嘉莉的认同危机——从埃里克森的认同危机理论分析《嘉莉妹妹》

　　Personal identity is the cognition of oneself.It is about the sameness of one's existence.In personality studies.identity means one's essential and continuous self.In philosophy,identity is also called sameness,and it is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable.In social sciences such as psychology and sociology.identity is an unbrella teen used to describe individuality,personal identity,social identity.and cultural identity of a given person or character.

　　Identity is an issue developed with modernity.which embodies the resolution of tradition and the drastic change of life.With the development of society,people's identities that once were constant have become non-stationary.As a result,everyone is faced with the problem of reselecting their identities.Identity is an issue throughout life and quite conspicuous in adolescence.

　　Adolescence is the key stage of identity in which the adolescents have to assume new roles and responsibilities along with the changes in the body and mind.Only through the itrgration of these new roles with old roles can one form a complete and coordinated identity in order to avoid identity diffusion.

　　Theodore Dreiser is one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century American literature.He is regarded as an outstanding figure in a national literary movement,and as a naturalist and a pioneer of American modern novels.His works are close to people's life.honest,bold and full of passion.As a forerunner of the American modern novel.he broke the important role in timid and genteel tradition of the Victorian period and played an introducing a new Realism into American fiction.He suffered numerous condemnations especially for Sister Carrie.He depicts the inner spiritual world of the adolescents and identifies closely with his characters.In a fairly characteristic language.He portrays the inner struggle of young people and criticizes the corrupting world.Despite their own characteristics.his novels are not moving away from the theme of Sister Carrie:people’s clothes.their speech and physical exercise.The industrial society.the place of women.and the shaping power of one's vision.

　　In Sister Carrie,Dreiser represents the resistance of the protagonist as well as what she suffers in the process of her growth from adolescence to adulthood.In this novel,the ambivalent protagonist endeavors to know herself and define her own identity in a world full of danger.By this novel,Dreiser touched upon a wide range of themes and experiences,from grinding poverty to upper-middle class comfort,which challenged the mainstream ideology of the 20th century.

　　This thesis shall investigate into Carne's identity crisis by trying to approach the novel from Erik Erikson's identity theory which is to be briefly discussed in the first chapter in relation to Sister Carries personality development on the one hand and,on the other,in hope of building up a kind of theoretical foundation for a substantial analysis of Carne's identity crisis.Chapters two,three and four shall focus on Carne’s identity crisis itself,including its causes,its manifestations,and its final outcome,respectively.For its courses,this thesis shall analyze the indifference among people,Carne's spiritual alienation,and Minnie's response to Carrie.For manifestation,this thesis shall concentrate on Carne's negative identity,including her use of her body for material interest,and her intended physical and spiritual alienation.Then,in the last chapter,the thesis shall interpret the transition that happens to Carrie,making her aware of real life and epiphany which has finally helped her to find her true identity.

　　This thesis chooses Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie as the critical object because Dreiser presents his protagonist very realistically.By exploring the protagonist's inner world in the process of her searching for her true identity,this study intends to help readers,especially those who are in the same situation as the protagonist,to know themselves and the world at large,with the hope that they can develop a positive attitude to face the setback and difficulties in life.

　　Carrie’s Identity Crisis in Ego

　　A.Environmental Transition

　　Feminism is a modern term.It is a consciously held ideology which opposes consciously held ideologies that maintain the primacy of masculine authority and power.Feminism is a political perception based on two premises.Firstly,gender is the foundation of a structural inequality between women and men,by which women suffer systematic social injustice.Secondly,the inequality between the sexes is not the result of necessity but is produced by the cultural construction of gender differences.This perception provides feminism with its double agenda:to understand the social and psychic mechanisms that construct and perpetuate gender inequality and then to change them.

　　Actually women have suffered from a long tradition of what is generally called“biological essentialism”,that is the belief that a woman's"nature"is an inevitable consequence of her reproductive role.What is natural or essential cannot be changed in the way that social attributes of character can,hence if biology were actually to render women more submissive and less adventurous than men there would be little that anyone could do about it.This kind of essential argument has been used throughout history and across societies to justify women's subordination,even though what are considered to be essentially"feminine"characteristics vary from culture to culture.

