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Though turn-of-the century readers found Dreiser’ point of view crude and immoral, his influence on the fiction of the first quarter of the century is perhaps greater than any other writer’s. He used “strong” language and used names of living persons (Wu, 2007:88). Sister Carrie shocks the public when it is published. In fact, it is so controversial that it almost misses being printed at all. Dreiser makes no moral judgments on his characters. He writes about infidelity and prostitution as natural occurrences in the course of human relationships, Dreiser seems not to encourage readers to view Carrie as immorally, instead. He draws attention to the obsolescence of traditional moral standards. He breaks up with the long-standing literary tradition that “fallen women” must be fully punished by death.
2.2.2 Thackeray’ attitudes towards Rebecca
Thackeray was born at Calcutta. At the age of six, Thackeray was sent to be educated in England. In his early education, an independent spirit was infused to small Thackeray. So he went his own way, attending various schools, and leaving Trinity College, Cambridge without taking a degree. He married Isabella who was the model for Amelia in Vanity Fair. Politically Thackeray was a radical, advocating social reform and democracy. In his opinion, the existing society was corrupted as well as corrupting. He took it as his duty to expose the vices of his age, especially those in the upper-middle class. And He also regarded snobbery and the money-grabbing as the chief vice in his society. He criticizes the social moral that makes up the society. His criticism embraces people of all social strata; his social-climbers and snobs and money-grabbers can be found in any class. He always speaks in an ironical, sarcastic and cynical tone of an on-looker. He used his pen to disclose the darkness of society (Wu, 1988:56).
In all his works, the world described by him is mainly lives of aristocrats and rich businessmen, that is, people of upper and middle class, while the common people kept out of his works. Thackeray was cynic who saw no good in anything and doubted the goodness of human nature. He also showed indignation and anger at hypocrisy and vanity and the prevailing selfishness which lay behind the charming masks of the socially successful.
Rebecca, the unscrupulous governess whose adventures dominate the book, is generally recognized as one of the most vividly drawn characters in the English novel. The subtitle of the novel “Novel Without a Hero” points to the author’s intention to portray, not inpiduals singly, but the whole of the notorious “Vanity Fair”, an appellative Thackeray bestows on English bourgeois and aristocratic society. This title was borrowed by Thackeray from the Pilgrim’s Progress by Bunyan. Thackeray pays much attention to the female in his novels, which represents on the characters and action of female. On the one hand, he was influenced by the Victoria’s value and male authority. So he shows his sympathies and the admiration towards the female. On the other hand, he was obsessed with Bohemian life style and did not agree with the weak characteristics of women in Victoria’s times. So in Vanity Fair, he showed his negative and positive attitude towards the ambitious Rebecca with a strong will, and forgave the incompetent but adorable Amelia.
Sister Carrie is not only having influence of realism, but also the tendency to naturalism. The author breaks the taboo of the Victorian traditional culture, for example, it is not immoral for Carrie to become two lovers of rich man in order to expose that living and immorality are two deferent things. All these show that author is impacted by Darwin’s thesis of evolution and survival of the fittest, from which people can be distinguished by the strong and the weak, not by good and evil. So the success of Carrie fully exposes that the contradictory sharpens. Thackeray not only holds the realistic attitude towards Rebecca, but also has subjective thought, for example, at the end of story, Rebecca sacrifices everything but gets money. This profoundly shows that Thackeray examines the position and role of woman in a money-oriented and status-conscious male world and attacks a corrupted hypocritical society which advocates the Victorian virtues of marriage and family.