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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sister Carrie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Urban Life and Decay
Morality and Instinct
Wealth and Class
Summary
Analysis
After arguing with his wife, Hurstwood stays in a hotel for the night. He is anxious as to what his wife plans to do. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hurstwood decides that she will use the information she’s discovered about Hurstwood’s affair to get what she wants out of him, resolving to hire a lawyer and a detective.
While Drouet wants to forgive and make up with Carrie, Mrs. Hurstwood plans to make her relationship with her husband irreparable. Mrs. Hurstwood is a woman of action—she makes immediate plans to separate from Hurstwood and take money from him. Evidently, she has no residual feelings of affection for her husband.
Themes
Hurstwood contemplates the properties he purchased under his wife’s name. He also thinks of his position at the saloon: if Mrs. Hurstwood “raises a row,” then his boss “[will] come and confer with him and there would be the devil to pay.” Seeing “no solution of anything,” Hurstwood begins to grow desperate. He comforts himself by thinking of Carrie, as “[she] was the one pleasing thing in this whole rout of trouble.”
Hurstwood is a man who values dignity—he is afraid that if Mrs. Hurstwood causes a scandal, he will lose face in front of his employers and acquaintances. The prospect of losing dignity puts Hurstwood in a dire strait, where the only comfort he has comes from thoughts of Carrie. In the span of a day, a relationship with Carrie now appears to be the only thing Hurstwood has under control.
Themes
Hurstwood checks his mailbox in the morning and finds nothing. He sets out to the park to meet Carrie, but she does not come. Hurstwood grows worried that something happened to her but soon “[decides] that it was perhaps nothing” and goes back to his office to see if Carrie sent him a letter. Finding no such letter, nor any letters from his wife, Hurstwood feels exceedingly troubled.
Hurstwood’s anxiety arises from waiting and not knowing more than anything else. Waiting creates the sense that all is unknown, and nothing is in control. Such a feeling is the worst thing possible for a man like Hurstwood, who prioritizes control. Hurstwood thrives on using connections and information to maintain control. Without connections and information, he is lost.
Themes
Hurstwood goes out to lunch. After returning, a boy delivers a letter from his wife demanding money to be sent back with the boy. Hurstwood, angry, tells the boy that there will be no reply. Hurstwood resolves to “make [his wife] change her tone.” In the afternoon, another letter from Mrs. Hurstwood arrives, declaring that “if the money was not forthcoming that evening the matter would be laid before Fitzgerald and Moy on the morrow, and other steps would be taken to get it.” Hurstwood wavers as to whether to send the money, and ultimately decides to deliver the money himself. He returns home but finds that his family has locked him out. Hurstwood feels both “relieved and distressed.”
Mrs. Hurstwood wants only money from Hurstwood, emphasizing her utter superficiality. Even her husband’s affair is an opportunity to improve her financial circumstances. Mrs. Hurstwood’s threats against Hurstwood shows that she is angry enough to cause a scandal and lose face. The fact that Hurstwood cannot enter his own home shows that Mrs. Hurstwood is now in control of the household and their children. In this way, Hurstwood’s status as an outsider in his own home is solidified.
Themes
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