The name is absent

60 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

No American author has been more aware of the shaping
power of special environments, such as that of the hotel in
which Clyde Griffiths Ieams the way of the world, or even
of private houses—

We think we are individual, separate, above houses and
material objects generally; but there is a subtle connection
which makes them reflect us quite as much as we reflect
them. They lend dignity, subtlety, force, each to the other,
and what beauty, or lack of it, there is, is shot back and
forth from one to the other as a shuttle in a loom, weaving,
weaving. Cut the thread, separate a man from that which is
rightfully his own, characteristic of him, and you have a
peculiar figure, half success, half failure, much as a spider
without its web, which will never be its whole self again
until all its dignities and emoluments are restored.³

When Caroline Meeber is induced to accept Charles Drouet
as protector, the voice of her conscience—“only an average
little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her
past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way”—
is unable to assert itself in the teeth of poverty and a Chicago
winter: “It was somewhat clear in utterance at first, but
never wholly convincing. Tlrere was always an answer, al-
ways the December days threatened. She was alone; she was
desireful; she was fearful of the wħistiing wind. The voice
of want made answer for her.” (Sister Carrie, pp. 103-104.)

Lester Kane is explained as “the natural product” of “an
age in which the impact of materialized forces is well-nigh
irresistible; the spiritual nature is overwhelmed by the shock”
and “of a combination of elements—religious, commercial,
social—modified by that pervading atmosphere of liberty in
our national life which is productive of almost uncounted
freedom of thought and action” (Jennie Gerhardt, pp. 132-
133). Mrs. Gerhardt, confronted with Jennie’s decision to go
to New York with Kane, “acquiesced from sheer force of

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