Theodore Dreiser was a journalist and novelist whose writings exemplified the nineteenth- century naturalist literary movement, rejecting both romanticism and Victorian morality stories to focus instead on realistic reporting, social commentary, and themes involving detachment and struggle. His novel Sister Carrie tells the story of a single young woman, Caroline Meeber, who moves from a small town to the big city, and reflects some of the major themes of the Gilded Age: the migration of peoples from towns to cities or from rural to urban settings, and especially what that meant for single women who took this opportunity.