　　Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex,a revolutionary masterpiece,points out a conception of"otherness"."Woman"functions as the other which allows men to construct appositive self-identity as masculine.And because what is other does not have identity in its own right,it often acts as an empty space to be ascribed whatever meanings the dominant group chooses.Thus women are frail not strong,emotional not rational,elding not virile,so that women can be defined as those positive qualities.In other words,by seeing as other to themselves,as not-men,men can read into"femininity"whatever qualities are needed to construct their sense of the masculine.

　　Since men's cultural dominance is the views of men are taken as the universal human view of things,it is important to recognize that the focus of feminist studies is this institutionalized male operating through social structures like the law,education,employment,religion,the family and cultural practices.None of these is to be explained simplistically in terms of conscious intent,of ill-will or of conspiracy of individual men or even groups of men.These self-sustaining structures of power,by means of which women’s interests are always ultimately subordinated to male interests,constitute the social order known as“patriarchy”,a designation which applies to almost all human societies,past and present.Contemporary feminist studies undergo three stages,which are reflected by three terms“female”,“feminine”and“feminist”.Of the three,“female”designates biological sex,`feminine"refers to cultural conceptions of gender and"feminist"involves political perceptions and aims.Now the current feminist movement is experiencing the third phase.

　　Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse.It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality.It examines women's social roles,experience,interests,and feminist politics in a variety of fields,such as anthropology and sociology,communication,psychoanalysis,economics,literature,education,and philosophy.Feminist theory focuses on analyzing gender inequality.Themes explored in feminism include discrimination,objectification(especially sexual objectification),oppression,patriarchy,stereotyping,art history and contemporary art,and aesthetics.Feminist theories first emerged as early as 1792 in publications such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft,“The Changing Woman”,“Ain’ta Woman”,“Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting”,and so on.“The Changing Woman”is a Navajo Myth that gave credit to a woman who,in the end,populated the world.In 1851,Sojourner Truth addressed women’s rights issues through her publication,“Ain’t I a Woman.”Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women having limited rights due to men’s flawed perception of women.Truth argued that if a woman of color can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men,then any woman of any color could perform those same tasks.After her arrest for illegally voting,Susan B.Anthony gave a speech within court in which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented in her publication,“Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting”in 1872.Anthony questioned the authoritative principles of the constitution and its male gendered language.She raised the question of why women are accountable to be punished under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection(women could not vote,own property,nor themselves in marriage).She also critiqued the constitution for its male gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by laws that do not specify women.

　　Since Carrie takes the job,she will go out or linger in the street after work to window-shop and enjoy the fascinating city scene.But this temporary job doesn't last long.A few days after she works in the shoe factory,she is struck with illness and is fired.The just-found-physiological security has been shattered.Where can she go?From whom can she seek help and comfort?By this time the Hanson's have been rather cold to her and she has obviously been a burden to them.Now Carrie is somewhat despaired,but by accident she encounters Drouet in the street."Drouet is just like the Satan in the garden of Eden,who plays the role of seduction"(蒋，127}.Out of the crowded sea of faces he appears,as if by magic,and he immediately recognizes Carrie.

　　At that depressing period,Carrie doesn’t understand the true meaning of money.In fact money is"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".(57)But as for Carrie,her understanding of money is something everybody else has and she must get.In her opinion,she would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money,and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value.

　　When Carrie arrives at her sister's home,she feels immediately her sister's lean and narrow life.Later Hanson's indifference to her arrival makes Carrie bored to death to stay in his house;Hanson is a cold-blooded,poorly paid and unknown clerk,with his life being wrapped up in a tedious trilogy-getting up pretty early,reading newspaper,and tricking his.beloved little baby who seems to be the only thing that makes“a pleasant side to his nature”.After Carries arrival,she becomes deeply concerned with nothing else but her job,because it is her job that guarantees the pay for her board.Relying on the poor wages,Hanson's life riddled by poverty is replete with dullness and monotony and his House is scarcely paid visit by his friends,relatives,or colleagues.Through years of working under pressure,Hanson has developed a morbidity disposition.

