The Whole(y) Family: Economies of Kinship in the Progressive Era

Abstract

In his chapter of the collaboratively written novel The Whole Family (1908), Henry James writes that has only to look at any human thing very . . . to see it out in as many aspects as the hues of the prism; or place itself, in other words, in relations that stop nowhere (167). The comment, typically Jamesian in evoking the multiplicity and complexity of social ties, also conflates human beings and things. His metaphor of the prism suggests that social relations are always refracted by and understood through inanimate objects, and his troping of sociability in terms of visual shine rather than tactile feelings or emotions implies that the aura of the commodity may have much to do with the form and experi- ence of human interconnections in modernity. James's remark cap- tures the problems of both the cooperative venture that was The Whole Family and the state of American kinship in the Progressive Era: viewing the in much less straight terms than he pre- tends to, he gestures toward a set of possible liaisons extending lat- erally, positively stop(ping) nowhere. 1 And The Whole Family even makes literal this shininess that either threatens or promises to engender such a complicated sociability: the at the center of the novel owns a silverplate factory, which turns out to have seri- ous implications for the question of how marital relations in particu- lar can be limited. June Howard has recently situated the novel in terms of the of Harper & Brothers publishing house, but there is another family business lurking in the novel, one whose past includes much more literal investments in the of family. 2 The silverplate factory grounds The Whole Family in a historically specific legacy of competition between intensive and extensive families—that of monogamous versus plural marriage in the Oneida Community. The Whole Family consists of 12 chapters published serially in Harper's Bazar, each written by an author affiliated with Harper &