Review - Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie: The Unexpurgated Edition by Theodore Dreiser

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sister Carrie, written at the turn of the 20th century and considered one of the "great American novels," also has an infamous history of censorship which is fascinating in its own right. I chose to read the free online version of the restored Pennsylvania edition. I understand that the "unexpurgated edition" is based off of that one.

On the surface, the novel is the story of Caroline Meeber, who moves from rural Wisconsin to Chicago in hopes of seeking her fortune. Unhappy with her work prospects due to her lack of experience and the less-than-enthusiastic welcome she gets from her sister and brother-in-law, Carrie is tempted away from a hand-to-mouth existence by Charles Drouet, a traveling salesman who buys her nice clothes and gets her to live with him. Eventually she realizes the shallowness of Drouet's personality and casts in her lot with George Hurstwood, a (unbeknownst to her) married man. This sets them on a path that leads to Carrie's stardom as an actress and Hurstwood's very steep downfall.

The book is dense and not easy to get through, but in the end I did like it. There are two things in particular that I noticed:

1. It is a major commentary on American society. Our society is based around the idea that if we could just have more money, fame, a different lover, or a bigger place to live, we would be happier. Ultimately, Carrie is not happy with her money and fame, and chasing her eventually leads Hurstwood to indifference and suicide. Drouet continues to be his oblivious self, but arguably he is never satisfied either--he can never have meaningful relationships with anyone. This passage in Chapter 49 in which Carrie is talking with Bob Ames, a cousin of her friend Mrs. Vance, sums up this thesis:


"Your happiness is within yourself wholly if you will only believe it," he went on. "When I was quite young I felt as if I were ill-used because other boys were dressed better than I was, were more sprightly with the girls than I, and I grieved and grieved, but now I'm over that. I have found out that everyone is more or less dissatisfied. No one has exactly what his heart wishes."

"Not anybody?" she asked.

"No," he said.

Carrie looked wistfully away.

"It comes down to this," he went on. "If you have powers, cultivate them. The work of doing it will bring you as much satisfaction as you will ever get. The huzzas of the public don't mean anything. That's the aftermath--you've been paid and satisfied if you are not selfish and greedy long before that reaches you."


2. It is not necessarily a work about morality. The author, Dreiser, does mention evil in it, but his characters are not deliberately evil--they suffer because they are driven by their whims and lack understanding of what their actions do to those around them. One might argue anyway that this is a better definition of sin than the overly simplistic list of "lying/cheating/stealing." But I still don't think Dreiser was trying to teach morality in this story--just depict in a naturalistic way that people tend to do what's in their own best interests and that "fate" can lead them in different directions. He sums this up in a rather heavy-handed passage:


Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strung up by the thumbs, when we hear the ominous shot which marks the end of another victim who has thought to break loose, we may be sure that in another instance life has been misunderstood--we may be sure that society has been struggled against until death alone would stop the individual from contention and evil.


From what I hear, the original edited edition of the book removed most of the philosophy from it, made Carrie a mindless, untalented fool, and removed most of the sexual references (which I had trouble detecting anyway, but I guess by early 20th century standards they would have been blatant). Carrie doesn't fret over moving in with Drouet, Drouet doesn't pursue other ladies while living with her, and Hurstwood doesn't frequent prostitutes before he leaves his wife. In other words, the characters were significantly changed.

I enjoyed this book for the depth and the tragedy of it, but it was a very heavy read. I can see after reading the historical notes included on the website that the restored edition is superior to what was originally published and probably closer to what Dreiser intended, although I would have switched the final two chapters--49 reads like an ending, and 50 like an afterthought.

And now, my only remaining question is... whatever happened to Carrie's parents? She goes to live with her sister in Chicago, but I don't remember the book even once mentioning her contacting her parents, thinking about them, or what they thought of her leaving. In fact, I don't think it mentions her parents at all. Either she had an awful relationship with them, or she was just so self-absorbed that she didn't care if her mother was worried sick about her.


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Review - Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy

rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first saw this book and wanted to read it, I thought it would probably strip me of any desire ever to have children. Fortunately, it actually accomplished the opposite, affirming that no matter which way you prefer to give birth--with drugs, without drugs, squatting, lying down, with a midwife or a doctor--there is probably someone out there who has tried it before and there are lots of arguments for your preferred method.

I could detect the author's bias toward giving birth the natural way with a midwife, and frankly felt convinced by it. It seems that our history of treating birth "like a disease" rather than a natural process and interfering with all sorts of drugs, tools, and doctors who think they know better than women who have been through it has caused more harm than good.

The mini-biographies of all kinds of natural birth advocates have me convinced that if my husband and I ever have a baby, which I hope we will in a few years, I would want to try it the natural way. Pain is manageable without drugs and it sounds like there are less risks overall (for example: the numbness of an epidural can take away a woman's ability to push, thus increasing the risk of breech babies, a required C-section, or the use of forceps and episiotomies. Babies can be accidentally cut during C-sections, and those operations also increase the future risk of pregnancy complications or infertility since a placenta has difficulty attaching to scar tissue).

