BOOKS
621
women with their God-given talents can obtain an influence "para–
mount to authority."
They may enjoy the luxuries of wealth, without enduring the labors
to
acquire it, and the honors of office, without feeling its cares, and
the glory of victory without suffering the dangers of battle.
Douglas' work often draws its strength from material like this and like
the following tribute from
Godey's Lady's Book:
See? she sits, she walks, she speaks, she looks-unutterable things!
Inspiration springs up in her very path- ... A halo ... encircles
her, and illumines her whole orbit. With her, man not only feels safe
but is actually renovated. For he approaches her with an awe, a
reverence, and an affection which before he knew not he possessed.
As Douglas points out, the power and position this woman is
supposed to have makes her completely dependent upon a man's
response. Moreover, she is not really living in the eye of man so much
as in the idea of "influence" itself, surrounded by other women as if by
mirrors.
Douglas argues that the real benefits of "influence," the luxuri es
of wealth without labor, were those of the "consumer." A woman
reading the description of her spiritual qualities in
Godey's Lady's
Book
would soon be looking at the fashion plates in the back of the
magazine to see how her spirit should be dressed. And in spreading this
" pirituality" abroad, the woman, and the minister who catered and
condescended
to
her, were laying the groundwork for a commerce in
mass-reproducible emotions. "Influence" became the mother of adver–
tising. Women became the subconscious of capitalist culture, the prime
target of the first advertising agencies. And shopping, a woman's major
activity, became the dream-life of the nation.
This is an appealing clarification of an observation that is not
new. But one wonders whether Douglas has mistaken this single
historical phenomenon for a developing process in advertising and
commerce that had already been long under way. Douglas' generaliza–
tions never seem
to
match the richness of the phenomena she describes.
The damage done to women and culture by the tendency to sentimen–
talize is not conveyed by analysis of the situation of women so much as
by the depiction of their activities. It is when Douglas describes the
interaction of "influence" with theology and fiction, when she con–
nects the alienation of women with the whole impulse to miniaturize
