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关键词：西奥多.德莱赛，自然主义，达尔文主义，《珍妮姑娘》
CONTENTS
Acknowledgementsi
Abstractii
摘要..iii
1 Introduction 1
2 Naturalism 4
2.1 Definition 4
2.2 Darwinism and His Evolutionary Theory 5
2.3 American Naturalism 6
3 Naturalism in Jennie Gerhardt 8
3.1 The Characteristics of Naturalism in Dreiser’s Works 8
3.2 Jennie’s Personal Character 9
3.3 Influence of the Society and the Environment on Jennie 11
3.4 Jennie’s Inner Desire 15
4 Conclusion 17
Bibliography
1 Introduction
With the economic, social and scientific transformations, American literature had been different from before. American naturalism was shaped at the end of the l9th century, and stood for by some naturalistic writers. Theodore Dreiser is generally acknowledged as one of the most outstanding naturalistic writers in the early period of American naturalism.
Regarded as one of the most prominent American naturalists in the twentieth-century, Theodore Dreiser draws more and more attention of readers all over the world. Dreiser was born after the woolen mill his father had operated in Sullivan, Indiana in 1871, was destroyed by fire. Unfortunately, Dreiser’s father was never able to reestablish himself, and much less able to support his large family. Therefore, the responsibility of raising and supporting so many children was taken by his mother. His mother worked hard and tried her best to bring up her children in order to protect them from cold and hunger. Dreiser was the ninth child of the thirteen children in the poor family. Dreiser was thus raised in an atmosphere of constant poverty, and forced to move from one place to another, scavenging for coal along the railroad tracks, often having nothing but mush to eat, and receiving only sporadic education in a succession of schools. At sixteen, he tried to do a number of jobs and failed miserably. He finally worked as a newspaper reporter. Dreiser knew nothing about writing; his natural style-long, and tedious sentences-was not suitable even to the journalism of the 1890s, but he was a good observer of people and events. During a surprisingly short period he became an effective reporter. Dreiser knew little of literary history, yet his first novel became a turning point, a touchstone in American literature. There is no doubt that Theodore Dreiser makes a permanent dedication and contribution to the whole generation. As Serafin said, “The fact remains that he was a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed as much as biology before and after Darwin.” (1999:638)
His major works include Sister Carrie(1900), which is the first and best known novels of his works. Some of the best known are the following: Jennie Gerhardt(1909), The Financier(1912), The Titan(1914), The“Genius” (1915), Tragedy(1925), and The Stoic(1947). In An American Tragedy(1925) Dreiser extends his abilities as a novelist and a thinker further than he was able to do before or after. At the time of his death, he was considered as one of the favorite writers in America.
Dreiser spent the first twenty-nine years of his life in the nineteenth century, when he grew up under the long shadow of the Civil War. Dreiser’s family background, his own disposition, and the era in which he grew up validated the dark, pessimistic outlook and attitude inevitably associated with his novels. Therefore, quite a number of Dreiser’s novels are fraught with his own experiences of life and family. “There is little question that Theodore Dreiser is the most distinguished member of the whole group of modern American novelists.He was a realist.Yes, he, partly through his own innocence perhaps, and early origins, told the truth about life when he could discover it. Probably no one else in our literature has had such a direct and intimate feeling for the common forms of experience, pleasant or disgraceful. What gave his work its remarkable texture, its glamour, really, was his simple sense of the variety and mystery of life on all its levels.”(Cerrito, 1999:296)