence,” “and wherever she encountered the eye of one it was onl