Sister Carrie

As Hurstwood struggles in his new job, Carrie finds success on stage. During a performance when a lead directs a question to Carrie, she adlibs a line that the audience finds funny. The director agrees to keep the line in and convinces the company director to move Carrie to a speaking part after one of the actors leaves the show. When another of the other actors, Lola, offers Carrie a place to stay if she is willing to split the rent, Carrie sees that Hurstwood is a problem with an answer.

Carrie figures that the time to leave Hurstwood would be when the rent comes due on the first of the month. After Hurstwood suggests they should move into an even smaller apartment, Carrie resolves to leave. That Friday, when Hurstwood goes for a walk, Carrie throws together her things and moves out to live with Lola, leaving him two ten-dollar bills. Uncertain what to do, Hurstwood sits in the rocking chair.

Now living with Lola, Carrie gains more confidence on stage. She is hired by The Casino for a summer gig making more than $30 a week. She and Lola join the chorus. Despite having no lines, Carrie becomes the show’s main draw, which she achieves through a series of practiced facial expressions.

The critics describe Carrie’s part as “one of the most delightful bits of character work ever seen at The Casino stage” (305). The manager offers her $150 a week. The contract makes the newspapers—Hurstwood, now living in a seedy dive, reads about it as he rocks.

Carrie becomes a theatrical sensation and a Manhattan celebrity. Her dressing room is upgraded, and a major hotel offers her a suite for both her and Lola with a parlor, multiple baths, and stunning view of Broadway. The two agree to move.

As her stage show becomes the talk of the town, Carrie fields interview requests and reads through fan mail. The money starts rolling in. Even though Lola encourages her to date, Carrie is not ready for any relationship. She stays alone: “It does not take money long to make plain its impotence, providing the desires are in the realm of affection” (312).

Shortly after Carrie leaves, Hurstwood grows destitute. He downscales his living quarters, moving into a cheaper dive. Only after he begs does he find work at a fancy hotel. The job only lasts a few weeks before Hurstwood contracts pneumonia and is fired for missing too many days. Released from the hospital, Hurstwood panhandles, begging for just enough money to eat something and have a flophouse bed for the night.

Hurstwood goes to the theater where Carrie is performing. He huddles outside in the gloom with other vagrants. Desperate for food, Hurstwood waits while a man from a charitable organization tries to persuade theatergoers to give the unhoused money. No one responds. When later the man conducts the unhoused to a shelter, Hurstwood panics. He arrives at the shelter and settles down in his “miserable bunk” in the “lightless chamber” (324). Because it had been more than a day since he had any food, Hurstwood knows he needs to eat “or die” (324).

In her dressing room, Carrie is surprised by a visit from Drouet, who is passing through town. She is cold to him and agrees only to have dinner, and even that she cuts short to return for the evening’s performance. Coincidentally, she meets Hurstwood the next night. He has gathered enough courage to beg her for money. She gives him what she has on her: $7.00. The next day she departs for London—her show is going on the road.

When Carrie returns, she is surprised to meet Bob Ames who attends her play. He has attracted enough investors to open a small laboratory in New Jersey to test new electrical devices. He tells Carrie that she is wasting her talents doing comedy, and that the world needs serious theater that explores critical questions about life. “Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings” (332), he tells her. Serious-minded playwrights do, and Carrie should give voice to those thoughts. Taken aback by his honesty, Carrie promises she will think about it.

A despondent Hurstwood wanders about Broadway. It is the dead of winter, and every day he scrambles to find a bed in any of the city’s charity organizations. When he begs people for help, many threaten to call the police. When he sees Carrie’s name—CARRIE MADENDA—on a theater marquee, he tries to see her, waiting for her at the stage door until an attendant pushes him away.

Meanwhile, Carrie and Lola have moved again, this time to a suite at the Waldorf. Carrie, reading a book Ames recommended to her, feels sorry for the people down below her window walking in the bitter cold and snow.

Drouet courts a woman using the same flattery he used on Carrie. Hurstwood’s wife and daughter, who married a wealthy Italian, are on a train heading to Rome.

Hurstwood feels “the game was up,” and that all of life’s charms, “which had always seemed precious,” had become “dull and inconspicuous” (335). In his cheap hotel room, Hurstwood, with “death in his heart” (336), takes off his jacket and shoves the garment carefully under the door. He then turns up the gas on the stove in the kitchenette and waits to die.

Carrie, back at the Waldorf, rocks herself slowly, thinking how much she has and yet how empty she feels: “She was still waiting for that halcyon day when she should be led forth among dreams become real” (344). The narrator closes the novel with an admonition to Carrie: “In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel” (344).