Text 5 beauty speaks for itself

from “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (1871 – 1945) – an American writer

(“Sister Carrie”, 1900, is a novel about a young country girl Caroline Meeber who moves to the big city where she starts realising her own ‘American Dream” by first becoming a mistress to men that she perceives as superior and later as a famous actress. It has been called ‘the greatest of all American urban novels’.)

The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended. When each individual realises for himself that this thing primarily stands for and should only be accepted as a moral due – that it should be paid out as honestly stored energy and not as a usurped privilege – many of our social, religious, and political troubles will have permanently passed. As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: «Money: something everybody else has and

I must get,» would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly. (10) Some of it she now held in her hand – two soft, green ten-dollar bills – and she felt that she was immensely better off for the having of them. It was something that was power in itself. One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only a long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value.

The poor girl thrilled as she walked away from Drouet ['dru:e]. She felt ashamed in part because she had been weak enough to take it, but her need was so dire, shewas still glad. Now she would have a nice new jacket! Now she would buy a nice pair of pretty button shoes.

(20) She would get stockings, too, and a skirt, and, and – until already, as in the matter of her prospective salary she had got beyond, in her desires, twice the purchasing power of her bills.

She conceived a true estimate of Drouet. To her, and indeed to all the world, he was a nice, good-hearted man. There was nothing evil in the

fellow. He gave her the money out of a good heart – out of a realisation of her want. He would not have given the same amount to a poor young man, but we must not forget that a poor young man could not, in the nature of things, have appealed to him like a poor young girl. Femininity affected his feelings. He was the creature of an inborn

(30) desire. Yet, no beggar could have caught his eye and said, “My God, mister, I’m starving,” but he would gladly have handed out what was considered the proper portion to give beggars and thought no more about it. There would have been no speculation, no philosophising. He had no mental process in him worth the dignity of either of these terms. In his good clothes and fine health, he was a merry, unthinking moth of the lamp. Deprived of his position, and struck by a few of the involved and baffling forces which sometimes play upon man, he would have been as helpless as Carrie – as helpless, as pitiable, if you will, as she.

NOTES

one of her order of mind – someone who thought like she did

strain – physical or mental pressure

dire – horrible

button shoes – high boots with buttons

purchasing power – the value of money, measured by how much it can buy

want –a state of extreme poverty

moth of the lamp – a flying insect like a butterfly that flies mostly at night and is attracted by light

involved and baffling forces – forces that are complicated and difficult to understand

EXERCISES

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