“That laborious and fatiguing function”: Mental Calculation, Consumerism, and Desire in Kate Chopin’s “A Pair of Silk Stockings”
Lola Chamberlain
Black Friday. Hundreds of people pound on the doors of a store, they’re let in, they shove each other, they trample those who fall, they pull items randomly off shelves, they scream at the cashier to hurry up, they peel out of the parking lot in their SUVs. The YouTube comments: these people are animals; glad i live in canada; they should be shot; greedy pigs; pure madness; like sheep rushing into the slaughterhouse. What’s going on? When faced with the outlandish behavior of these shoppers, our first instinct is often one of personal judgment. We call them greedy, obnoxious, inconsiderate, selfish. We dehumanize them or we consider their actions an individual moral failure. But consider this: How often have you bought something to make yourself feel better? How many times have you anxiously awaited a package in the mail, only to be disappointed not because it wasn’t what you expected, but because it was and you’re still unsatisfied? How many times have you gone to the store and spent twice as much as you wanted?
Everyone who lives under capitalism has a warped vision of consumerism. Those Black Friday shoppers are simply the most extreme versions of each of us. To understand why we behave like this, why our attitude towards stuff is so illogical, we need to understand how the economic system we live in turns our relationship with ourselves and other people into relationships with things, with commodities, and how this approach to relationships alienate us from ourselves and our community.
This brings me to Kate Chopin’s short story “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” published in 1897. In this story, a poor mother named Mrs. Sommers sets out on a shopping trip with a little money she stumbled into. Having carefully planned to buy some much-needed clothing for her four children, she instead ends up spending all of the money on herself, on things most would deem extravagant: silk stockings, new shoes, magazines, a fancy dinner, and a ticket to the movie theater. I aim to explain why Mrs. Sommers goes on this shopping spree, and how this can help us all understand our fractured relationship with consumerism.
This story has been characterized in many ways: as the triumph of consumerism to provide power and agency to women, as the triumph of women to prioritize their personal pleasure over that of their children, and as the failure of consumerism to provide solutions to a problematic marriage (Stein 358). Each of these explanations assumes a distinction between private and public life; they assume that Mrs. Sommers initially faces some difficulty in finding meaning in her home life, and subsequently turns to the market, where she encounters either the solution to her woes or a fundamentally different set of problems. My understanding differs from all these viewpoints asit unifies the two spheres into one and shows that the problems Mrs. Sommers faces in both places have the same fundamental root simply expressed in different ways. Sometimes, we consider shopping to be a sort of therapy, a relief from the stress of work, school, and relationships. I argue, however, that the cause of this stress and the attempted solution both stem from the same place: the Marxist concept of alienation. In short, Marxist alienation is the fragmentation of the self into disparate, irreconcilable parts and the loss of a unified identity brought about by the economic base of capitalism. I show that this concept of alienation explains the problems Mrs. Sommers faces both before and during her shopping spree. Her attempts to reunite herself fail not because she moves from one unfulfilling set of circumstances to another, but because she remains bound by the same alienation wherever she turns and however she acts.
Before proceeding with the analysis of the story itself, I will define the concept of alienation in traditional Marxist theory so as to clarify my claim. Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian Marxist, traces the advent of capitalism to the point in time at which the commodity expanded from “one form among many regulating the metabolism of human society” to “ the universal structuring principle” of human society (Lukacs 85). Lukacs points out that when this happens, “the whole life of society is thus fragmented into the isolated acts of commodity exchange” which “depend on rational calculation” (Lukacs 91). Commodities are related to other commodities in terms of their quantitative value, and therefore these relationships are understood not through interpretation or emotion but through calculation. Under capitalism, every human relationship takes, in Marx’s words, “the fantastic form of a relation between things” (qt. Lukacs 86). This means that our relationship with other people is mediated through commodities, so it appears to us to be a relationship between things instead of a social relationship. We think about what people have to offer us, and what we have to offer them. We categorize each other, we calculate. Even the relationship of a person with themselves becomes subject to this transformation: “qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are things which he can ‘own’ or ‘dispose of’ like the various objects of the external world” (Lukacs 100). Our identities depend on who we are around. We market ourselves to other people in a certain way to increase our social value. Thus, the dominance of the commodity causes the alienation of people both from the world and from themselves, while at the same time negating the possibility of human freedom in the face of the inalterable laws of the market (Lukacs 87). If we treat ourselves and other people as commodities, we are bound by the same unshakeable laws of economics that govern them. However, while Lukacs delves deeply into the effects of this alienation in the productive sphere, he neglects to consider their effects on the other half of the market, on the consumers of the commodities. Using Chopin’s story as an example, I aim to show how the commodity structures this aspect of humans under capitalism.
The act of consumption, even when separate from selling labor as a commodity, heightens the distance between the consumer and her body. Chopin’s story demonstrates this through Mrs. Sommers’ initial rejection of dreaming in favor of material calculation. After Mrs. Sommers finds herself in possession of fifteen dollars, for days, “she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation” (Chopin 1). This opposition between dreaming and calculation is reiterated when she finally comes up with a plan to spend the money: “it was during the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and judicious use of the money” (Chopin 1). In both instances, Mrs. Sommers is presented with an opportunity to dream and therefore to experience her unconscious, sensuous desires. Instead, she is completely absorbed in commodity exchange, an absorption that prevents her from thinking about anything in material reality, including her own body.
