Henry Georeg's giant book, which I didn't read in its entirety, isn't super-full of useful stuff, but his thesis is definitely worth getting right. George, writing in the 1870s, is famous for wanting to abolish private property. The reason comes from this formula: Production - Rent = Wages + Interest (171). I didn't quite follow the interest stuff, but for now we can stick with Production-Rent= Wages.
George is trying to solve the problem: why do the richest areas also have the most poverty? (6,9). The answer is that, when land is free, production will equal wages, because people will be their own bosses or work for whoever will pay them as if they were their own boss. However, when land gets built up and production increases, rent goes up. Rent doesn't have to be paid to the landlord; the landlord and the employer can be the same person, and the owner-operator takes the same chunk the operator would have to give to the owner. Based on our formula, now that land is very expensive and all land is owned by someone and workers can't become their own bosses, most of the money produced now goes to the landowner. This means the bottom falls out of wages. Solution: end private property so that labor, which produces capital, can access the capital which it produces, rather than having it sucked up in rent (328) (See also 213, 6).
Other important points George makes:
On Malthus, he argues that Malthus fails to understand how, if we just used the resources we used to make, say, diamonds to feed people, human society could always feed everyone (142). He also points out that larger groups of people generally have more, not less, productive power. George also notes that Darwin called evolutionary theory the application of Malthus to the natural world, meaning we have it backwards when we call the application of Darwinism to humanity "social Darwinism." It would be better put that Darwinism is "biological Malthusianism." The relevant quote is on page 101.
Also, George notes that Malthusian makes the rich feel good, because poverty is the natural mechanism by which population growth is stopped (96, 98). Cue the Ebenezer Scrooge quote about reducing the surplus population here.
Two tiny notes: George mentions the great Chicago fire on p. 148 and the power of railroads (more The Octopus than The Financier) on p. 192.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Ebenezer Howard's "Garden Cities of Tomorrow"
Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow wasn't that interesting, perhaps because Mumford loves it so much that he'd already told me all the interesting stuff. Most of this slim volume is just explaining how the Garden City would work - how it would raise funds, etc. That wasn't interesting. Here's what is important:
First, in Mumford's intro, a couple more awesomely Mumfordian tidbits: he makes the obvious (to a Mumford reader) but controversial otherwise statement that a Garden City is not a suburb but an "anti-suburb" (35). Also, he connects the urge to utopian city planning with shaker communities in the US, a connection I had not yet made (39).
The best thing to get out of Howard's book is just an understanding of what a Garden City is. As expressed on page 48, both the town and the country have strengths and defects. The town has great society but no scenery or fresh air; the country is bright and clean and devoid of human beings. The solution is the "Garden City," not a city made of gardens but a city inside a garden. In other words the garden city is on 6,000 acres: 1,000 acres of actual city and 5,000 acres of farmland (the so-called "Greenbelt") surrounding the city. Thus, within that 1,000 acres is a coherent community - residential, commercial, and industrial built around a park and the hospital, musuem, library, town hall, etc. It's pleasant, walkable, and mildly dense (brownstone level, according to Mumford (p. 519 of "The City and History). And since it's surrounded by rural areas it cannot ever get built up and overrun (these specs are on p. 51-53).
The second and vital part of this plan is the idea of "Social Cities." Garden Cities must be restricted from growing, but growth will occur. Howard calls for a series of garden cities linked together by high speed rail and highways (142). Mumford expands this idea, but it is certainly the key to whole thing - this plan would let the entire world urbanize and keep its green space.
First, in Mumford's intro, a couple more awesomely Mumfordian tidbits: he makes the obvious (to a Mumford reader) but controversial otherwise statement that a Garden City is not a suburb but an "anti-suburb" (35). Also, he connects the urge to utopian city planning with shaker communities in the US, a connection I had not yet made (39).
