WOENSDAG 2 APRIL 2014
Ek lees tans die boek, Mrs. Bridge, deur Evan S. Connell, gepubliseer in 1959. Dit vertel die storie van die hoër-middelklas Bridge-familie van Kansas City in die 1920’s en 1930’s, meestal vanuit die perspektief van Mevrou Bridge van die titel.
Mevrou Bridge se lewe draai om haar kinders en haar sosiale lewe. Die sosiale omgewing waarbinne sy beweeg word beskryf as “unity, sameness, consensus, centeredness”.
Nie veel dramaties gebeur ooit in haar lewe nie, hoewel sy soms gekonfronteer word met ongemaklike kwessies soos klasbewussyn. Sy onthou ook dat haar een vriendin haar een keer gevra het of sý ook soms voel asof sy uitgehol en leeg aan die binnekant is. Hierdie vraag kom by haar op die dag toe sy verneem dat dieselfde vriendin haarself om die lewe gebring het.
Volgens die Wikipedia artikel oor die boek het dit nie heeltemal die aandag gekry wat dit dalk toegekom het nie:
By 1962, when critic Michael Robbins proclaimed that Mrs. Bridge answered the question asked by writer and social critic, “what kind of people we are producing, what kinds of lives we are leading”, the novel was already out of print: readers of College Composition and Communication were urged to write the publishers in hopes of getting the book reprinted. In 1982, when both Bridge books were republished [Mr. Bridge het gevolg in 1969], Brooks Landon, in The Iowa Review, commented that “Connell seems to have become one of those writers we know to respect but may not have read”.
Een van Mrs Bridge se konfrontasies met klasbewussyn vind plaas een dag in ’n boekwinkel, toe sy deur ’n boek blaai met die titel, The Theory of the Leisure Class, ’n werklike 1899 boek deur Thorstein Veblen. Die boek word beskryf as sosiale kritiek oor die gewoontes en leefstyl van finansieel gemaklike lede van die middel en hoër-middelklas. Dit fokus veral op hoogs sigbare spandering van geld:
Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power—either the buyer’s income or the buyer’s accumulated wealth. Sociologically, to the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means either of attaining or of maintaining a given social status.
Moreover, invidious consumption, a more specialized sociologic term, denotes the deliberate conspicuous consumption of goods and services intended to provoke the envy of other people, as a means of displaying the buyer’s superior socio-economic status.
Die artikel gaan voort:
In the 19th century, the term conspicuous consumption was introduced by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), in the book The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899), to describe the behavioural characteristics of the nouveau riche (new rich) social class who emerged as a result of the accumulation of capital wealth during the Second Industrial Revolution (ca. 1860–1914). In that social and historical context, the term “conspicuous consumption” was narrowly applied to describe the men, women, and families of the upper class who applied their great wealth as a means of publicly manifesting their social power and prestige, be it real or perceived.
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