잘 팔리는 고아 되기: 『키다리 아저씨』에 나타난 자본주의적 생존 방식

초록

Since its first publication in 1912, Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs has been neither canonized nor critically acclaimed but has always been popular among common readers. This essay considers such a gap between scholarly and popular receptions in light of the gender-specificity of feminist criticism, and proposes reading the novel as Webster’s realistic representation of the orphan issue in early 20th-century America. The essay attends to the sociocultural backgrounds of the rise of orphan industry in which orphaned children were rapidly commodified in the service of profit-seeking asylums and money-investing philanthropists. Based on that attention, it examines the protagonist Judy Abbott’s situation as that of an orphan who, after being selected to be sponsored by Mr. John Smith, desperately seeks to remain as his ‘original’ commodity so as to survive in the capitalist world. The essay concludes by pondering how various cases of secondary commodification of Judy’s story in movies and animations following the novel’s success signify Webster’s intention to have her orphan continue producing charming effects on various consumers.

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