Anyone who has ever been poor is familiar with the enormous mental strain of poverty. The constant rumination over money distances us from our physical bodies, we are always thinking of our next paycheck, our next meal, and how much longer we can make this pair of shoes last, not how we feel and if we are taking care of our bodies and minds. This results in the neglect of our physical and mental selves. Lukacs writes that “the movement of commodities on the market, the birth of their value, in a word, the real framework of every rational calculation is not merely subject to strict laws but also presupposes the strict ordering of all that happens” (Lukacs 72). Mrs. Sommers’ calculations are her way of engaging with a market-based society which operates by these “strict laws.” When the world is organized by commodities, our interactions with it necessarily take the form of rational thought. Each decision requires the precise ranking of needs based on their monetary value, and understanding how each small choice fits into the laws which govern our entire society. This kind of thought is diametrically opposed to living in her body as an irrational, organic organism whose desires and wants do not always fit into rational analysis. She, therefore, becomes distanced from the aspects of her body, like the propensity to dream, which have no place in this framework.
This distancing is not limited to merely suppressing her bodily desires but actively sacrificing them in order to survive. As a mother of four, Mrs. Sommers works tirelessly to maintain the lives and possessions of her family. When she goes out to the shops, she physically pursues the bargains she needs, to the extent that the story compares her to a soldier in battle. Before she starts shopping, she rests, “trying to gather strength and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging breastworks of shirting and figured lawn” (Chopin 1). A soldier risks their life to achieve victory for their cause, so when Mrs. Sommers intends to “charge” (like a soldier), among many other shopper-soldiers “besieging” the department store, she implies that she is willing to risk her very life and body to achieve her ends. She also displays this impulse regarding housework, as in her budget she says she usually darns and patches clothes to avoid replacing them, in effect sacrificing her energy, time, and body in the interest of saving money. The effect of this self-sacrifice can be seen directly in her inattention to her physical needs: “between getting the children fed and the place righted and preparing herself for the shopping bout, she had actually forgotten to eat any luncheon at all!” (Chopin 1). By prioritizing caring for her children and her home over her own physical needs, Mrs. Sommers damages her body. The effects of this neglect begin to set in at the moment she succumbs to her bodily desires and starts her shopping spree, for its at this point that she notices that she feels “faint and tired” (Chopin 1). Constantly living in the rational realm is simple unsustainable, especially when our own physical needs are in opposition to what we rationally determine to be important. At some point, the willpower to continue on the reasonable path will no longer be enough to counteract the material strain this places on our bodies.
The shopping spree begins when Mrs. Sommers stops consciously calculating the best course of action and instead lets her physical body and physical desires drive her actions. Mrs. Sommers succumbs to her desires because she no longer has the willpower or physical energy to keep them at bay. The silk stockings which initiate her spree tempt her by repressing her usual calculating thought patterns and appealing to carnal pleasure. While resting to “gather strength and courage,” Mrs. Sommers “grew aware that her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to touch” (Chopin 1). She “grew aware” “by degrees” of a part of her physical body, “her hand” experiencing pleasure. First comes the sensation, then the awareness of sensation, a reversal of her earlier impulse to forget the physical in favor of mental processes. The counter girl then asks her if she has an interest in looking at the rest of the stockings, but Mrs. Sommers “smiled just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing it.” At this moment in time, she still thinks as a rational consumer; she compares the stockings to a “tiara of diamonds” because if she was acting according to her meticulous plan they would be just as out of her reach.
Once she succumbs to her physical desire, however, her usual mindset of rational calculation fails. Her body continues to act even as her mind resists the purchase: She “went on feeling the soft, sheeny luxurious things” and “two hectic blotches came suddenly into her pale cheeks”(Chopin 1, 2). Suddenly, her neglected body, which was previously “pale” and hence lifeless, fills with color and begins directing her actions. By giving in to these impulses, Mrs. Sommers stops “thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function[. . .] ”(Chopin 2, emphasis mine). At this moment, we can begin to see the inevitability of what seems to be a sudden and inexplicable change in her character. The act of thinking itself is “laborious and fatiguing” because it requires an enormous amount of effort to figure out the most rational course of action every second of the day while simultaneously physically laboring constantly to maintain the upkeep of the household. The overwork of her mind and neglect of her body eventually results in the failure of willpower to restrain the body; eventually, the mind must “rest” and relinquish control of the body’s natural impulses.
Mrs. Sommers begins her shopping spree in an attempt to satisfy her physical desire, but the act of consumerism quickly shifts this desire from the longing for pleasure to the longing for aesthetic beauty. When she tries on the stockings in a fitting room, the narrator remarks “How good was the touch of raw silk to her flesh!” (Chopin 2). The primary satisfaction from beginning to end of the purchase was that of feeling, the “touch” of the silk felt “good” on her “flesh.” However, this sensuous desire soon morphs into something completely different: the need to look good.
