Determinism in Émile Zola’s Nana (1880) and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900)

Abstract

This work is a comparative study which explores the issue of determinism in Émile Zola’s Nana (1800) and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900). The aim of this study is to apply Herbert Spence’s Social Darwinism relying on his book entitled The Principles of Biology (1864). Throughout this research, we have provided historical and literary overview of the two authors to make them more comprehensible and to link the two novels which are written in different times and locations. The following study concerns how the characters of the two novels are controlled by environmental determinism and heredity, so these forces trap the individual in both Zola’s society under the Second French Empire and Dreiser’s urbanized American society. Our discussion shows how Zola’s Nana and Dreiser’s Sister Carrie struggle in what Spencer coins as “the Survival of the Fittest” including other characters engagement in this conquest of life , as well as, the two heroines’ desire to gain wealth, luxury and fame. Both of Nana and Carrie Meeber have failed in their struggle and lead many of their lovers to ruin or worse to death, so Nana ends in tragic death and Carrie feels unsatisfied and her life remains meaningless. Then, the two writers portray how every factor of individual’s prevailing experience such as the state of birth which conditions his life and this justifies his behaviors and animal instincts including social environment which is in a constant movement, affects human life and imprisons him. Consequently, the affinities between the two writers reveal the influence of Emile Zola over Theodore Dreiser and the fact that both of them belong to naturalism as a movement, which first appeared in France and then extended to America. Indeed, this link makes possible this comparative study of both novels in the light of Social Darwinism