Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth Century America.
Durham: Duke UP, 2000.
[Main Argument]
In Sentimental Materialism, Lori Merish revisits the thesis Ann Douglas puts forward in Feminization of American Culture, namely, the interconnection between consumption and feminine realm of sentimental culture in the 19th century America. Unlike Douglas, who rather harshly dismisses women’s consumption as an escapist compensation for their lack of social power, Merish places women’s sentimental consumption at the center of the political economy of the emerging market capitalism. With the ideal of what she terms “pious consumption,” by the 1830s, consumption evolved into a form of construction of female subjectivity, by which a woman expresses her religious, moral, and civic values, which became the cornerstone of the nation building. Contrary to the widely held belief, materialism and revivalism went hand in hand with each other: “refined domestic artifacts would ‘civilize’ and ‘socialize’ persons and awaken ‘higher’ sentiments; such objects would seduce wayward individuals into the regenerative sociability of domesticity, and, by inspiring purified sentiments, could draw individuals to God” (90). Merish further argues, however, while the public nature of female consumption enabled women to constitute their civic agency through the “other Protestant ethic,” it also circumscribed women’s role in domestic sphere.
大変良著（rise of consumerism and eroticization of consumptionを扱っていてスポットオン）だが、今週はじっくり読む暇がなかったので必ず再読すること。