The best thing to get out of Howard's book is just an understanding of what a Garden City is. As expressed on page 48, both the town and the country have strengths and defects. The town has great society but no scenery or fresh air; the country is bright and clean and devoid of human beings. The solution is the "Garden City," not a city made of gardens but a city inside a garden. In other words the garden city is on 6,000 acres: 1,000 acres of actual city and 5,000 acres of farmland (the so-called "Greenbelt") surrounding the city. Thus, within that 1,000 acres is a coherent community - residential, commercial, and industrial built around a park and the hospital, musuem, library, town hall, etc. It's pleasant, walkable, and mildly dense (brownstone level, according to Mumford (p. 519 of "The City and History). And since it's surrounded by rural areas it cannot ever get built up and overrun (these specs are on p. 51-53).
The second and vital part of this plan is the idea of "Social Cities." Garden Cities must be restricted from growing, but growth will occur. Howard calls for a series of garden cities linked together by high speed rail and highways (142). Mumford expands this idea, but it is certainly the key to whole thing - this plan would let the entire world urbanize and keep its green space.
Mumford, The City in History, Part 3
The final sections of Mumford's "The City in History" seemed slightly less useful, perhaps as he advanced beyond the time period that is my focus. There are still plenty of relevant and interesting points, however. One of Mumford's most insistent observations is that the so-called "Megalopolis" is actually no such thing, but in reality an "anti-city," a conurbation of ever-expanding suburbs with no centrality (505). In contrast to the doomed megalopolis and the suburban conurbation, Mumford praises Ebenzer Howard's garden cities (515-onward) asserting that they are far more successful than they have ever been given credit for, and that their true genius is lies not in their garden nature but in their ability to create a series of small urban centers which provide for a walkable life but also connect with one another to achieve cultural significance.
Some of Mumford's observations which seem useful for a chapter on Cowperwood are:
520 - Howard believes that a single public figure must hold the planning power. Is this what Cowperwood did, from a private standpoint?
534- Mumford mentions the power of bureaucracy, but notes that it's not a government creation but a business one, imported to a less extent by government
536 - the banker is the central figure in the modern city - this is the "financier" model that cowperwood ultimately found to be untrue
544 - the urban economy is an ever-expanding "Maw" - this is how Cowperwood makes his money, by banking on this ever-expanding Maw to consider expanding.
Some of Mumford's observations which seem useful for a chapter on Cowperwood are:
520 - Howard believes that a single public figure must hold the planning power. Is this what Cowperwood did, from a private standpoint?
534- Mumford mentions the power of bureaucracy, but notes that it's not a government creation but a business one, imported to a less extent by government
536 - the banker is the central figure in the modern city - this is the "financier" model that cowperwood ultimately found to be untrue
544 - the urban economy is an ever-expanding "Maw" - this is how Cowperwood makes his money, by banking on this ever-expanding Maw to consider expanding.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Mumford, The City in History, Part 2
Mumford's description of "Coketown" gave me a series of ideas about writing about Chicago. The first and most important of these is his assertion that society gave up the Baroque art of city planning in favor of a "Darwinian" belief that laissez-faire attitudes were the right ones to take towards the creating of the city (453). This belief, which Mumford consistently but slightly confusingly labels "utilitarianism," "was an attempt to break through the network of stale privileges and franchises and trade regulations that the absolute state had imposed upon the decayed economic fabric and dwindling social morality of the medieval town" (453). This belief that harmony would emerge out of chaos (something that emphatically did not happen) led to the "natural expectation that the whole enterprise should be conducted by private individuals" (454). In other words, urban planning became a private enterprise because the state wasn't trusted with the responsibility. Thus "The very age that boasted its mechanical conquests and its scientific prescience left its social processes to chance, as if the scientific habit of mind had exhausted itself on machines, and was not capable of of coping with human realities" (470).
