Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930. By Susan J. Matt. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 223 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-8122-3686-6.)

Abstract

In this lively short book, Susan J. Matt surveys the legitimization of consumer desire that paralleled the demise of Victorian culture and the rise of modern culture from 1890 to 1930. Drawing primarily on published narratives, Matt argues that these forty years witnessed an expansion of consumer society that was made possible by a distinctive shift in emotional style among a majority of Americans. In these years, Matt asserts, a greater number of people came to understand the desire for possessions, not as a reprehensible sin, but as a positive good. This shift occurred in tandem with the heyday of American industrialization, mass retailing, and popular culture. All of these factors combined to enable the democratization of consumption and to usher in an era of envy that is still with us today. Over five brief chapters, Matt examines the world views and consuming experiences of five groups: urban middle-class women, white-collar men, rural women, farm men, and middle-class children. She considers how these groups overcame the negative outlook toward consumption that had long dominated mainstream American culture, with its strong Protestant roots, to develop an appreciation for goods and pleasure. Prior to 1910, the elites who monitored behavior and taste—clergy, editors, journalists, and reformers—had discouraged Americans from aping their betters through the accumulation of possessions. By the 1910s, a new generation of taste makers picked up the gauntlet for increased consumption, arguing in magazine articles, in advertisements, and on movie screens that the desire f or nice things was par t and parcel of every American's birthright. In these years, the term “keeping up with the Joneses” came into currency.