The Structures of Toy Consumption: Bourgeois Domesticity and Demand for Toys in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Consumption emerges as an extremely complex topic when gift-giving is introduced into analysis. Consumer goods both reflect and construct the complex social relations that give rise to gift-giving. Toys emerged as mass consumer items in the nineteenth century because the responded to the internal antinomies within the ideology of bourgeois domesticity. The family as a privileged site of affection underwriting a healthy individuality often worked at cross-purposes to the family as the site of construction of culturally middle-class citizens. The inevitable tensions between these competing ideals and tasks were resolved through family festivals, especially Christmas. Christmas emphasized the mutual affection of the family members through attention to the immediate desires of other family members. This attention to the desires of children tended to encourage toys as a gift since more than any other gift, particularly books, they were capable of generating immediate excitement and happiness.