This is obvious the place to talk about Cowperwood - on the one had his actions are obviously a product of this laissez-faire approach to city planning, and thus he benefits from from this system, whereby "individual competition for ever-greater profits led the more successful to the unscrupulous practice of monopoly at the public expense" (453). But Mumford continues: "Design did not emerge" and Cowperwood is the living, breathing embodiment of design - he is a central figure who centralizes everything and sees the entire system - something which Taylor, in The Principles of Scientific Management, says is impossible. So perhaps there is a bit of slippage, a very interesting bit of slippage, between Mumford's conception that design did not emerge and the design that Cowperwood brought. Is this a throwback on Dreiser's part to a Baroque age? A special exception in the case of Cowperwood? etc.
If Cowperwood fits into Coketown, Addams fits into its response, the "counter-attack," whereby hygiene is newly valued (475) and "municipal socialization" finally steps in to provide that hygiene (476). Obviously, Addams is one of those who set out to effect that municipal socialization. Mumford also mentions settlement houses by name, stating that, since the laissez-faire city planning created cities with no municipal center, the settlement movement formed to give cities "an organizing social nucleus" through which to bring about political vitality (500).
Finally, I want to mention that Mumford praises Olmsted's suburbs in various cities for building workable green spaces into coherent communities (497).
This is obvious the place to talk about Cowperwood - on the one had his actions are obviously a product of this laissez-faire approach to city planning, and thus he benefits from from this system, whereby "individual competition for ever-greater profits led the more successful to the unscrupulous practice of monopoly at the public expense" (453). But Mumford continues: "Design did not emerge" and Cowperwood is the living, breathing embodiment of design - he is a central figure who centralizes everything and sees the entire system - something which Taylor, in The Principles of Scientific Management, says is impossible. So perhaps there is a bit of slippage, a very interesting bit of slippage, between Mumford's conception that design did not emerge and the design that Cowperwood brought. Is this a throwback on Dreiser's part to a Baroque age? A special exception in the case of Cowperwood? etc.
If Cowperwood fits into Coketown, Addams fits into its response, the "counter-attack," whereby hygiene is newly valued (475) and "municipal socialization" finally steps in to provide that hygiene (476). Obviously, Addams is one of those who set out to effect that municipal socialization. Mumford also mentions settlement houses by name, stating that, since the laissez-faire city planning created cities with no municipal center, the settlement movement formed to give cities "an organizing social nucleus" through which to bring about political vitality (500).
Finally, I want to mention that Mumford praises Olmsted's suburbs in various cities for building workable green spaces into coherent communities (497).
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Mumford, The City in History, Part 1
There are a number of interesting things to be gleaned from the roughly 50 pages of Mumford I read today, although none of it is necessarily a slam-dunk thing to be put into my dissertation. The main point from this portion of the book is Mumford's argument that the city (in a process beginning in the 16th century and accelerating in the 19th century) became a purely financial endeavor, one in which the primary unit is "the individual lot" and those lots are treated "without respect for historic uses, for topographic conditions, or for social needs" (421). In other words, the only parts of a city one can act on are little chunks, and those little chunks are dealt with purely financially. This makes municipal building nigh-impossible (424) and requires only a single municipal service: transportation (424-425). Transportation, notes Mumford, is at first helpful to the worker by allowing him to cheaply get to his place of work (429) but quickly just becomes another way to extend the city, making transportation as expensive as time-consuming as it was before by enlarging the city and increasing the distance the worker must travel (430). This transportation stuff should shield interesting results when considered with Cowperwood.
The most problematic part of this for me is how much Mumford hates density. He's right that density robs the city of that which the town has - air, light, green space, etc. But in "The Regimentation of Congestion" his attacks on density seem to leave out all that's good about density - he goes so far as to suggest that the "Paris flat" and other wealthy ways of living in dense areas suffer from much of the same problems as slums (433). I think that Jane Jacobs championing of the street as a place to play would be the exact opposite of Mumford's disgust at how cramped together people have become.
