The Critical Recognition of Sister Carrie 1900–1907

Abstract

In his introductory essay to The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, Alfred Kazin has noted that the legend that Sister Carrie had been suppressed by the publisher's wife became so dear to the hearts of the rising generation of the twentieth century that ‘Mrs Doubleday became a classic character, the Carrie Nation of the American liberal epos, her ax forever lifted against “the truth of American life”’. Equally dear to the hearts of the new generation of Americans was the belief that both the puritanical publishers and the equally puritanical reviewers tried to prevent the ‘immoral’ Sister Carrie from coming before the American public. That this belief is still widely held is testified to by the recent studies of Philip L. Gerber, W. A. Swanberg, and Yoshinobu Hakutani.