The Emergence of New Consumer Culture and Its Effect During the Turn-of-the-Century
The Emergence of New Consumer Culture and Its Effect during the Turn-Of-The-Century Period People living in the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century witnessed a huge industrial change in American society. This change led to the “opening up of huge factories, the development of electricity in the 1880s which augmented factories more than ever, the revolution in mass communication, the invention of telephone, the construction of railroads, the incredible rise of population with the rushing of immigrants into this country” (Cassuto and Eby, 2004, p.2-3). More importantly, this turn-of-the-century period marked the emergence and the development of mass production and consumption, which was considered as a new kind of culture that bore fantasy to many people, especially women of all different classes, at that time. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945), an American novelist, and Kathy Peiss, a history professor at University of Pennsylvania, are both interested in this aspect of change in the society. As a result, they both published works to depict the inner lives of Americans in response to this change. Sister Carrie and Cheap Amusements are two best representations for their works. Interestingly, through reading those two novels, readers can easily tell that both Dreiser and Peiss pay more attention to young working class women when examining the new consumer culture. Sister Carrie is a novel written by Theodore Dreiser and published in 1900. Through this novel, he told readers a story about a girl named Carrie Meeber who was born into a poor family
and came to Chicago to make her American dreams come true. There, she stepped into a struggle in the society where people’s social statuses were recognized through the items they had on themselves. It can be said that consumerism developed and played an important key in each of the American life from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century.
and came to Chicago to make her American dreams come true. There, she stepped into a struggle in the society where people’s social statuses were recognized through the items they had on themselves. It can be said that consumerism developed and played an important key in each of the American life from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Cited: Cassuto, Leonard, and Clare Virginia. Eby. The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print. Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. New York: Bantam Classic, 1982. Print. Peiss, Kathy Lee. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1986. Print.