The most problematic part of this for me is how much Mumford hates density. He's right that density robs the city of that which the town has - air, light, green space, etc. But in "The Regimentation of Congestion" his attacks on density seem to leave out all that's good about density - he goes so far as to suggest that the "Paris flat" and other wealthy ways of living in dense areas suffer from much of the same problems as slums (433). I think that Jane Jacobs championing of the street as a place to play would be the exact opposite of Mumford's disgust at how cramped together people have become.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Question #11: Dewey and Naturalism
First, the reasons why naturalism and pragmatism are or could be opposed - these might come most easily from James. Put in the most simple terms, naturalism is fascinated with degeneration, with the devolution of the human subject, whereas pragmatism seems to be only interested in moving humanity forward. But there are crucial ways in which pragmatism and naturalism dovetail. Using Dewey:
First, and most obviously, it's no coincidence that Dewey uses the term "empirical naturalism" to describe his understanding of the scientific method. This use of the term naturalism refers not to the literary movement headed by Zola but rather to the older, original use of the term naturalism, which means some combination of a materialist and scientific philosophy. In other words, we have an initial point of agreement between pragmatism and literary naturalism: both discard Platonic realism/metaphysics and Descartian dualism, favoring instead a naturalistic/materialistic epistemology.
Beyond this similarity is the uniquely textual method that both naturalism and pragmatism employ. To put this more precisely, both naturalism and pragmatism (particularly in its Deweyan manifestation) represent practitioners of a textual field (literature, philosophy) attempting to use certain aspects of the scientific methodology to reveal truths on some border ground between their traditional disciplinary space and the space of politics and sociology. In other words, both naturalism and pragmatism, inspired by a materialist philosophy which abandons most traditional aesthetic or metaphysical concepts, seeks to find a way to bring literary/philosophic writing to bear on the contemporary social problems of the world.
This uniting takes place when he concludes that a useful description of his project is "naturalistic humanism." In other words, an the philosophical system of the type that both naturalism and pragmatism reject held, perhaps about all things, a separation of man and experience from nature. This for Dewey is but a silly obstruction - how else is man to know of nature than by experience? The only other alternative is a supra-empiricial, a transcendental knowledge of nature which both naturalism and Dewey see as an outdated and obfuscating mode of epistemology.
Perhaps nothing links Dewey's epistemology with naturalism more than his belief, as is only natural once we do away with a transcendental knowledge of nature, that non-cognitive experiences precede cognitive experiences, and that cognitive experiences are made up of non-cognitive experiences. This could more or less be the doctrine of Zola - in fact, it is a better way of putting it than Zola ever could. This is the central doctrine of naturalistic philosophy; not that consciousness does not exist or is a fiction, but that whatever consciousness is, it arises out of biological functionings of the nervous system. Dewey describes the alternative to such an understanding as a world in which every human is a stranger in every environment, abstracted from their surroundings and unable to know them. The naturalists, with Dewey, wanted to get rid of such an understanding of humanity, as well as humanity's morals and, indeed, consciosness. For both Dewey and Zola, humankind was another biological organism, finding its way in an environment by virtue of the biological signals communicated by its nervous system.
From here, it is not hard to imagine naturalism and pragmatism as divergent courses with near identical starting points. Both of them wanted to sweep away what they perceived as millennia of rubbish that had accumlated from a disassociation of man from his environment. Both of them did so, not by writing scientific texts, but by attempting to link this newly scientific awareness with the unique strengths of their respective disciplines. Etc.
First, and most obviously, it's no coincidence that Dewey uses the term "empirical naturalism" to describe his understanding of the scientific method. This use of the term naturalism refers not to the literary movement headed by Zola but rather to the older, original use of the term naturalism, which means some combination of a materialist and scientific philosophy. In other words, we have an initial point of agreement between pragmatism and literary naturalism: both discard Platonic realism/metaphysics and Descartian dualism, favoring instead a naturalistic/materialistic epistemology.
