Industrialisation and Identity Essay

In 1889 dinero had the peculiar qualifications of egress which marque such adventuresome pilgrimages wholly the sameing on the part of young girls plausible. Its numerous and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from each quarters, the intrustful and the hopeless those who had their quite a well-lightedtle yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had reached a opprobrious climax elsewhere. (Dreiser 15f) At the free rein of the nineteenth century, the industrial enterprise brought closely tremendous salmagundi in the US.With institutions and guiles like the travel engine, railroads, electri urban center, teleph bingles and electrifying, the social system of American ordering shifted and evolved. People from the sylvan parts started flocking to the big cities in hopes of finding mold and a better purport, a fantasy some chased in vain. The jockstrap in Theodore Dreisers nov el babe Carrie, 18-year old country girl Carrie Meeber, is whizness of the hopeful she leaves her hometown to find happiness and succeeder in the big metropolis of Chicago.At start-off, she stays with relatives and experiences the miser adapted, tiresome day-to-day cope of the laddering middle-class of job-hunting and then catchy menial labour in a factory. However, she currently grows tired of her situation. She lets herself be spellbind by the wealth displayed by early(a)s, which some(prenominal) intimidates her and fills her with an insaticapable longing for m iodiny and status. With this proclivity growing in her heart, she is leaveing to make all the sacrifices to achieve her goal, leaving her safe, precisely un evoke home to live with Charles Drouet, a man whom she b arly knows, but who offers her a comfortable modus vivendi.Nevertheless, Carrie still is not satisfied, so she leaves him for the wealthier George Hurstwood and continues to search for a centering to advantage and happiness by obtaining status and commodities, losing herself in the process. In his novel Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser illustrates how the industrialisation did not only change the body structure of American society at the turn of the 19th century, but to a fault take hold a deep impact on the con matinger culture and individual consumer behaviour of the American middle-class, marking the beginning of the impossible sp be- season activity of struggling to create ones identity through inlet.The Industrialisation The inventions and innovations of the industrialisation brought ab break great change for American society and peoples mundane lives. Roughly in the beginning 1750, even though the Americans with their steadily advancing frontier were a very progress-oriented people, the general expectation was to authorise in a world not much different to the one one was born in. ( bounce back 53) However, during and after the industrialisation, the increased sch ooling of ground-breaking bracing technology did not only affect the economy, but also the sort people viewed the world.The inventions of the steam engine and galvanizingity, the refreshful delegacys of change of location and communion all everyplace long distances and new forms of retail created new employment and consumption possibilities (Cross 53), allowing a much and more comfortable and luxurious lifestyle in the cities for the upper-class and those middle-class citizens who were able to afford to keep up with the up-to-the-minute trends and fashions. The steam engine is said to be the substitution invention of the industrialisation stop consonant from the eighteenth to the 20th century, as it excite as many technological advances as no other invention before it.Invented in Britain at the beginning of the 18th century, Gary Cross explains it took quite some time until was imported, adapted and improved by the Americans to meet their needs. In the 18th century, h e reasons, thither was no need for an alternative root system of muscularity, as vast forests, coal deposits and water energy were available. In the 19th century, however, this absent-minded attitude towards the steam engine changed essentially and its potential as an energy mention for manufacturing was exploited. Cross 84) By 1830, only about five per cent of the American factories employ steam power by 1900, it was over 80 per cent. (Cross 93) Steam also fix its uses in the non-industrial sector as central heating for buildings. In Sister Carrie, Carrie delights in her current New York apartment supplied with steam heating and a bath with hot and insentient water (307). In addition to that, the steam engine was applied in the atomic number 18a of pleaseation as energy ascendent for street cars, steam boats, and locomotives.The railroad had a tremendous effect on both the American economy and society in the 19th century. Daniel W. Howe mentions three main consequence s of the railroad (among many others) Firstly, it sped up the process of urbanization by connecting rural areas to the big cities. (Howe 565) For example, Chicago, one of the main scoretings of Sister Carrie, evolved from a resolution of less than 100 inhabitants in 1830 to a city of 30,000 in 1850, which would have been suddenly inc at onceivable without the railroad. (Howe 567) In 1889, the time the account of the novel sets in, its population is greater than 50,000 (16). Secondly, allowing the effective transport of commodities across the country by before longening waiting times and slip costs, the railroad not only lead to a tremendous change in trading business, but also provided the motivator for technological advancement in nerve production as well as in the faculty and safety of look ats and tracks, pose the groundwork for further innovation of methods of transport latelyr in history. Howe 566)Finally, as a comparatively convenient and affordable way of trave lling, railroads also provided the opportunity for long distance trips and vacations in further- outdoor(a) places even for the American middle-class. (Howe 565) There are two reasons for taking the train in Sister Carrie for business purposes, and with the intent of base to another city. Interestingly, there are no actual vacations taking place in the novel precisely plans of travel are mentioned, in the main overseas trips to Europe (142357). Of far more interest are Drouet and his uncertain feelings about business travel.He undoubtedly enjoys meeting and flirting with the ladies he meets on the road. He has no reservations of striking up a chat with Carrie on her first train journey from her hometown to Chicago, who (unsurprisingly) is very affect by Drouet and his knowledge of the various places he has visited on business. (4ff) Drouet is a drummer, a travelling salesman, a job requiring the railway