Dreiser's "Second Choice" jolts Shirley out of her "lower-middle-class complacency by Arthur, a dashing, romantic newcomer who woos, wins, and leaves her. Love, Shirley suddenly finds, is excitement, defined by Arthur as freedom, movement, exploration," and a different way of being in the world (Harris 73)
Theodore Dreiser - the Second Choice Theodore Dreiser, author of such realist classics as Sister Carrie is famed for his starkly realistic works of fiction that depict the "conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success" (Liukkonen & Pesonen 2008)
and I doubt if I'll be able to manage so well for him in a city. I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow" (Cather 309)
As Drieser notes, "As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: 'Money: something everybody else has and I must get,' would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly" (Drieser Chapter VII)
She is a woman however who is born with the ability to survive by analyzing her surroundings. "Xaroline, or Sister Carrie, as she has been affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power and observation and analysis" (Dreiser pp 2)