【正文】 nise in it a keen analysis of her own positionher individual shortings of dress and that shadow of manner which she thought must hang about her and make clear to all who and what she was.”5 These sentences indicate that the experience in the department store for the first time casts shadow on her heart afterwards. The contempt of rich women as well as shop girls stimulates her pure heart deeply. As she loses her job, she meet Drouet again, her desire has been ignited by the dinner he treats her, the new clothes he brings for her, and his promise to buy a car for her, thus she believes that Drouet can give her all things she has always dreamed of: Now the mystic scenery merged queerly and the place was by waters she had never seen. They were upon some board or ground or something that reached far out, and at the end of this was Carrie. They looked about, and now the thing was sinking, and Minnie heard the low sip of the 6 encroaching water. “Come on, Carrie,” she called, but Carrie was reaching farther out. She seemed to recede, and now it was difficult to call to her. “Carrie,”she called, “Carrie,”but her own voice sounded far away, and the strange waters were blurring everything. She came away suffering as though she had lost something. She was more inexpressibly sad than she had ever been in life.” 6 From above we can see that, Carrie?s consumption consciousness is regarded as the corruption of moral by her sister and her brotherinlaw. At the beginning of the 20th century, American society had greatly changed in its social culture and values by being prompted in the course of addition, people living in big cities had more plicated needs than those living in countrysides. Therefore, there is no doubt that people?s consumption desire can be stimulated by the needs of society. The whole novel describes many twists through the whole life of Carrie: from a female worker in a shoe factory to a fashion lady, from someone?s mistress to a famous star. The gradually expanding desire brings her different mentalities also different fates. Her fate ends up with a declining and illusory situation at last. 3. Disillusionment Brought by Consumption In the last chapter of the novel, Mr. Hurstwood mittees suicide in a cheap hotel, and Carrie sits in a rocking chair, looking out the window and dreaming about more luxurious goods. At the end of the whole novel, Dreiser wrote: Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o39。?in her rocking chair. Thus a tide of review and revaluation of Sister Carrie is promoted again by critics home and abroad. Sherwood Anderson wrote in his Dreiser that “The feet of Dreiser are making a path for us”and“They are tramping through the wildness making a path.” 1 However, for his opponents, Dreiser was more an agent of regression than a pathfinder because of his depiction of the triumph of man?s??animal??nature over his capacity for reason and moral choice. For example Stuart P. Sherman condemned Dreiser in his famous essay The Naturalism of Mr. Dreiser that Dreiser had eradicated“distinctively human values?and had made“animal instincts the supreme factor in human life. 2 Since the middle 1980s, American critics have attempted to open new areas by laying importance to the relationship of Dreiser?s thought and work to largescale social and cultural issues which arose from an urban society and consumer economy. For 2 example, in Just Looking:Consumer Culture in Dreiser,Gissing and Zola, Rachel Bowlby has made a detailed research of the department store in Sister Carrie as a microcosm of the urban consumer culture devouring sister Carrie in Chicago. Domestic study concerning Dreiser and his works started from the 1930s. From 1930s on, a series of Dreiser?s works have been translated into Chinese, attracting great attention among Chinese readers. But the criticism of his works started from 1978. Researchers have begun to explore Dreiser?s main novels from various perspectives like naturalism, feminism, Freudian Psychology as well as realism, making the study on Dreiser and his works popular. In recent years, Jiang Daochao has opened a new area by studying Dreiser?s works from a new perspectivethe consumer culture. Since then, there have appeared many works about the consumer culture in Dreiser?s novels, and they mainly focus on the influence of consumer culture on Dreiser? s writing whereas the important role of consumer culture in women?s identity construction and their social status. Before the 1980s, feminist scholars strongly criticized consumer culture, and they thought that women are the victims of the maledominated consumer society during the process of their consumption and are consumed by men. The body of this thesis contains two chapters. In chapter one, the author introduces the concept of consumer culture and its reflection and influence in Sister Carrie and American two discusses specific reflection including material consumption, emotion consumption and body consumption and their respective features in Sister Carrie. Both of the two chapters aim to reveal the final tragedy to Carrie, that is, she ultimately bees a victim of consumption. 3 I. A Brief Review of Consumer Culture in Sister Carrie A. Introduction to Consumer Culture Generally speaking, consumer culture is “a social arrangement in which the buying and selling of goods and services is not only a predominant activity of everyday life but also an important arbiter of social anization,significance and meaning.