The innocence of objects: commodification, collecting and fetishism in the Age of innocence and the Museum of innocence

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the personal and social interactions with material world, as seen in the practices of commodification, collecting, and fetishism in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. Although material objects have always been embedded in literary works, their significance is often subordinated to characters and events. In these novels human lives are closely intertwined with material objects, which transform and translate characters and events. These texts, I argue, challenge the supremacy of the subject and acknowledge the significance of the objects in their narratives. I also analyze the concept of innocence in the novels’ titles and its relation to the discourse of the object. I argue that Wharton and Pamuk’s object-oriented texts blur the categories of object and subject in the sense that the material objects are fetishized/idolized whereas human beings are objectified/reified. Understanding the ways in which these authors acknowledge the vital position of the object in fiction may alter the way we read literature.