'GILDED CARRIAGES AND LIVERIED SERVANTS': Thackeray, Bourdieu, and Material Culture

Abstract

The writings of William Thackeray (1811-1863) are dominated by his experience of the commodity form; his apprehension not only of objects and material reality, but also of his own literary productions emerges from economic experience. Working from Pierre Bourdieu's materialist analysis of spatial relationships, the following paper first examines the consequences of commodification on Thackeray's representation of space and material culture, and then briefly analyzes that representation as a product of Thackeray's habitus, understood as the dialectical product of his position within a series of social transformations in mid-Victorian England.