From Gift to Commodity: Capitalism and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction

Contents

Contents Preface xi one Nineteenth-Century American Fiction and the Inevitable, (Im)possible, Maddening Importance of the Gift 1 Part One Sacrifices of a Nation two The New Republic and the Aporia of Responsibility: Prudent Economy, Speculation, and (Ir)responsible Sacrifice in Hannah Foster’s Coquette 21 three Self-Sacrifice or Preservation: Lydia Maria Child’s Reflections on the Gift in Hobomok and The American Frugal Housewife 49 Part two Panic Fictions four Panics, Gifts, and Faith in Susan Warner’s Wide, Wide World 83 five From Grateful Slave to Greedy Banker: William Wells Brown’s Clotel and the Circulation of Shinplaster Fiction 114 six From Typee to The Confidence-Man: Herman Melville and the (Im)possibility of the Gift 144 Part three Fading Gifts and Rising Profits seven Gifts and Markets: Grotesque Economic Confusions in William Dean Howells’s Portrayal of the “Incorporation of America” 173 eight Enigma and Precision: The Golden Tooth and the Horrors of the End of the Gift in Frank Norris’s McTeague 208 Notes 231 Bibliography 257 Index 273 ...