Literature and Inequality: Nine Perspectives from the Napoleonic Era through the First Gilded Age

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The consequences of high-end inequality seep into almost every aspect of human life: it is not just a question for economists. In this highly accessible new work, Professor Shaviro takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore how great works of literature have provided some of the most incisive accounts of inequality and its social and cultural ramifications over the last two centuries. Through perceptive close readings of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Edith Wharton, among others, he not only demonstrates how these accounts are still relevant today, but how they can illuminate our understanding of our current situation and broaden our own perspective beyond the merely economic. Cover Front Matter Half-title Title page Copyright information Table of Contents 1 Introduction The Recent Sharp Rise of High- End Inequality The Last 200 Years’ Up- Down-Up Pattern with Respect to High- End Inequality Why Does High-End Inequality Matter in General? US High-End Inequality in Particular Design Implications for This Study Part 1: England and France during the Age of Revolution Part 2: Victorian and Edwardian England Crossing the Ocean Part 3: The United States, Post-Civil War through World War I Parts 1 to 3 Part 1 England and France During the Age of Revolution Chapter 2 Why aren’t Things Better Than This?: Class Relations within the Top 1 Percent in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Peeling Away the Varnish Benign Hierarchy? “Better Than This” for Whom? Low-End Versus High-End Inequality in the World of Pride and Prejudice Pervasive Personal Entrepreneurialism Money, Hypocrisy about Money and the Marriage Market Multiple Personal Ranking Metrics Summing Up: Why Aren’t Things Better Than This? Chapter 3 A Rising Tide Rocks all Boats: The Threat of Rising Prosperity in Stendhal’s Le Rouge ET LE Noir An Easy Read, or a Painful One? The Perspective of 1830 The “Threat” of Rising Prosperity Wealth Versus Status Why Object to Broadly Rising Prosperity? The Higher, the Better? A Tale of Two Arrivistes? Summing Up: Why Does a Rising Tide Rock All Boats? Chapter 4 Arrivistes, Rentiers, Mandarins and Flunkies in Honoré DE Balzac’s LE Père Goriot and LA Maison Nucingen A Novel about Arrivistes, or about Rentiers? A Deliberately Misnamed Novel? How Much Money One Needs to Live Well, and Why The Morality Play That Isn’t The Hero as Flunky “À nous deux maintenant”? High-End Inequality amid the Transition from Aristocracy to Capitalism Summary for Part 1 England and France During the Age of Revolution Part 2 England From the 1840s Through the Start of World War I Chapter 5 Why do “Scrooge Truthers” Hate Charles Dickens’s a Christmas Carol? Charles Dickens Versus Ayn Rand? Poverty through a Rich Man’s Eyes Composite Inspirations That Underlie the Story’s “Wildly Discordant Elements” The Critique and Rejection of Secularized Puritan Asceticism The Critique and Rejection of Malthusianism Respect for the Rich Versus the Poor The Scrooge We Remember, and the Scrooge We Forget The Anti-Capitalist Screed That (Mainly) Isn’t Chapter 6 Not to Blame?: Plutocrats, Capitalism and Foreigners in Anthony Trollope’s the Way We Live Now England in the 1870s The Main Interlocking Plots The First False Narrative: “A New Financial Plutocracy Is Supplanting the Traditional Social Order.” The Second False Narrative: “The Root of the Problem Is Capitalism.” The Third False Narrative: “Foreigners Are Corrupting the English.” The Centrality of “Gentlemen” Chapter 7 Unconnected: Rentier Intellectuals Über Alles in E. M. Forster’s Howards End Band of Outsiders? “Only Connect”? A New Class, and a New Type of Status Conflict Class and Class Values in Edwardian England Explaining Left-Leaning Intellectuals The Good, the Bad and the Ugly “Rich” or Not; “Gentlefolk” or Not Schlegels Versus Wilcoxes Schlegels Versus Basts Ruth Wilcox Summary for Part 2 England From the 1840s Through the Start of World War I Part 3 Gilded Age America Chapter 8 Anti-Success Manual?: Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s the Gilded Age Bleakness at Dawn? Twain and Warner Twain Versus Warner Contemporary “Success Manuals” The Novel’s Main Action The Gospel According to Success Manuals The Gilded Age Versus the Success Manuals Wealth-Seeking’s Effects on Character and Happiness in The Gilded Age Social and Economic Aspects of the Quest for Wealth Issues of Social Class in The Gilded Age The Gilded Age’s Pessimism Revisited Chapter 9 No Success Like Failure?: Edith Wharton’s the House of Mirth Transformation at the Top An Enticing Opening, and a Deliberately Disappointing Ending A Long Underappreciated Work The Gilded Age Background to The House of Mirth’s Take on Class and Gender The Death of Lily Bart Failure in the Marriage Market Why Is The House of Mirth’s Portrait of New York High Society so Harsh? No Success Like Failure? Chapter 10 Superhero or Bungler?: Frank Cowperwood/Charles Yerkes in Theodore Dreiser’s the Financier and the Titan The Financier as Superhero Financiers Amid the Gilded Age’s Immediate Aftermath Why Charles Yerkes? Cowperwood the Exemplar Cowperwood the Blunderer Cowperwood Versus Yerkes Cowperwood and Finance Summary for Part 3 Gilded Age America Chapter 11 Conclusion Aristocratic Versus Meritocratic Hierarchy Business Activity and the Business Elite The First Gilded Age and Our Second One End Matter Bibliography Index