On the train to Chicago, young Carrie, who faces the daunting challenge of finding work in the big city, falls under the tonic spell of the salesman Charles Drouet—not because of the quality of his character but because he is wearing a flashy suit.

In Sister Carrie, Money means power. Chicago is a “giant magnet” for the “hopeful and the hopeless” (12) who aspire to the privilege and power of money. Characters dream of the lavish opulence it can secure. Hurstwood is victimized by careless greed and left without money. He lives a miserable life on the streets, begging for enough change to get him to the next day. Making matters worse, the novel is set amid the economic catastrophe of the Panic of 1893, second only in impact to the stock market collapse that ushered in the Great Depression 40 years later.

Although Dreiser, the novel’s moral authority, disagrees, within the novel money symbolizes power. For an America just waking up to its new identity as an international economic force, the idea of money compels the novel. Characters live in fear of losing it. Hurstwood, for all his passion for Carrie, measures his every action against the possibility of his wife pursuing legal action that would make him a pauper.