Fictions of Commodity Culture: From the Victorian to the Postmodern (review)
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In Fictions of Commodity Culture, Christoph Lindner draws on recent critical and cultural theory to examine "the representation of commodity culture in a selected body of nineteenth-and twentieth-century fiction" (1). Lindner grounds his ideas in the theories of Adam Smith, Marx, Lukacs, and Baudrillard, making clear connections between them and those of the authors under consideration, Gaskell, Thackeray, Trollope, and Conrad, and drawing connections between the nineteenth-century authors and postmodern cultural phenomena. Each of these Victorian authors, he argues, "conceives social exchange in terms of economic exchange" (11).
In chapter 2, Lindner discusses Gaskell's industrial novels, Mary Barton [End Page 432] and North and South, and claims that Gaskell is more interested in the social and domestic relations of the characters than the product they produce. Gaskell's working characters are disenfranchised and dehumanized because they produce, but do not own or consume, the commodities they produce. However, as Lindner points out, humanity is restored and the "fragmented society" is reconciled (33). Lindner helpfully reproduces Gaskell's texts as well as those of the theorists on which he relies. He concludes this chapter by making the argument that Irvine Welsch's urban realism novel Trainspotting (1993) is prefigured by the nineteenthcentury industrial novel.
Chapter 3 focuses on the character of Jos Sedley as the "grotesquely corpulent and materially depraved consumer" (58). Lindner explores not the producers of commodities, but "consumer seduction" and "material indulgence" (60). His in-depth analysis includes some discussion of Bakhtin's carnival world. The chapter ends with a brief analysis of Martin Amis's Money (1987) as it is prefigured by Thackeray.
In chapter 4, Lindner begins by explaining the "Madonna phenomenon." He claims that like Madonna's song "Material Girl," Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds explores the female within commodity culture and addresses the "interplay between sexual politics and consumerism" (69). Lizzie, Trollope's material girl, knowingly uses the diamonds to establish her worth within society. Lindner argues that "commodity cul-ture's economic construction of the feminine allows no role for women other than that of disenfranchised – even dehumanized – objects of exchange" (85).
In chapter 5, Lindner argues that in the early twentieth century, "commodity culture takes on an air of decay and degeneracy in fiction that attests to an increasingly acute discomfort over capitalism's decadent effects on the values and practices of society" (94). In The Secret Agent, the shop and city contain human subjects who are "damaged goods." This novel does not have the social optimism of the nineteenth-century novel, but instead explores anarchy and the "moral nihilism" of the characters and their society (117). Lindner concludes the chapter with a discussion of "Anarchy in the UK," describing the rise of punk in Britain in the 1970s as a response to commodity culture.
In the final chapter, Lindner describes the white noise of television and shopping as explored in DeLillo's White Noise. He claims that mindless consumerism based on packaging, not product, pervades the novel, so that the characters respond to the "void at the very core of late twentiethcentury consumer culture" (167).
Lindner substantiates his assertions with excellent explanations of the theory in which his analysis is grounded. He also provides a comprehensive bibliography. The connections that Lindner makes between [End Page 433] nineteenth-century novels and postmodern works are interesting and informative. His book will be of interest to scholars concerned with nine-teenth-and twentieth-century novels, capitalism and modern social theory, Marxism, materialism, the cultural politics of consumption, and commodity culture.
Juliette Berning Schaefer is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio Dominican University, where she teaches British literature, composition, and humanities. Her research interests include Victorian literature, women's studies, teaching, technology, and composition. She has published on Helen Taylor and using technology in the college classroom.
