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The mind a department store: reconfiguring space in the Gilded Age

The mind a department store: reconfiguring space in the Gilded Age
The mind a department store: reconfiguring space in the Gilded Age
The essay examines the metaphor of blurred or absent architectural boundaries–what Georg Simmel termed the "modern feeling against closed spaces"–in three discursive arenas: the physical space of domestic interiors and department stores, the mental space of William James's psychological writings, and the fictive space of utopian and naturalist novels. Edith Wharton's and Ogden Codman, Jr.'s The Decoration of Houses and Henry James's The American Scene express alarm at the paucity of closable doors in American architecture, seeing in this form of decor a disregard for decorum. In contrast, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Bradford Peck's The World a Department Store celebrate the open-plan emporium as a blueprint for the successful cooperative society. The open-plan appears again in William James's descriptions of mentation: mobility, circulation, interdependence, replaceability, malleability and drift displace the more static models of faculty and associative psychology. James's substitution of fluid constructs for static ones has significant consequences for conceptions of selfhood. The malleable self, its permeability and relationality, provides both a topic and a set of narrative problems for writers like Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris.
0026-7929
227-249
McDonald, Gail
07e4eb8a-d792-467a-b5a7-a73ed461fa5c
McDonald, Gail
07e4eb8a-d792-467a-b5a7-a73ed461fa5c

McDonald, Gail (2002) The mind a department store: reconfiguring space in the Gilded Age. Modern Language Quarterly, 63 (2), 227-249. (doi:10.1215/00267929-63-2-227).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The essay examines the metaphor of blurred or absent architectural boundaries–what Georg Simmel termed the "modern feeling against closed spaces"–in three discursive arenas: the physical space of domestic interiors and department stores, the mental space of William James's psychological writings, and the fictive space of utopian and naturalist novels. Edith Wharton's and Ogden Codman, Jr.'s The Decoration of Houses and Henry James's The American Scene express alarm at the paucity of closable doors in American architecture, seeing in this form of decor a disregard for decorum. In contrast, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Bradford Peck's The World a Department Store celebrate the open-plan emporium as a blueprint for the successful cooperative society. The open-plan appears again in William James's descriptions of mentation: mobility, circulation, interdependence, replaceability, malleability and drift displace the more static models of faculty and associative psychology. James's substitution of fluid constructs for static ones has significant consequences for conceptions of selfhood. The malleable self, its permeability and relationality, provides both a topic and a set of narrative problems for writers like Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris.

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Published date: June 2002

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 42155
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/42155
ISSN: 0026-7929
PURE UUID: ab80fbb0-1a49-43e9-abe2-09181ccf8410

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Date deposited: 21 Nov 2006
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 08:45

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Author: Gail McDonald

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