　　Carrie admires freedom in nature.So she tries her best to find a job to realize her dream:

　　First she is faced with the very basic need for living.According to the humanistic theorist Abraham Mallow,human needs can be arranged in a hierarchy ranging from the most necessary requirement for survival at the bottom to the most profound expressions of human potential;self-actualization at the top.

　　Secondly,people adopt a double standard to judge man and woman.Social mores is often more strict with women than with men.That is,women are more likely to be blamed by the public while men in the similar situations could easily be forgiven.Many employers refuse women employees.So it is very difficult for Carrie to find a job,especially when she is lacking of experiences related.And for those who are willing to hire women,very few of them admit their working abilities and treat them equally with male workers.

　　B.Conceptional Conflict

　　At the beginning,Carrie has conventional moral concept.Her conventional morality is a durance,making her suffering a lot.Her inner conflict between traditional moral value and consumer ethic brings her nothing but pain.When she loses the job and has to go home,Drouet’s money surely plays a very importance role in preventing that.However,when she takes away the money of Drouet’s,the feeling of ashamed attacks her.From a perspective of conventional view concerning the concept of money,“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.”(Dreiser 57)Consequently,when she takes the Drouet’s money,“the consciousness of shame attacks her to some extent,and then she becomes so weak to take it.”(Dreiser 58)

　　With the disgrace of being immoral in mind,Carrie tries to change the situation but in vain,which causes nothings more that a plethora of suffering.And then,she cohabit with Drouet,Carrie is still constantly tortured by the self-suffering of morality.“She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before;she looked into her mind,a mirror prepared of her own and the whole world’s opinions,and saw a worse.Between these two images she wavered,hesitating which to believe.”(Dreiser 80)She thinks her behavior not good and is still bothered with the problem of moral.This results the desiring of marriage from Carne,she believes that she will be saved her from awkward situation,in a sense,she treated the marriage as a chance for her to attune her actions with morality.Thus,she insistently hopes that Drouet would like to propose marry to her,and then a reason and then,there is reason and excuse for her to feel ease for her discomfort.When she begins to date with Hurstwood,she thinks,“I seem to be getting very bad.It’s wrong to act as I do,I know.”(Dreiser 113)She also imposes the desiring of marriage on Hurstwood,and constantly urges him to do that.

　　In her conventional morality,marriage will definitely render her a legitimate status,which might leave various kinds of reasons for her to explain her immoral behavior.Therefore,by the time Drouet finds the affair of Carrie and Hurstwood,and instantly tells Carrie the truth that Hurstwood has married,both the“shame of exposure”and“shame at Hurstwood’s perfidy”attacks her(Dreiser 175),so she decides to end their affair.When Hurstwood has deceived her to elope with him and told her the truth,Carrie thinks,“It’s a shame”and“erring”.All these things show that she is still bothered with and suffering from the conflict resulted from the bondage of conventional morality.

　　Carrie’s Identity Crisis in Association

　　A.Carrie’s Estrangement with Family

　　The so-called“American Dream”here is a conventionalized saying which is according to the American culture and literature.It means a fairly widespread attractive ideal and pursuit formed under the condition of American Society especially during the time of the exploration of the“New World”.

　　Fitzgerald made a symbolic description about the wealthiest part Long Land which stands for the wealth of New York even America.Obviously,it drew a significant historical background of the tragedy described by the author.In many famous literary works,the attractiveness of American Dream has been described.Just as Theodore Dreiser tells in Sister Carrie,Sister Carrie is simple girl form countryside and in the end she became a famous actress.

　　Theodore Dreiser,a modem American novelist,is a pioneer of naturalism in American literature.He makes a great contribution to the world literature with his works reflecting the true and cruel society.Regarded as the first great writer in the 20 century American literary history,Theodore Dreiser takes the lead to describe the cruel reality.“Dreiser,more than any other man,marching alone,usually unappreciated,often hated,”said Sinclair Lewis,the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature,“has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life”(Sinclair Lewis,2009).As Sinclair Lewis said,“without his[Dreiser’s]pioneering,I doubt if any of us could,unless we liked to be sent to jail,seek to express life and beauty and terror”.Feng Xiaoqin said that Dreiser provides American literature with the“first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman”.Allen Taylor,a renowned literary critic,even“listed Dreiser,Hemingway and Faulkner as the greatest novelists in America after World War I”(冯晓琴,2013).

