How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[Hurstwood] was beginning to find, in his wretched clothing and meager state of body, that people took him for a chronic type of bum and beggar. Police hustled him along, restaurant and lodging-house keepers turned him out promptly the moment he had his due; pedestrians waved him off. He found it more and more difficult to get anything from anybody. At last he admitted to himself that the game was up. It was after a long series of appeals to pedestrians, in which he had been refused and refused—every one hastening from contact. (47.20-21)
It's one thing to feel lonely and friendless as Carrie does, but it's quite another to be a social outcast like Hurstwood is by the novel's end. This passage suggests, in fact, that it's the pedestrians's refusals and rebuffs that finally send him over the edge and solidify his resolve to commit suicide.
Quote #8
And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life's object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of their original desires. She could look about on her gowns and carriage, her furniture and bank account. Friends there were, as the world takes it—those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success. For these she had once craved. Applause there was, and publicity—once far off, essential things, but now grown trivial and indifferent. Beauty also—her type of loveliness—and yet she was lonely. (47.115)
It's sometimes been claimed that women define themselves through their relationships, while men define themselves through their achievements. Is Carrie's loneliness emphasized in the novel because she's female?
Quote #9
Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. (47.124)
Descartes (a.k.a. Mr. I-think-therefore-I-am) would've never had these problems. So can Carrie's isolation really be explained by the fact that she "feels, rather than reasons?" How does that work?