Beyond this similarity is the uniquely textual method that both naturalism and pragmatism employ. To put this more precisely, both naturalism and pragmatism (particularly in its Deweyan manifestation) represent practitioners of a textual field (literature, philosophy) attempting to use certain aspects of the scientific methodology to reveal truths on some border ground between their traditional disciplinary space and the space of politics and sociology. In other words, both naturalism and pragmatism, inspired by a materialist philosophy which abandons most traditional aesthetic or metaphysical concepts, seeks to find a way to bring literary/philosophic writing to bear on the contemporary social problems of the world.
This uniting takes place when he concludes that a useful description of his project is "naturalistic humanism." In other words, an the philosophical system of the type that both naturalism and pragmatism reject held, perhaps about all things, a separation of man and experience from nature. This for Dewey is but a silly obstruction - how else is man to know of nature than by experience? The only other alternative is a supra-empiricial, a transcendental knowledge of nature which both naturalism and Dewey see as an outdated and obfuscating mode of epistemology.
Perhaps nothing links Dewey's epistemology with naturalism more than his belief, as is only natural once we do away with a transcendental knowledge of nature, that non-cognitive experiences precede cognitive experiences, and that cognitive experiences are made up of non-cognitive experiences. This could more or less be the doctrine of Zola - in fact, it is a better way of putting it than Zola ever could. This is the central doctrine of naturalistic philosophy; not that consciousness does not exist or is a fiction, but that whatever consciousness is, it arises out of biological functionings of the nervous system. Dewey describes the alternative to such an understanding as a world in which every human is a stranger in every environment, abstracted from their surroundings and unable to know them. The naturalists, with Dewey, wanted to get rid of such an understanding of humanity, as well as humanity's morals and, indeed, consciosness. For both Dewey and Zola, humankind was another biological organism, finding its way in an environment by virtue of the biological signals communicated by its nervous system.
From here, it is not hard to imagine naturalism and pragmatism as divergent courses with near identical starting points. Both of them wanted to sweep away what they perceived as millennia of rubbish that had accumlated from a disassociation of man from his environment. Both of them did so, not by writing scientific texts, but by attempting to link this newly scientific awareness with the unique strengths of their respective disciplines. Etc.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Exam Prep: Question #1: Drama in Sister Carrie/Maggie
1.Two of the most important American naturalist novels, Sister Carrie and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, are highly dramatic in their sense of place and staging, and both feature key dramatic performances in public spaces. Discuss the role that drama and performance play in each of these novels, and explain how the dramatic strands of these novels affect the authors shared desire to highlight social inequality and class issues.
In ways that will become clear almost immediately, Maggie and Sister Carrie are deeply different novels. Most of their similarities are superficial: they represent canonical naturalist novels by canonical male novelists that follow and are named for lower-class urban heroines who struggle to find a use for their uncommon beauty and talent. Of course, in another equally superficial way, these novels are highly different: Maggie is short even for a novella, whereas only An American Tragedy makes Sister Carrie look like a picture of restraint. But they do share an emphasis on the dramatic; in both Maggie and Sister Carrie, dramatic performances play a major role in the story and shape the interactions between the characters.
For Maggie, her first date with Pete is an escape from the miserable life of her apartment in the form of a trip to a music hall which mixed burlesque and musical performances, to the enormous delight of Maggie. But more important to Maggie than the musical performances are the cheap plays, all of which are described as having beautiful girls live as the wards of rich gentleman who have impure intentions; the girls are inevitably rescued by dashing young men whose primary action in the play is to rescue elderly strangers.
It is from these plays, and these plays alone, that Maggie gets her view of romance. Pete is transformed into one of the dashing young men who rescues the heroine, and Maggie herself becomes of course the girl in need of rescuing. But Maggie's understanding of her situation could hardly be more at odds with the facts of the case. The greatest dissimilarity is with her home life.
Ok, this isn't working, so breaking it down: 1.Maggie is inspired by the plays to read her life as a storybook romance.
2.However, the reality is that her romance is a play, but an entirely different one. It takes place in music halls of ill-repute, and there people are not judged on their moral fibre but their beauty. Thus Maggie is a succesful performer for atime, but eventually Pete sees his more beautiful ex, and Maggie is abandoned. In other words, she didn't play the part beautifully enough - she was lacking the requisite experience, makeup, and costume.
