The Theory of the Leisure Class - Veblen

The explosion in prosperity and mass manufacture during the Industrial Era was of pivotal interest to those working in the fledgling social sciences. In the groundbreaking Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Thorstein Veblen attempts to trace the evolution of Western society into the class stratifications that characterized it at the end of the 19th century.

Veblen analogizes the industrialized system to a barbarian plunder, where the weaker members of society are subservient to the those exempt from the dredges of manual labor.

In Veblen's most famous argument, the leisure class acquires a surplus of time and money which it dedicates to "conspicuous" luxuries designed to advertise its wealth and promote social standing: "it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence."

Veblen considers (among other things) the conspicuous consumption of sports, fine arts, and clothing--particularly the corset, whose ostentation is a proportionate to its impracticality.

In Moby-Dick, Melville's criticism of the corset is comparatively tempered by Ishmael's in-character tendency to exalt such whale derivatives. But his most acerbic commentary on the garment comes from Mardi, where the women of the fictional island of Pimminee are so constricted by their corsets that they are prevented from gazing skyward.

Chapter 1, "Introductory"
Chapter 2, "Pecuniary Emulation"
Chapter 4, "Conspicuous Consumption"
Chapter 7, "Dress as an Expression of Pecuniary Culture"

Theory of the Leisure Class:

• Gutenberg
• Google Books
• Librivox

Extracts:

• "There you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled with envyings of each other’s charms, nor displaying the ridiculous affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whalebone corsets, like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, and unconstrained." (Typee, 17)
• "In Pimminee were no hilarious running and shouting... no rehearsing of old legends: no singing of old songs; no life; no jolly commotion: in short, no men and women; nothing but their integuments; stiff trains and farthingales." (Mardi, 2.27)
• "...such was the construction of her farthingale, that her head could not be thrown back, without impairing its set. Wherefore, she had always abstained from astronomical investigations." (Mardi, 2.25)
• "During the repast which ensued, blind Pani, freely partaking, enlarged upon the merit of abstinence; declaring that a thatch overhead, and a cocoanut tree, comprised all that was necessary for the temporal welfare of a Mardian. More than this, he assured us was sinful." (Mardi, 2.2)
• "...corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for disinterested society’s sake; and thousands, bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of man—no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it." (Confidence-Man, 24)
• "The Greek, of any class, seems a natural dandy. His dress, though a laborer, is that of a gentleman of leisure. The flowing and graceful costume, with so much of pure ornament about it and so little fitted for labor, must needs have been devised in some Golden Age. But surviving in the present, is most picturesquely out of keepign with the utilities." (Journal, Dec 25, 1856)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.