Despite enacting her repressed desires, Mrs. Sommers does not feel in control because she has completely ceased to recognize her body as part of herself, and instead sees it as an aesthetic object to be admired. After purchasing and trying on the stockings, she feels she has “abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility” (Chopin 2). She views her body not as an organic part of herself but as something “mechanical” and therefore inhuman and alien. When she buys new shoes and looks at them on her body, “she could not realize that [her foot and ankle] belonged to her and were a part of herself” (Chopin 2). Encased in the stocking and shoe, her foot is no longer a part of her body, but an object to be admired. The shoes are not designed for her comfort, for they are “polished, pointed-tipped boots.” Already, the second purchase she makes has a different function from the first, a transition that continues for the rest of the shopping spree. When she buys gloves, she and the clerk “both lost themselves for a second or two in admiring contemplation of the little symmetrical gloved hand” (Chopin 3; emphasis mine). Looking at her hand, Mrs. Sommers does not grow closer to her body but actually loses herself. She views her body as an outsider; she does not look at her hand but at “the” hand. Although she is enacting her unconscious desire to feel at home in her body by making herself “admirable,” in reality, she grows further and further from feeling whole with every purchase. After the first purchase of her shopping spree, she starts thinking of her body not as a part of herself but as an object to be admired. Buying things to adorn her body simply turns her relationship with her body into a commodity relationship, and deepens her alienation from it. She no longer thinks about how she feels, but how she appears.
Mrs. Sommer’s purchases are an attempt to make herself a sexually attractive object, to express the bodily desires she has repressed to scrape out a meager living for her family. Eventually, however, the commodities themselves become the ends instead of the means to achieve this pleasure. Her focus on objects which enhance her appearance means that she seeks the approval of somebody besides herself. She enjoys the stockings and shoes she splurges on not only because they fit well and feel good but because they “looked very pretty.” She displays them when she walks by “lift[ing] her skirts at the crossings” (Chopin 2). In his analysis, Allen Stein points out that she carries her new magazines “without wrapping” in order to display the expensive objects to other people and convey her wealth (Stein 363). In each of these instances, she is not concerned with how she feels, but with how she looks. The initial instinct which led her to buy the stockings was the instinct of physical pleasure, the stockings felt good on her skin and so she bought them. At this point, however, that instinct has been transformed into the desire to be seen, to appear attractive. This demonstrates the perversion of desire that results from trying to satisfy ourselves through consumption.
Moreover, even when these desires are materially fulfilled, they do not disappear. Mrs. Sommers finally achieves her goal when she is ogled by a man on the train that takes her home. The narrator writes that the man “with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study of her small, pale face,” but she doesn’t even notice the attention. She is once again so absorbed in her “powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever” that she misses the moment of recognition she has been pursuing. Previously, when she ate in a restaurant, she was hyper-aware of how she was perceived because she was in the process of buying things to influence that perception. Now that she spent all her money, she stops being aware of herself as perceived by others, the “dream ended” and she retreats again into her mind (Chopin 4). Because her awareness of her body was based entirely on purchasing commodities, it ceases the moment she stops being able to do so.
Kate Chopin’s story is a subtle interrogation of the effects of alienation caused by capitalism and the difficulty of freeing oneself from this alienation when every aspect of life is dominated by market forces. Mrs. Sommers starts as alienated from her body, she remains alienated throughout her shopping spree, and she ends up alienated in the end. Although she initially begins her spree in order to fulfill her sensuous desires, this impulse is quickly redirected into the impulse to appear wealthy and beautiful. Whichever direction she turns, whatever she tries to do, she faces the same problem. A superficial reading of this story may paint Mrs. Sommers as a terrible, selfish mother, just like those terrible, selfish Black Friday Shoppers. A closer look, however, reveals the terrible isolation, fatigue, and alienation that arises from living under capitalism, and how overconsumption can seem to temporarily solve these problems. Just like Mrs. Sommers, however, I predict that many of these voracious shoppers will return home feeling just as bad, in all those respects, as they did when they set out. Consumption of goods not only fails to satisfy the initial desire which sparks it, but also transforms those desires into something less material, and less likely to ever be satisfied. The key to understanding these complex emotions is to look not at the individual’s psyche but at the economic system which shapes that psyche. The criticism directed towards people who overconsume goods should therefore be rerouted towards capitalism itself. To change the sometimes horrifying actions of ourselves and our fellow humans, we need to change the way that we produce and distribute goods.
Bibliography
Chopin, Kate. “A Pair of Silk Stockings.” The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted, Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Lukacs, Georg. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” History and Class Consciousness, translated by Rodney Livingstone, MIT Press, 1986, pp. 83–223.
Marx, Karl, et al. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Prometheus Books, 1988.
Stein, Allen. “Kate Chopin’s ‘A Pair of Silk Stockings’: The Marital Burden and the Lure of Consumerism.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3, Mississippi State University, 2004, pp. 357–68.