　　As the first novel of Dreiser,Sister Carrie is also one of the first influential American novels in the 20th century.“This novel[Sister Carrie]reveals Dreiser’s basic style:simple in outline,tight in structure,serious in tone,and intense,dramatic in action(郑刚,2011)”.And this novel reflects the real and cruel society of America in a way different from the main stream literary works at that time.Before Dreiser’s Sister Carrie,many American Romantic works and historical novels chose to describe the optimistic aspects of life.

　　B.Carrie’s Attitude towards Love

　　During the process of meeting love and belong needs,Carrie has got two lovers.But she does not show her pure love for them.Instead of loving the two gentlemen themselves,she loves their money and status.Drouet is the first step for her to change into a wealthy,beautiful and gentle lady.And with the help of him,Carrie makes friends with those people belonging to the upper class.But when she finds Hurstwood loves her,who is richer and more powerful,she betrays Drouet and accepts Hurstwood’s love.However,when the two men are useless for her,she leaves them immediately without hesitation.She makes both of the men as her stepping stones.In return,she cannot receive or own the two men’s love forever.When she becomes famous,she receives endless flowers and invitations.But she does not accept any one’s love.She does not believe in love.For Carrie,love is a luxury.Even if she belongs to the upper class in her later life,she cannot get sincere love from others.She cannot meet her love needs.

　　When Carrie accepts Drouet’s love and help,and lives with him,she cannot enjoy the materials as much as she likes.She often falls into thoughts,and feels guilty.She cannot help blaming herself.In the pure country girl’s heart,she knows it is immoral for her to accept Drouet’s money.She has no idea that she has sold herself to a man.Dressing those beautiful clothes,she is not as happy as she imagined before.When she comes across a former colleague in the street,she has noticed the deep meaning in the colleague’s eyes.Sense of shame immediately fills in her heart.Carrie tries her best to escape from her early life including her relatives.Even if she passes by her sister’s flat,she feels shame and guilty.She knows she has changed into a greedy and vainglorious lady.She loses all the courage to stand in front of her relatives.Like a deserter,Carrie says goodbye to her old life and her relatives.She is not a pure girl any longer.Although she has met her physiological needs,she feels unhappy.

　　Carrie’s Identity Crisis in Society

　　A.Degeneration from Toil

　　Theodore Dreiser,one of the pioneers of modern American novels,is a realist writer whose literary works get quite close to the ordinary lives of people and are usually written with an honest and bold attitude,full of passion for life.For instance,Sister Carrie,the first novel of Dreiser,is a truthful reflection of American society in his time.And Dreiser's another work American Tragedy represents his highest literary achievement,helping people clearly see a real society of America and making a great realistic significance.

　　On August 27,1871，Dreiser was born in a small family of a bankrupt owner in Indiana.His childhood was spent in great misery.Without the graduation from middle school,he went to Chicago alone to try his luck.Dreiser's mother was tender-hearted and loved her children very much.She taught him to learn to show kindness to others.And Dreiser's father,a pious Catholic,was diligent and hard-working.During an accidental fire in his factory,Dreiser's father got wounded and then his family went into trouble.Later,he was often in a bad mood and became more stern and rude to his children,but his tenacious spirit also encouraged Dreiser to move forward in the face of difficulties and failures.When Dreiser himself firstly came to Chicago at the age of fifteen,he could only do some rough work in restaurants or hardware stores.At the same time,he was also attracted by the gaiety and splendor of this metropolis.In 1889,Dreiser got a chance to study in Indiana University with the help of a warm-hearted school teacher.However,he dropped out of his college in the second year and became a cashier in a real estate company.In fact,in order to earn a living,Dreiser had experienced various kinds of jobs,such as dishwasher,laundryman,ticket inspector,salesman and so on.

　　All of those experiences brought him into a close contact with people from lower classes and made him know a lot about the dark side of the society.That helped him accumulate rich material for his later literary creation and laid a foundation for his tragic thought in his works.

