The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to Henry James

by Elsie B. Michie

Overview

It is a familiar story line in nineteenth-century English novels: a hero must choose between money and love, between the wealthy, materialistic, status-conscious woman who could enhance his social position and the poorer, altruistic, independent-minded woman whom he loves. Elsie B. Michie explains what this common marriage plot reveals about changing reactions to money in British culture.

It was in the novel that writers found space to articulate the anxieties surrounding money that developed along with the rise of capitalism in nineteenth-century England. Michie focuses in particular on the character of the wealthy heiress and how she, unlike her male counterpart, represents the tensions in British society between the desire for wealth and advancement and the fear that economic development would blur the traditional boundaries of social classes.

Michie explores how novelists of the period captured with particular vividness England’s ambivalent emotional responses to its own financial successes and engaged questions identical to those raised by political economists and moral philosophers. Each chapter reads a novelist alongside a contemporary thinker, tracing the development of capitalism in Britain: Jane Austen and Adam Smith and the rise of commercial society, Frances Trollope and Thomas Robert Malthus and industrialism, Anthony Trollope and Walter Bagehot and the political influence of money, Margaret Oliphant and John Stuart Mill and professionalism and managerial capitalism, and Henry James and Georg Simmel and the shift of economic dominance from England to America.

Even the great romantic novels of the nineteenth century cannot disentangle themselves from the vulgar question of money. Michie’s fresh reading of the marriage plot, and the choice between two women at its heart, shows it to be as much about politics and economics as it is about personal choice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421401867
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2011
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elsie B. Michie is a professor of English at Louisiana State University, coeditor of Victorian Vulgarity, editor of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: A Casebook and The Lottery of Marriage by Frances Trollope, and author of Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian Woman Writer.

Table of Contents

Preface: Vulgarity, Wealth, and Gender ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: Rich Woman/Poor Woman: An Anthropology of the Nineteenth-Century Marriage Plot 1

1 Social Distinction in Jane Austen 26

2 Frances Trollope and the Problem of Appetite 65

3 Anthony Trollope's "Subtle Materialism" 103

4 Margaret Oliphant and the Professional Ideal 142

5 Henry James and the End(s) of the Marriage Plot 179

Afterword: From Pemberley to Manderley 216

Notes 223

Bibliography 277

Index 293

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An excellent book, one that will be eagerly read and regularly cited as an original, authoritative study of a major issue in nineteenth-century literature and culture.
—John Kucich, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

John Kucich

An excellent book, one that will be eagerly read and regularly cited as an original, authoritative study of a major issue in nineteenth-century literature and culture.

— John Kucich, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Editorial Reviews

An indispensable survey of the figure of the rich woman in the novel of manners from Austen to James . . . Michie's writing is clear, precise, and lucid. An important work. Essential.

Choice

Michie's book opens up new angles from which to think about the relations between money and marrying in nineteenth-century fiction.

Times Literary Supplement - Rachel Bowlby

This is a valuable study that will be useful to anyone interested in gender and economics in the nineteenth century.

Modern Language Review - Patricia Zakreski

The mixture of laughter, guilt, and envy that characterizes our culture’s response to the unattractive rich woman is fully explored and exorcized in this closely argued study.

Nineteenth-Century Literature - Valerie Sanders

A seminal body of outstanding scholarship and a very highly recommended addition to academic library English Literature reference collections and supplemental reading lists.
—Midwest Book Review

An indispensable survey of the figure of the rich woman in the novel of manners from Austen to James . . . Michie's writing is clear, precise, and lucid. An important work. Essential.
—Choice

Bold, engaging, and richly complicated . . . It is immensely valuable in calling our attention to the relationship between nineteenth-century marriage plots and the discourses of political economy generally and to the maligned but ubiquitous figure of the heiress in particular, challenging critics today to overcome their own sense of money as a vulgar question.
—Nancy Henry, Review of English Studies

Michie's book opens up new angles from which to think about the relations between money and marrying in nineteenth-century fiction.
—Rachel Bowlby, Times Literary Supplement

One of the most valuable pieces of criticism this year. The emphasis and clarity of its writing is a delight in itself.
—Talia Schaffer, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies

The mixture of laughter, guilt, and envy that characterizes our culture’s response to the unattractive rich woman is fully explored and exorcized in this closely argued study.
—Valerie Sanders, Nineteenth-Century Literature

This is a valuable study that will be useful to anyone interested in gender and economics in the nineteenth century.
—Patricia Zakreski, Modern Language Review

The rich development of its themes, no less than its local insights, should place this book high on Victorianists' reading lists.
—Jill Rappoport, Victorian Studies

This is a sophisticated and thought-provoking study.
—The Year's Work in English Studies

From the Publisher

This is a sophisticated and thought-provoking study.

The Year's Work in English Studies

The rich development of its themes, no less than its local insights, should place this book high on Victorianists' reading lists.

Victorian Studies - Jill Rappoport

One of the most valuable pieces of criticism this year. The emphasis and clarity of its writing is a delight in itself.

Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies - Talia Schaffer

Bold, engaging, and richly complicated . . . It is immensely valuable in calling our attention to the relationship between nineteenth-century marriage plots and the discourses of political economy generally and to the maligned but ubiquitous figure of the heiress in particular, challenging critics today to overcome their own sense of money as a vulgar question.

Review of English Studies - Nancy Henry

A seminal body of outstanding scholarship and a very highly recommended addition to academic library English Literature reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Midwest Book Review

The mixture of laughter, guilt, and envy that characterizes our culture’s response to the unattractive rich woman is fully explored and exorcized in this closely argued study.

— Valerie Sanders

Nineteenth-Century Literature

One of the most valuable pieces of criticism this year. The emphasis and clarity of its writing is a delight in itself.

— Talia Schaffer

Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies

Michie's book opens up new angles from which to think about the relations between money and marrying in nineteenth-century fiction.

— Rachel Bowlby

Literary Criticism and Law

Bold, engaging, and richly complicated... It is immensely valuable in calling our attention to the relationship between nineteenth-century marriage plots and the discourses of political economy generally and to the maligned but ubiquitous figure of the heiress in particular, challenging critics today to overcome their own sense of money as a vulgar question.

— Nancy Henry

Review of English Studies