The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture

1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7546-6156-6
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 552 g

Reihe: Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present

During the rise of consumer culture in the nineteenth century, children and childhood were called on to fulfill a range of important roles. In addition to being consumers themselves, the young functioned as both 'goods' to be used and consumed by adults and as proof that middle-class materialist ventures were assisting in the formation of a more ethical society. Children also provided necessary labor and raw material for industry. This diverse collection addresses the roles assigned to children in the context of nineteenth-century consumer culture, at the same time that it remains steadfast in recognizing that the young did not simply exist within adult-articulated cultural contexts but were agents in their formation. Topics include toys and middle-class childhood; boyhood and toy theater; child performers on the Victorian stage; gender, sexuality and consumerism; imperialism in adventure fiction; the idealization of childhood as a form of adult entertainment and self-flattery; the commercialization of orphans; and the economics behind formulations of child poverty. Together, the essays demonstrate the rising investment both children and adults made in commodities as sources of identity and human worth.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Denisoff, Dennis

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Introduction: Small change: the consumerist designs of the 19th-century child, Dennis Denisoff. Part 1 Play Things: Toys and Theater: Experiments before breakfast: toys, education, and middle-class childhood, Teresa Michals; Paper dreams and romantic projections: the 19th-century toy theater, boyhood, and aesthetic play, Liz Farr; The drama of precocity: child performers on the Victorian stage, Marah Gubar. Part 2 Consuming Desires: 'I'm not a bit expensive': Henry James and the sexualization of the Victorian girl, Michèle Mendelssohn; For-getting to eat: Alice's mouthing metonymy, Carol Mavor; Salome's lost childhood: Wilde's daughter of Sodom, jugendstil culture, and the queer afterlife of a decadent myth, Richard A. Kaye. Part 3 Adulthood and Nationhood: Adult children's literature in Victorian Britain, Claudia Nelson; Home Thoughts and Home Scenes: packaging middle-class childhood for Christmas consumption, Lorraine Janzen Kooistra; Maps, pirates and treasure: the commodification of imperialism in 19th-century boys' adventure fiction, Ymitri Mathison. Part 4 Children and the Terrors of Cultural Consumption: Toys and terror: Lucy Clifford's Anyhow Stories, Patricia Demers; 'We have orphans [.] in stock': crime and the consumption of sensational children, Tamara S. Wagner; 'And now Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten': children, consumption, and commerce in 19th-century child-protection discourse, Monica Flegel; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Dennis Denisoff is a Research Chair in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.