The elements of the naturalistic selection and management of materials and its austere or brutal frankness of manner are apparent in many modern novels and
dramas, such as Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure although Hardy substituted a cosmic determinism for biological DNA environmental determinism, various plays
of Eugene O’Neill, and Norman Mailer’s novel of world war II, The Naked and The Dead.
An enlightening exercise is to distinguish how the relation of the sexes is represented in a romance Richard Blackmore’s Lorna Doone , an ironic comedy of
manners Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice , a realistic novel William Dean Howells’ A Modern Instance , and a naturalistic novel Emile Zola’s Nana, or
Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy .
2.3 Dreiser’s Pictures of America
It is very clear, however, that in addition to the source of autobiography, Dreiser in his writings drew upon his acute awareness of growing America of his
time; his novels provide a carefully detailed, often almost documented picture of his own American society, as he saw it. It is as if he felt the pressure, the responsibility-
perhaps because of his many and varied youthful experiences-to expose a new and rather monstrous America which found its gigantic, sprawling expression around
1900 and thereafter. This America was an industrialized, urban society which had developed as rapidly as the huge fortunes in oil, meat packing, steel, railroad,
speculation etc. which supported it. Unfortunately such rapid transformation of a
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country was bound to carry with it the extremes of poverty, and Theodore Dreiser was no stranger to the slums of the cities he knew – especially Chicago and New
York. What disturbed Dreiser most and many another observer of the era was the huge gap between good old American ethics and religious standards still being
preached daily, and the actual practices of those who yet listened complacently and comfortably to the preachers. In short, it is the theme of hypocrisy which Dreiser
took up as a cause in his writing; and it this hypocrisy-the false front, the appearance of virtue and the practice of ruthless realities which he undertook to expose in such
writings as Sister Carrie. Dreiser had come to believe that the society, not its people individually, was corrupt; of rather, he disbelieved that men are born sinful,
suggesting to the discomfort of some of his earlier readers that hypocrisy, corruption, not to mention sheer poverty, are not conducive to building character or
strength of will – the lack of which we see so demonstrated in the structure of Sister Carrie’s personality. Such a society is more likely, instead, to produce seduction,
adultery, crime, selfishness, waste. And Dreiser saw such results so inevitable as to rule out the possibility of condemning the actors and actresses in tragedies although
the reasons for their decline or ultimate unhappiness are always carefully spelled out. Dreiser’s consistently humane and sympathetic attitude toward his material –
his characters, their stories – throughout his writing career should be stressed. No doubt such an attitude is due in part to the lack of prevailing conventional propriety
in his own early life, which is just what he claims for Sister Carrie, upon the occasion of her first acceptances of favors from Drouet; there were no strong home
traditions to hold her. Dreiser presents the facts of life as he sees them – that is,
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pragmatically – not as readers especially of his own era would expect them to be. Such matter – of – fact presentation of the experiences of his characters, however,
combined with his indifference toward the conventions of reward and punishment, indicate that his attitudes while born of his own autobiographical background,
personally, and nurtured on the hypocritical materialism of his times deepened into “ philosophy “: the belief that any ethic, any sense of love or justice, must spring
from the individual’s actual experience with forces both inside and outside himself combined with his own growing awareness of self the cultivation of intellect and
sensibilities , in order to make judgment – reasoned action – possible, state which no fully developed characters created by Theodore Dreiser ever reach.
Dreiser’s first picture of human and social conditions, however, reflecting this very indifference toward conventional morality and toward the traditions of
reward and punishment – Sister Carrie – encountered difficulties of publication, although Doubleday had been formally committed to publish it. Not only that Carrie
escaped punishment, but that Dreiser did not look upon her life as sinful, was an insult to late nineteenth century conventionality expressed, for example, in the
horrified response of Mrs. Doubleday to the novel. However, Mrs. Doubleday’s horror may have been exaggerated in the tale retold so often as to have become a
legend, partly through the interest and friendship of such writers as H. L. Mencken. A young novelist, frank Norris, as editorial reader for Doubleday, helped in the
original acceptance of the novel for publication. Norris’ own work would so resemble Dreiser’s in its frankness and exposure of the hypocrisies and inequalities
of American life that it was inevitable he should heartily applaud this author.
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Dreiser’s publishers issued a minimum number of copies, without advertisement, and the author netted less than a hundred dollars from the novel. A decade or so would
have to evolve during which the author suffered depression and futility at the reception of sister Carrie, and found himself less and less able to attempt more
fiction before the book would receive its proper critical acclaim; in 1907, when the novel was reissued, and thereafter, the public was more receive its proper critical
acclaim; in 1907, when the novel was reissued, and thereafter, the public was more receptive to Sister Carrie.
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CHAPTER III THE ELEMENTS OF NATURALISM IN
DREISER’S JANNIE GERHARDT
3.1 Determinism