3.Maggie's home life is an inversion of the plays - she could not live in a slummier setting. But, just like the dance halls, it too is a performing space. Within the apartment, her mother's true colors come out; she destroys furniture and takes her rages out on everyone. When Maggie exits this space by spending a night out, she is condemned to hell by her mother, not for actually doing anything with Pete but merely for not spending the night there - the performance matters, not the action or intentions. And then the mother's true intentions go away when she moves to the public space: the tenement hallway. Here maggie's mother is the picture of morality, condemning Maggie to hell and wailing to her neighbors' of the unfairness of the situation in a way that Crane compares to a museum showman. It is also in this hallway where the book's final performance takes place: after Maggie's death, her mother does a call and response with the other busybodies in the apartment building, reiterating her sadness over Maggie's descent into hell and then finally, vocally, with the final words of the novel, "fergiving" the girl who she did not support in life. This ties in with Pizer's assertion that this is not really a naturalistic novel but rather one concerned with the hypocrisy of society - it's not necessarily environment that brings everyone down, but unrealistic "show morals"
Sister Carrie is not an inversion of the traditional damsel in distress is rescued by dashing young man kind of play, but simply a reordering of it. After all, although Dreiser makes it very clear with some late editorializing that Carrie will not find happiness simply by obtaining the object of her desire (ie fame and fortune) she does nevetheless achieve those things. And she achieves them, at successive terms, by playing the part correctly. The primary rewriting in this retelling of the story of young girl who makes good concerns the role of the prince. Carrie auditions two different princes, Drouet and Hurstwood, and both of them prove ultimately ineffectual. Drouet first wins her heart by simply being present and dandy, and he proves to be her first drama coach: he dresses her correctly and teaches her the correct mannerisms of a lady. Once Carrie starts playing the part of a higher-class woman, her success begins, when she literally begins performing in an amateur play which attracts her the attention of Hurstwood, a nightclub manager who is friends with Drouet but, by virtue of his higher social status, is able to steal Carrie and eventually flee and sham-marry her.
Carrie eventually casts off Hurstwood and rebuffs Drouet, because she reaches a point where her acting can sustain her. Like the heroine of the cheap play, she has made good. Her first steps involved performing in polite company; her later steps came from performing on stage, but either way she has created performances that captivate men and result in success. But, as I mentioned, Dreiser undercuts this final success in a number of ways. For starters, Hurstwood is not only not a handsome prince, he eventually becomes a suicide, ignored by Carrie. Not only does his miserable suicide provide a contrast to Carrie's success, it also makes it clear that Carrie's success is ultimately shallow and has made her unfit for human sympathy. And Dreiser makes clear that it is Carrie's status as a constant performer, always seeking out the correct behavior and best, most superficial finery, that has made an empty shell of her. Carrie, like Maggie, was lured to an unfortunate end by making real life into a peformance; in Maggie's case this performance is mostly forced upon her by others, while Carrie is an active participant in it. (and Ames suggests to her that true art is a way out - he represents possibly an another option, that Carrie misses)
In ways that will become clear almost immediately, Maggie and Sister Carrie are deeply different novels. Most of their similarities are superficial: they represent canonical naturalist novels by canonical male novelists that follow and are named for lower-class urban heroines who struggle to find a use for their uncommon beauty and talent. Of course, in another equally superficial way, these novels are highly different: Maggie is short even for a novella, whereas only An American Tragedy makes Sister Carrie look like a picture of restraint. But they do share an emphasis on the dramatic; in both Maggie and Sister Carrie, dramatic performances play a major role in the story and shape the interactions between the characters.
For Maggie, her first date with Pete is an escape from the miserable life of her apartment in the form of a trip to a music hall which mixed burlesque and musical performances, to the enormous delight of Maggie. But more important to Maggie than the musical performances are the cheap plays, all of which are described as having beautiful girls live as the wards of rich gentleman who have impure intentions; the girls are inevitably rescued by dashing young men whose primary action in the play is to rescue elderly strangers.