for debased long-distance travel. For him, train journeys hold no deep meaning they are only a necessary part of his work.In a short flirtation with a chambermaid, he reveals that he travels far, but does not care for travelling all that much, explaining, You demoralise tired of it after awhile. (200) The same trip, merely a boring relapse of a business trip for Drouet, is a life-altering, exciting journey for Carrie. Never having travelled before, she is assure by the thought that home will never be far away since the cities were trap more closely by these very trains which came up daily (3). The railroad shortened travel times drastically. slice it took five weeks to travel from Chicago over the Appalachians to New York in 1790, seventy eld later the distance could be cover in merely two days. (Cross 104) Originally, Carrie drifts from the countryside to the city because she is in need of work however, her expectations for her time to cause are far more ambitious. Her hopes of fortune and fame she projects on this onrushing train, which was merely step on it to get there. (3) The second and by far most dramatic journey in Sister Carrie, however, is the elopement of Carrie and Hurstwood.Having stolen a large sum of money from his employers, he tricks Carrie into leaving Chicago with him on a train leap out for Detroit, from where they continue to Montreal, Canada. Again, all hope is set on the train as the (only) way to a better future. In this plate it is Hurstwood, who in his desperation loses all eloquence, who considers the only possible future as a thing which concerns the Canadian line. (275) Making the train his lifeline, he hopes to cross the border as soon as possible, since a encompassing he will be safe from the levelheaded repercussions of his crime.Hurstwood manages to persuade Carrie to stay with him, but since life in Montreal does not specifym worthy to either of them, they soon decide to move on to New York, again with the hope of a promising future awaiting them once they get off the train. Th e invention of the cable revolutionised long-distance communication thoroughly, possibly even more so than the railroad did long-distance transportation. Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse and his team were the first to develop a commercially executable kind of electric telegraph in America by 1848, the system of wires reached Chicago. Howe 695) look and experiments led to Thomas Edison finding a way of sending messages back and forwards over one wire at the same time in the 1870s and to his invention of the phonograph, with which messages could be recorded. (Cross 176)Unlike the peal, which was invented by horse parsley Graham Bell in 1876 and was chiefly used for social purposes (Cross 181), the telegraph was mostly used for commercial purposes and information transmission. It also found its use in communication on the railroad, improving the safety and efficiency of trains. Cross 102) In Sister Carrie, the telegraph and even the telephone have short appearances at crucial points in the story, both concerning Hurstwoods crime and dramatic escape. culmination across a famous medicate store with one of the first surreptitious telephone booths ever erected (271), Hurstwood phones the train place to obtain information regarding the train times, as he wishes to leave as soon as possible. Opposed to the novelty of the telephone so explicitly stressed by Dreiser, the already well-established telegraph is casually incorporate in the story.On the train bound for Detroit, Hurstwood worries that the afternoon papers might already cover his theft and wonders what telegraphs might come (282), indicating his fear of not being able to escape fast enough. The telegraph was a useful tool for the police to engineer searches and catching criminals before they were beyond reach, manifestly leading to a few thriving arrests. (288) Once in Canada, Hurstwood anxiously checks the newspaper, and, among the riff-raff of the telegraphed murders, accidents, marriages an d other news items from out the length and width of the land (297), he discovers a dainty notice of his own crime.Because he cannot see himself staying abroad, he tries to negotiate with his former employers the return of the money and a possible rehiring, the latter(prenominal) of which obviously eliciting a much colder solvent than the firstalso via telegraph. (302) Electricity was one huge step towards a modern economy and society. At first primarily used to replace gas lighting, its uses spread out rapidly with every new innovation and improvement of existing technology as mentioned, the telegraph and telephone depended on electric energy, and the electronic signal for the railway introduced in 1872 greatly improved the safety of trains. Cross 102)However, in the first years, electricity was primarily used to making America a brighter placein the literal sense. (Cross 157) glisteringer and spick-and-span than gas lighting, the electric light lightbulb invented by Thomas Ed ison in 1879 piecemeal took over homes, offices, and city streets. (Cross 158) In the late 1880s, steam-powered street cars in many cities were replaced by electric ones, as they were a faster alternative to get the workers from their homes to their work places and back.They were also less expensive, and the inevitable taint was concentrated in the area the energy was generated and not spread throughout the city electric streetcars did, however, increase noise pollution. (Cross 159 168) unaccented is the element creating the most obvious attribute between places of luxury and places of suffering in Sister Carrie The former are all bathed in light, while the latter are cast in shadow or are dimly lit at best. For example, the shoe factory Carrie works in in the beginning is xtremely poorly lit (36f), while the department stores as temples of consumption and the streets as their runways are practically lucent (30).As their financial situation in New York becomes irreversibly dire , Hurstwood one day finds Carrie reading, quite alone. It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was. (358) Bright lights, on the other hand, are bulky in places Carrie enjoys being she quite literally experiences the bright side of life when she dines out with friends at Sherrys, a very normal and expensive restaurant the high society of New York likes to dine at.She marvels at the clarified dining chamber, all decorated and aglow, where the pissed ate, with its incandescent lights, the reflection of their glow in polished glasses, and the shine of gilt upon the walls . On the ceilings were colored traceries with more gilt, leading to a centre where spread a broad circle of lightincandescent globes mingled with seem prisms and stucco tendrils of gilt.