The Function of Gift Exchange in Stendhal and Balzac (review)

Abstract

Doreen Thesen's admirable study of gift giving in the novels of Stendhal and Balzac should prove of interest not only to specialists of Realism but also to those interested more generally in the literary representation of economic relations. Taking as a point of departure the work of such twentieth-century French thinkers as Marcel Mauss, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Alain Caillé (a member of the MAUSS group, an acronym for the Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales), who developed the theory of the "gift" as a means of opposing the notion that utility and rational self-interest govern human interaction, Thesen asks whether a similar resis-tance to the economic can be found in the early nineteenth century, a moment in which money became a cultural obsession. As Thesen deftly shows, while Stendhal and Balzac seem to share in their culture's financial fixation, their repeated depiction of gifts signals a critique of capitalism's encroachment on the social and psychological life of their period.