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Feminist Thing Theory in Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie employs a ubiquitous rhetoric of "things," using the word thing and its compounds something, anything., and everything more than a thousand times. The term's placement is as prominent as its repetition, the term appearing within the first page and a half of every single chapter. Yet critics have not looked at Dreiser's rhetorical preoccupation with the word thing other than through passing critiques of his overall "tedious repetition of words" (Leibowitz xvi). Accounts of Dreiser's "relentless rep etition" (Matthiessen 85) are often coupled with references to his seeming sense of the insufficiency of his linguistic medium, as in his comments in Sister Carrie that "words are but vague shadows of the volumes we mean" (6) and that "[pjeople in general attach too much importance to words" (88). Dreiser's supposed uncertainty about the efficacy and interpretative power of language and his skepticism about being able "to give authorita tive shape to words" (Poirier 239) unfairly frames his rhetorical strategies as passive report. Rather than merely contributing to the monotony of his style, Dreiser's use of thing becomes an important means of characteriza tion. What we might call "thing rhetoric" documents Carrie's develop ment both as an actress and as a "stand-in for the figure of the writer" (Hochman 57) through her gradual appropriation of Dreiser's authorial voice. When Carrie employs this rhetoric, she challenges woman's social objectification and commodification, as is shown in a reading of the novel in terms of feminist thing theory. "It strikes to the heart of all life, animate and inanimate": Thing Theories Arguably the creator of thing theory for literary studies, Bill Brown chal lenges the assumed mute and self-evident status of the object by demon strating how the animate and inanimate reciprocally shape, mimic, and