"“For the look of the thing”: middle-class consumerism in the Mayhew Brothers’ Living for Appearances and the Greatest Plague of Life"

Abstract

The paper discusses the problem of consumerism in the Mayhew brothers’ Living for Appearances and The Greatest Plague of Life: Or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant. The two novels offer a satirical comment on the emergence, in the mid-19th century, of a distinctive commodity and consumer culture in England – a development intimately related to the growth and the new visibility of the middle classes. The paper places the novels within their appropriate cultural-historical context and discusses the ways in which they address contemporary anxieties about the new consumerism. Most importantly, it focuses on the nexus between consumption and social aspiration; on commodification; on the imitation and adulteration of commodities and social identities; on the specularization of the self; and, with respect to The Greatest Plague of Life, on the problem of the specifically female gender of consumerism.