Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds

The Advent of Mass Consumption

In the 1860s, twenty­ year-old  Denise Baudu  and  her two younger brothers, recent orphans, emigrated from a provincial French village to Paris, to live with their uncle.

Arriving at daybreak after a sleepless night  on the hard  benches of a third-class railway car, they set out in search of their uncle's fabric store. The unfamiliar streets opened onto a tumultuous square where they halted abruptly, awestruck by the sight of a building more impressive than  any they had ever seen: a department store. "Look," Denise murmured to her brothers. "Now there is a store!" This monument was immeasurably grander than  her  village's  quiet variety shop, in which she had worked. She felt her heart rise within her and forgot her fatigue, her fright, everything except this vision . Directly in front of her, over the central doorway, two  allegorical  figures  of laughing women flaunted a sign  proclaiming the store's name, "Au Bonheur  des  Dames" ("To the Happiness of the Ladies"). Through the door  could be seen  a landslide of gloves, scarves, and hats tumbling from racks and counters, while in the distance display windows unrolled along the street.

Entranced, the three youngsters walked slowly along, gazing  at the displays. In one window an intricate  arrangement of umbrellas formed the roof of a rustic cabin, while in another a dazzling rainbow of silks, satins, and velvets arched  high above them.  At the last display of ready-to-wear clothing, a snowfall of expensive laces cascaded  in the background, and  before them pirouetted three elegant mannequins, one draped in a velvet coat trimmed  with silver fox, another in a white cashmere opera cloak, the third in an overcoat edged with feathers. The heads of the mannequins had been removed and been replaced by large price tags. On either side of the display, mirrors endlessly multiplied  the images of these strange and seductive creatures, half-human and half-merchandise, until they seemed to people the street. Denise awoke from her reverie. She and her brothers still had to locate their uncle. Asking directions, they discovered they were on the very block where he kept his shop. It was  housed in a moldering  building on the opposite side of the street, where its three dark, empty windows grimly confronted the brilliant displays of Au Bonheur des Dames. Inside Denise glimpsed a dim show­room with a low ceiling, greenish woodwork, and tables cluttered with dusty bolts of cloth. She felt as if she were staring into the dank shadows of a primeval cave.

Denise is the heroine of Emile Zola's novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1884), which opens with this account of her arrival in Paris. Her initial encounter with a department store dramatizes the way nineteenth-century society as a whole suddenly found itself confronting a style of consumption radically different from any previously known. The quantity of consumer goods available to most people had been drastically limited: a few kitchen utensils used to prepare a sparse and monotonous diet, several well-worn pieces of furniture (bed, chest, table, perhaps a stool or bench), bedding, shoes or clogs, a shirt and trousers or a dress (and sometimes one outfit for special occasions), some essential tools. That was all. Moreover, these goods were obtained mainly through barter and self-production, so that the activity of consumption was closely linked with that of production. Money was rarely used by the average person and credit was haphazard and scarce. Only the better-off spent much time in stores; for most, the activity of shopping was restricted to occasional fairs. In the past century these ancient and universal patterns have been shattered by the advent of mass consumption. Its characteristics are a radical division between the activities of production and of consumption, the prevalence of standardized merchandise sold in large volume, the ceaseless introduction of new products, widespread reliance on money and credit, and ubiquitous publicity. This fabulous  prospect of a vast and  permanent fair, which transfixed  Denise, has since charmed  millions of others as it has reached out from the largest cities to ever smaller ones,  and from the richest countries  to poorer ones. The merchandise itself is by no means available to all, but the vision of a seemingly unlimited profusion of commodities is available, is, indeed, nearly unavoidable. In the wealthier societies the manifestations of mass consumption-department stores,  discount  houses,  super­ markets,  chain stores,  mail-order houses, and perpetual advertising in newspapers and magazines and on television, radio,  and  billboards-are so pervasive  that we hardly realize how recently and how thoroughly both private and collective life have been transformed into a medium where people habitually interact with merchandise.

The advent of mass consumption represents a pivotal historical moment. Once people enjoy discretionary income and choice of products, once they glimpse the vision of commodities in profusion, they do not easily return to traditional modes  of consumption. Having gazed upon the delights of a department store, Denise would never again be satisfied  with the plain, unadorned virtues of Uncle Baudu 's shop.  The hackneyed plot of the young innocent in the big city receives a specifically modern twist, for now the seduction is commercial. We who have tasted the fruits of the consumer revolution have lost our innocence.

The Moral Implications of Mass Consumption -- Although such moralistic  language is not usually applied to consumer affairs, it is appropriate. The implications of the consumer revolution extend far beyond economic statistics and technological innovations to intensely felt, deeply troubling conflicts in personal and social values. Before the nineteenth century, when only a tiny fraction of the population had any choice in this realm, consumption was dictated  for most by natural  scarcity and unquestioned social tradition. Where there is no freedom,  there is no moral dilemma. But now,  for the first time in history, many  people  have considerable choice in what to consume, how,  and  how much,  and in addition have the leisure, education, and health to ponder these questions. The consumer revolution brought both the opportunity and the need to reassess values, but this reassessment has been incomplete and  only partly  conscious. While the unprecedented expansion of goods and time has obvious blessings, it has also brought a weight of remorse and guilt, craving and envy, anxiety and, above all, uneasy conscience, as we sense that we have too much, yet keep wanting more.  We resent  our own  tendency  to judge ourselves and others according to trivial differences in consumption habits.