Abstract
IN HIS INTRODUCTIONtoThe Question of the Gift, Mark Osteen claims that “economism … is the land mine of gift theory” (5). For many theorists, he explains, gift-giving and market exchanges share the same forms of calculation; for others, more specifically, self-interest is the “objective truth” of the gift. The challenge that gift discourse has taken up in recent years is how to rethink reciprocity, altruism, and generosity while at the same time avoiding both the “Scylla of sentimentality and the Charybdis of economism” (Osteen 31). In this paper I discuss Dinah Mulock Craik's mid-Victorian bestseller,John Halifax, Gentleman(1856), using gift theory (or some insights thereof) as my main analytical tool. Why is gift theory relevant to the understanding of a novel that openly extols the advantages of self-help and economic individualism?
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