Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART ONE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
- PART TWO CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL ISSUES
- PART THREE CASE STUDIES
- 5 The Portrait of a Lady and The Rise of Silas Lapham
- 6 The Realism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- 7 The Red Badge of Courage and McTeague
- 8 What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Ways of Consuming Women
- 9 The Awakening and The House of Mirth
- 10 The Call of the Wild and The Jungle
- 11 Troubled Black Humanity in The Souls of Black Folk
- Further Reading Index
- Index
8 - What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Ways of Consuming Women
from PART THREE - CASE STUDIES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART ONE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
- PART TWO CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL ISSUES
- PART THREE CASE STUDIES
- 5 The Portrait of a Lady and The Rise of Silas Lapham
- 6 The Realism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- 7 The Red Badge of Courage and McTeague
- 8 What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Ways of Consuming Women
- 9 The Awakening and The House of Mirth
- 10 The Call of the Wild and The Jungle
- 11 Troubled Black Humanity in The Souls of Black Folk
- Further Reading Index
- Index
Summary
A recent magazine article evokes the perennial mystery of human desire by asking why a movie star who “has it all” - “a perfect body, happy marriage, wealth,” and “success” - is “not yet satisfied.” Beginning with a play of words, “Why Demi Moore Wants More,” the article ends by finding the word more “elusive.” This elusive more is the subject of my essay, which links a desire for more to determinism as a doctrine of causation common to literary naturalism, behavioral psychology, modern advertising, and consumerism. Once consumption figures in a discussion of literary naturalism, at issue in this essay, the lines of argument move centrifugally in various directions to include such seemingly far-flung and unrelated matters as the Vietnam War, kleptomania, the “packaging” of American politics, women's fashion, material culture studies, fitness diets, images of burning bodies, the commodification of books, Jane Fonda's self-transformations, and indecent proposals to Demi Moore. All these matters converge at a single point of origin where a woman character, an American literary heroine, stands and looks.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and NaturalismFrom Howells to London, pp. 178 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995