It is from these plays, and these plays alone, that Maggie gets her view of romance. Pete is transformed into one of the dashing young men who rescues the heroine, and Maggie herself becomes of course the girl in need of rescuing. But Maggie's understanding of her situation could hardly be more at odds with the facts of the case. The greatest dissimilarity is with her home life.
Ok, this isn't working, so breaking it down: 1.Maggie is inspired by the plays to read her life as a storybook romance.
2.However, the reality is that her romance is a play, but an entirely different one. It takes place in music halls of ill-repute, and there people are not judged on their moral fibre but their beauty. Thus Maggie is a succesful performer for atime, but eventually Pete sees his more beautiful ex, and Maggie is abandoned. In other words, she didn't play the part beautifully enough - she was lacking the requisite experience, makeup, and costume.
3.Maggie's home life is an inversion of the plays - she could not live in a slummier setting. But, just like the dance halls, it too is a performing space. Within the apartment, her mother's true colors come out; she destroys furniture and takes her rages out on everyone. When Maggie exits this space by spending a night out, she is condemned to hell by her mother, not for actually doing anything with Pete but merely for not spending the night there - the performance matters, not the action or intentions. And then the mother's true intentions go away when she moves to the public space: the tenement hallway. Here maggie's mother is the picture of morality, condemning Maggie to hell and wailing to her neighbors' of the unfairness of the situation in a way that Crane compares to a museum showman. It is also in this hallway where the book's final performance takes place: after Maggie's death, her mother does a call and response with the other busybodies in the apartment building, reiterating her sadness over Maggie's descent into hell and then finally, vocally, with the final words of the novel, "fergiving" the girl who she did not support in life. This ties in with Pizer's assertion that this is not really a naturalistic novel but rather one concerned with the hypocrisy of society - it's not necessarily environment that brings everyone down, but unrealistic "show morals"
Sister Carrie is not an inversion of the traditional damsel in distress is rescued by dashing young man kind of play, but simply a reordering of it. After all, although Dreiser makes it very clear with some late editorializing that Carrie will not find happiness simply by obtaining the object of her desire (ie fame and fortune) she does nevetheless achieve those things. And she achieves them, at successive terms, by playing the part correctly. The primary rewriting in this retelling of the story of young girl who makes good concerns the role of the prince. Carrie auditions two different princes, Drouet and Hurstwood, and both of them prove ultimately ineffectual. Drouet first wins her heart by simply being present and dandy, and he proves to be her first drama coach: he dresses her correctly and teaches her the correct mannerisms of a lady. Once Carrie starts playing the part of a higher-class woman, her success begins, when she literally begins performing in an amateur play which attracts her the attention of Hurstwood, a nightclub manager who is friends with Drouet but, by virtue of his higher social status, is able to steal Carrie and eventually flee and sham-marry her.
Carrie eventually casts off Hurstwood and rebuffs Drouet, because she reaches a point where her acting can sustain her. Like the heroine of the cheap play, she has made good. Her first steps involved performing in polite company; her later steps came from performing on stage, but either way she has created performances that captivate men and result in success. But, as I mentioned, Dreiser undercuts this final success in a number of ways. For starters, Hurstwood is not only not a handsome prince, he eventually becomes a suicide, ignored by Carrie. Not only does his miserable suicide provide a contrast to Carrie's success, it also makes it clear that Carrie's success is ultimately shallow and has made her unfit for human sympathy. And Dreiser makes clear that it is Carrie's status as a constant performer, always seeking out the correct behavior and best, most superficial finery, that has made an empty shell of her. Carrie, like Maggie, was lured to an unfortunate end by making real life into a peformance; in Maggie's case this performance is mostly forced upon her by others, while Carrie is an active participant in it. (and Ames suggests to her that true art is a way out - he represents possibly an another option, that Carrie misses)
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