Living the Dream: Benjamin's Arcades Project and The Golden Bowl

Both The Golden Bowl and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project examine the conquest of the epistemologies of history and domestic life by monetary consumer culture. By examining The Golden Bowl in terms of the mass cultural alienation that Benjamin called "dream-sleep" and the related phenomenon of the flâneur, this essay demonstrates a Benjaminian anthropological vision present within James's text. Although demonstrating the ultimate victory of a domestic order exemplifying the cultural alienation that Benjamin described, the novel also provides space for a critique of the overarching cultural conditions that permitted this alienation.