Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 189-193

Conclusion

Conclusion In 1899, long before many Americans accepted such ideas, Robert Ellis Thompson, a professor of political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, proclaimed, "It is a benefit to spread a discontent with ugliness in dress, house and furniture . The peddler and the storekeeper are missionaries of civilization , and through their labor we have reached the point at which the poorest are no longer content with what once satisfied the most opulent. But much remains to be done." He pointed to the "large sections of the American people" who "are still very poor consumers and make small demands upon the industries of the country." In order to raise the standard of living for such people, "a just discontent with the paltry ways they have of living" must be diffused throughout the country. Thompson, aware that he was advocating a morally controversial position about consumption, confided to his readers that they need not worry about the moral effects of their envy and discontent. He claimed that they would not be "less men, but more, for learning to want and to enjoy more than they do."1 This view, that Americans would become better people if they only felt sufficient discontent and desire, bucked conventional wisdom about the basis of morality. Traditionally, Americans had believed that only through asceticism and restraint might one improve morally. Thompson's claim, that men and women's physical circumstances and moral condition would be improved when they became good consumers, presaged the increasing acceptance of envy, discontent, and materialism that would develop in the twentieth century. By 1930, Thompson's ideas had become commonplace in the United States. Bourgeois Americans of all ages had become accustomed to indulging their desires and acting on CONClUSION 183 their envy. They had come to think of envy and discontent as emotions which indicated that they had aspirations, taste, and a desire for a higher standard of living. Rather than seeing envy as a sin and consumer activity as a threat to their moral integrity, Americans believed that they could better themselves through spending. They also believed that they could make themselves happier by making purchases. The way to gain true contentment was not to accept deprivations but to act on their envy and pursue the things they longed for. These new interpretations of envy, discontent, and contentment which consumers and merchants developed in the 191Os and 1920s continue to shape consumer behavior in our own time. Modern consumers accept not only the emotional codes that their grandparents and great-grandparents developed, but their larger social implications as well. They believe that all Americans, regardless of their location , age, or sex, have a right to purchase what they want. Sumptuary laws, formal or informal, have largely disappeared from American culture. There are few people who are presumed to live outside of the thrall of consumer society, few who are expected to be satisfied with merely peering through the show windows instead ofentering into America's retail stores. No longer do moralists try to prevent farmers from looking like city folk, nor do they worry when middle-class women and men dress themselves like far wealthier people. Children, their pockets filled with allowance money, are also recognized as ready consumers. While many parents and child psychologists still worry about children consuming, few believe that it is possible to insulate them from the world of goods, and few are surprised when they display envy, consumer desire, and competitive tendencies at a relatively tender age. Modern consumers also accept and act on the idea that they can at least partially transform their identities through purchases. Such an idea offended nineteenth-century moralists, who believed that the self was a static , God-given essence that existed apart from the worldly activities of getting and spending. Since the 1910s and 1920s this traditional notion of the self has faced a stiff challenge from a more malleable conception of personal identity. Americans today have great faith that they can give themselves "makeovers"-that they can turn themselves into who they long to be if only they can have access to the right clothes, accessories, and cars. These influential ideas about the self, spending, and the emotions arose out of the dramatic transformations of tum-of-the-century society. The Victorian moral order began to crumble in the face of assaults leveled at it by 184 CONClUSION Darwinists, psychologists, sociologists, and modem economists. A more...