The Unreal of Reality: Spectacular City and Its Theatricality in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

Examining Dreiser`s representation of the core cultural experiences in modern America, this paper illuminates the question of modern vision how new lines of visibility and new visual experiences formed by capitalist urban spaces and the period`s technological developments take on decisive significance in fostering a particular organizing of the social order, of subjectivity and social relations in modern America. In giving expression to the city as a site of both a place and a way of life by dramatizing the scenes, structures and topography of the cityscape which impinge upon the minds of his characters, Dreiser analyzes the enforcing mechanism of visual power of the city and the varied implications of the cultural transformations of the urban experience which are at once celebrated and condemned in Sister Carrie. Whereas fascinated by the improved visibility, plentitude of visual forms and visual stimuli presented in urban space, Dreiser simultaneously foregrounds the urban setting as a problematic site where reality is associated with dramatic spectacles. Emphasizing the theatricality of the urban spectacles, Dreiser also demonstrates how the urban spectacle comes to be the most highly developed power which infuses capitalist ideology into every aspect of daily life, and how it reshapes the topography of individuals` desire and consciousness through controlling its visual imagery.