Dreiser began his work on Jennie Gerhardt in January of 1901. Dreiser’s characterization of Jennie Gerhardt was influenced by his sister named Mame and Jennie’s tragedy was just as accidental as Carrie’s success. Jennie Gerhardt tells a story about a young girl who has two immoral sexual relationships with two rich men from the upper class. Jennie is the daughter of a large and poor German immigrant family living in Columbus, Ohio, where she and her mother are employed as cleaners in a local hotel. The U.S. junior Senator, George Sylvester Brander, is a man of middle-age who lives in the hotel. He might be called a successful man, and is deeply attracted by Jennie’s beauty, youth, and purity. Brander shows deep sympathy for Jennie and seeks to help her and her family out. Jennie is attracted by Brander’s status and wealth. Driven by their respective personal needs and desire, they have a love affair. As a result, Jennie gets pregnant by Brander, who is carried away suddenly by a heart attack before he can fulfill his pledge to marry her. Jennie’s father, a devout Lutheran, enraged by such a disgraceful thing, which brings scandal to the family, orders that she must leave home. And Jennie has no choice but to obey her father and moves to Cleveland with her illegitimate child, where she works as a maid of the Bracebridge household. There she meets Lester Kane who is from a wealthy and pre-eminent manufacturer family and becomes his mistress. They live together for many years, but Lester has never married her. And when his family’s discovery of their irregular relationship poses a threat to his social position in the family firm, he decides to abandon her and marry a wealthy widow who is from his own. Jennie returns to the starting point of her circle of seeking for pleasure and happiness. Eventually she is left empty and alone with two orphan children to raise.

Since the publication of Jennie Gerhardt, different comments on Jennie Gerhardt and Theodore Dreiser came forth abroad. Some critics complain about his verbal writing and literary style. In many foreign countries, the study on Dreiser can be pided into three periods. In the first period, the study focused on the social background, his writing style. In the second period, critics concentrated on his works from a naturalistic perspective, and in the final period, scholars reexamined his novels from feminist perspectives. In China, Dreiser’s criticism appeared relatively late, and roughly started from about 1978. Also, a lot of critics have been studying Jennie Gerhardt on the theme and plot.

Jennie Gerhardt had received high praise from some other critics. “Except the impassable work The Adventures of Hackburry Finn which like the lonely Himalayas, it is the most excellent American novel which I have read.” (Cerrito, 1999:297) It is also considered as a masterpiece in the Chinese academic circles. But this novel has also evoked some criticism. People maintain that the protagonist is much more polished than that in his first work, Sister Carrie, who is considered as a character without any moral quality in her. To sum up, there is relatively less criticism of Jennie Gerhardt. “As a result many readers, especially students, prefer Jennie Gerhardt over Sister Carrie because of its sentimentality and formula-like plot of the lady in distress.” (Parini, 2004:411)

This paper will take Jennie Gerhardt as an example and analyze the naturalistic features in Jennie Gerhardt. The deep-seated analysis of it will offer a specific insight and great help in the understanding of naturalism. What’s more, the thesis will also put emphasis on explaining how social，environmental and instinctive factors influence Jennie’s fate in order to foster a deeper comprehension of the characteristics of naturalism.
2 Naturalism
Nowadays naturalism is one of the most influential literary schools in the world and it enjoys its great popularity among literary scholars all over the world after the advent of classicism, enlightenment, and romanticism. Compared with previous literature, it plays an indispensable role on the integration of literature and natural science and exerts a far-reaching influence on American literature. However, in the long debate on naturalism, it is also difficult to give a precise definition to it. This chapter will give a brief introduction of naturalism, Darwinism, and American naturalism as well as the relationship between them. 自然主义在《珍妮姑娘》中的体现(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_2218.html