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His passion had gotten to that stage now where it was no longer colored with reason” (163). He promises Carrie anything, even marriage, in order to seal his victory. Recklessly, he steals money from his employer and abandons his family in order to run off to New York City with his prize. Carrie’s radiance has dazzled him and blinded him: “Hurstwood could not keep his eyes from Carrie. She seemed the one ray of sunshine in all his troubles. Oh, if she would only love him wholly…how happy he would be!…He would not care” if he lost everything (228).
Ironically, Hurstwood does lose everything in New York, including Carrie. Once Carrie realizes her mistake, she abandons the floundering and pathetic Hurstwood and becomes self-reliant, recognizing that she can use her charms on a larger scale by channeling them into her roles in musical comedy. Although Carrie seems to rise in the novel, Dreiser shows her to be a victim of her own dissatisfaction at the end. Forever rocking and dreaming, Carrie is destined to search continually for the vague happiness that always seems just beyond her reach. Although she has gained money and fame, like Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, she can never attain the elusive goal that is symbolized by the green light on the other side of the bay.
Ultimate dissatisfaction is also the fate of Nella Larsen’s Helga Crane, another of Sasa’s femmes fatales. Helga almost seems bipolar as her moods swing from optimistic and deliriously happy to dissatisfied and desperate for change. Although Helga frequently captivates men, most notably Swedish artist Axel Olsen and American academic Robert Anderson, she either loses interest in them or rationalizes rejecting their proposals. Transformed by her Swedish aunt and uncle into an exotic creature with gaudy plumage, Helga, a mulatta, is irresistible to her portrait painter Olsen.