Antisocial nation: Consumer society and antisocial impulse in Victorian Britain

Victorian society depended on the maintenance of positive affective bonds between individuals and between individuals and government. Anxieties about the relationships between classes, and between members of the same class made such bonds difficult. Additionally, consumer society distanced consumers from each other, creating cynical consumers of spectacle, novels and consumer objects. Commodity culture used new visual enticements to encourage the affective bonds between people and commodities; they continued to create a cycle of emotional investment and frustration in the consumers who purchased in ever-increasing numbers. After the Great Exhibition, both Dickens and Eliot describe the urge to consume in terms of collecting, and both show that such consumption can only cause destructive social stagnation. In contrast, both present models that allow both economic and affective circulation. Novels by Dickens, Eliot, Wood, Ouida, and Collins distance their readers, placing them in what James Buzard describes as a participant/observer position that allows them to observe and to consume the characters\u27 emotions. While this distances the reader, it also forces the reader to moderate his or her affective connection to the consumable object. As observer, the reader also responds to the social anxiety attendant on class relationships by judging each character in order to decide whether or not to extend affective identification. Readers enjoy the ability to deny identification to characters representing other class positions and enjoy Schadenfreude when those characters do not succeed in crossing class boundaries