The Consumption of Culture in Maggie and Ragged Dick

Abstract

Contemporary concerns regarding conspicuous consumption and its influence over our individual identities reach back to the early days of capitalist society. As respectability becomes less confined to heritage and blood lineage, new social groups appear from-rags-to-riches creating the myth of the American dream. Contrasting two literary texts from nineteenth century New York, this paper attempts to reveal the lure and limitations of consumer culture in regard to its role in upward class mobility. Depicting lives of the impoverished class, both texts examine the emerging consumerism in terms of fashion, cultural commodities and how they are employed in attempts of class imitation. Clothing styles and decorative ornaments function as a code to which the characters ascribe in order to construct a collective group identity and accentuate the differences among social groups. However, the act of conspicuous consumption is dealt in two contrasting viewpoints. Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick fails to reveal the constraining forces of capitalist society, as limits of class mobility remains masked by naivety and optimism. On the other hand, Stephen Crane's Maggie works as a more realistic account of class mimicry and the hegemonic aspect that lies in the fact that the emulating group is eternally destined to be a docile subject of influence. An analysis of these two texts shows that the problem of class mimicry lies in the lack of independent agency in the consumption pattern of a group that is under the influence of an upper-class culture.