Class oppression, commodification, and consumerism in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

Abstract

Theodore Dreiser, an American novelist, had experienced financial insecurity in his family and tasted the bitterness of poverty. So, through the contrast of affluence and poverty, he depicted class distinction, oppressive ideologies, and social inequality in a capitalist and consumerist society in his literary works. It is perceivable that through a Marxist reading of his works, one can feel the way he tried to portray the urban capitalist society in America in the late nineteenth century and the negative effects of capitalism on individuals and their behavior and values. This paper intends to discuss Marxist critique of class oppression, commodification, and consumerism in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. The characters in this novel commodify and oppress one another in order to achieve their own personal goals; someone victimizes another person to his own convenience and becomes a social climber while there is no financial security for the other one who falls to misery. The difficult conditions of the workers and the lower class versus the comfortable conditions of the higher class in such a capitalist society are discussed in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Besides, the ruling class constructed false ideologies which just benefit them and they instill these ideologies into the minds of the lower class and in this way the labor source, or base, is governed by the superstructure. So, the role of ideology in the society and the Marxist view of its function in capitalist society are also discussed in this paper.