In "Sentimental Materialism" Lori Merish considers the intricate
relationship between consumption and womanhood in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Taking as her starting point a
diversity of cultural artifacts--from domestic fiction and
philosophical treatises to advice literature and cigars--Merish
explores the symbolic functions they served and finds that
consumption evolved into a form of personal expressiveness that
indicated not only a woman's wealth and taste but also her race,
class, morality, and civic values. The discursive production of
this new subjectivity--the feminine consumer--was remarkably
influential, helping to shape American capitalism, culture, and
nation building.
The phenomenon of female consumption was capitalism's complement
to male production: It created what Merish calls the "Other
Protestant Ethic,"a feminine and sentimental counterpart to Max
Weber's ethic of hard work, economic rationality, and self-control.
In addition, driven by the culture's effort to civilize the
"cannibalistic" practices of ethnic, class, and national otherness,
appropriate female consumerism, marked by taste and refinement,
identified certain women and their families as proper citizens of
the United States. The public nature of consumption, however, had
curiously conflicting effects: While the achievement of cultured
material circumstances facilitated women's civic agency, it also
reinforced stereotypes of domestic womanhood.
"Sentimental Materialism"'s inquiry into middle-class
consumption and accompanying ideals of womanhood will appeal to
readers in a variety of disciplines, including American studies,
cultural studies, feminist theory, and cultural history.
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