My main criticism of the book is that it's so packed with information that could have been better organized by time period. The author chose to organize it by category, which worked well for such an ambitious project, but the times jumped around so much that it was a little hard to follow at points. Other than that, I loved the stream of factoids and constantly interrupted my husband's own reading to share them with him.

Being informed about something always makes me much more calm about it than not knowing, so the positive impact of reading this book overall far outweighed the gruesome parts for me--but if you just want those, go ahead and Google the word symphysiotomy and you'll have had enough.


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Review - This Present Darkness

This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Peretti really hooked me with this one. I read and read all weekend until it was done.

This is the story of the small town of Ashton, secretly under the control of a demonic horde. Unbeknownst to one another, Marshall Hogan, the owner and editor of the local newspaper, and Hank Busche, new pastor of a small church, slowly uncover the hideous secrets of the town.

All characters are largely unaware, save for brief encounters, of the details of the battle between angels and demons on the spiritual plane constantly taking place around them.

Although the massive conspiracy theory was implausible and the exorcism a bit overdone, it stood up as a suspenseful work and a fascinating illustration of spiritual warfare.

I would recommend slogging through the first thirty pages or so if you're a stickler for writing style--it's worth it to get to the main story, at which point Peretti finally learns the word "said" and tones down the cliche descriptions of people.

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Review - Lonesome for Bears

Lonesome for Bears: A Woman's Journey in the Tracks of the Wilderness by Linda Jo Hunter

rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is another one that I picked up during my library work. I really, really want to say I liked this book, because I learned a number of interesting things about bears from it (staying calm, staying put, and glancing away from a bear are ways of showing you don't want a fight, for example). Some of the author's imagery was quite good, and I could tell that she cared about her subject. However, I had several major problems with the book:

1. The narrative in the beginning seemed disjointed. I was expecting a book about a woman who overcame her fear of bears and grew to love them, but I felt that her fear of bears was glossed over within a very short space. It made it seem like the central conflict was over within the first chapter. In addition, before she and her husband became managers at Redoubt Bay Lodge, I wasn't sure when the previous events were happening. More dates would have been better.

2. Whatever the writing issue was, I just didn't feel for the bears like I knew the author did. Her prose seemed to lack in just the spots where it needed to shine the most.

3. The whole book lacked a central theme. Because of the solved conflict right at the beginning, the rest of the book read more like a journal chronicling several mostly unrelated events.

Again, great book if you want to learn more about bears--there are several very interesting and funny stories about them, the author being an expert tracker and guide. Not so great if you want an entertaining story that will move you and keep you on the edge of your seat.

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Review - Chief Sarah

Chief Sarah: Sarah Winnemucca's Fight for Indian Rights by Dorothy Nafus Morrison

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book after someone donated it to the library where I work. At first it looked like young adult level material, but I don't think it was necessarily meant for that audience--it's simply a short, well-written, concise account of one aspect of a very dark part of U.S. history, namely, the slaughter of largely innocent natives and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' forcing them onto reservations.

Chief Sarah, as she was called, was a member of the Paiute tribe. At first afraid of the white settlers, who looked like owls to the natives, she gradually learned their language and their ways, serving as a bridge between them and her people. Natives of Nevada, her people were forced to move to multiple states, at last being sent to Washington state and the Yakima reservation where many of them died of exposure and starvation. While some of them wanted revenge for their treatment, Sarah and her family of tribal leaders always promoted her grandfather's vision of peace, and were considered friends and guides by the U.S. Army. However, the Bureau of Indian Affairs at that time tended to lump all Indians together, having no concept that separate tribes might have different philosophies and intentions. The ever-brave Sarah went as far as traveling to Washington D.C. on behalf of the Paiutes, but was seemingly thwarted at every turn.

The book left me angry at the ignorance of that time--the belief that all Native American tribes were the same, and must be "civilized," which meant being taught to settle down in one place and learning how to farm. Some of the leaders of the reservations actually helped them do that, but most of them mistreated them and stole the money that was meant for their care. All of this was mostly because settlers wanted to "own" the land that they roamed freely.

When some white men came upon native encampments, they would slaughter everyone they found down to the women and children. Then if the remaining members of the tribe tried to take revenge, the settlers would see it as a "unprovoked" attack and send out more men to take down the rest of the tribe.

I admired this courageous woman, Sarah, whose tribe found themselves in such a lose-lose situation. She believed that education was the key to peace, not violence. Still, it saddens me that the tribes of today are still forced to either stay on a reservation, or integrate with a society that in some ways is just as foreign today as it was 150 years ago.


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