　　B.Awareness after Depravity

　　Carrie has undergone an entire process of her personal self development.She left her rural home,entered metropolitan cities,suffered both physical and spiritual loss,and experienced what life really means to humanity.All these started with her desires for monitory wealth,social status,and material possessions.But she is not a fallen woman;instead,she has the power of“emotional greatness”which eventually helps her to successfully turn her desires to the pursuit of peace and beauty,and such a pursuit contributes a lot to her ability to finally find herself.

　　This turning is accompanied with constant encouragements from Robert Ames,a handsome young scholar from Indiana.Ames’encouragement unlocks her desire for art.Compared with Drouet and Hurstwood,Ame’s is reasonable and noble whose mind goes beyond other rich people.It has an invisible influence on Carne's thinking what real success is.At this turning point,Carrie begins to realize that her former desires for materials are wrong;and she begins to see the true meaning of life and the righteousness of desires which she is to demonstrate in her later life.

　　Carrie asks Ames whether he thinks it is good to be an actress.Ames'approval makes her realize that it is necessary for her to start on a road to pursue her good new desires.Her asking for advice is symbolic of her wisdom.not of her cowardice:and her decision to be an actress is the mark of maturity.She begins to pursue positive desires.At last一she realizes that materials could not bring her inner happiness and peace and her spirits has reached a much higher position.She changes her pursuit from material wealth to peace and beauty which she sees as her happiness.And this pursuit eventually leads to the restoration of her personal self.

　　From the novel,we could see that Carrie is indeed a talented girl.She possesses an all-round basis for dramatic plays.She possesses a sympathetic and impressionable nature.She possesses an innate taste of imitation.Even without any practice,she could react to the situations of drama which she views from various kinds of faces in the scene.Firstly,Carrie achieves her success on the comic stages in New York.When Carrie is disillusioned with her career,she reencounters Ames who encourages her to pursue roles in serious plays.To Ames,the expression of Carries face is different from others;she gets the same feelings in a pathetic song and picture.That is a thing which the world likes to see because of its natural expression.The world is full of struggling people who do not express themselves fully and need others to voice for them.Many genius voice for them.Someone expresses their ideas in music,another one in poetry.still another in plays.However.for Carrie,she seems to have been born with nature;her face is the representatives of all desires.

　　Sister Carrie is Theodore Dreiser's first great novel.With his vivid description.Dreiser shows us a remarkable picture of woman’s crisis in the capitalistic industrialization and patriarchal society.He also gives a detailed account of Carries struggles and growth.He describes Carrie as a woman who eventually finds her identity.The long popularity of Sister Carrie lies in the fact that it has spoken out what most of us have gone through in our adolescence,our pain of growing up.and our searching for identity.

　　In the capitalistic industrialization,Carrie suffers the indifference among people and is surrounded by the ideology of American Consumerism.After a dreary round of job-hunting and suffering the indifference among people especially indifference from her sister and brother in-law,with the sense of loss and decriminalization in the swarming city,Carrie is easy to worship money and is easy to become a doll of men,and is particularly fragile to her economic and physical independence.

　　Nowadays in our society,there are also some girls who dream to live a happy life by relying on'men.Temporarily,they can live a rich life,but soon they will be deserted.Therefore,this interpretation of Carne's identity crisis during her process of growing to maturity shall definitely give some kind of enlightenment or inspiration for both those adolescents who are undergoing or have gone through a similar kind of pain.This is also the major significance this study lies in.

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　　I am delighted to utilize this opportunity to express my hearty thanks to those who have given me a hand with my undergraduate study and the accomplishment of this dissertation.First and foremost,I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my supervisor,Professor xxx,who has shown her patience and professionalism.Under her guidance,I was deeply enlightened when writing this dissertation

　　Besides,I am thankful to the teachers from foreign language department in XXX University who I have benefited from their courses,especially Professor xxx,Professor xxx and Associate Professor xxx,Ms.Zhao Lin,Ms.xxx,Ms.She Guiting and the like.

　　Thanks also go to all my roommates.They make my undergraduate life so vivid that I will never forget.My fellow classmates,moreover,create an affirmative study atmosphere which pushes me to walk further.

　　Last but the most important,I would like to acknowledge my beloved family whose unconditional support and love,encouraging me to pursue my dream during these years.