When a person of my acquaintance began throwing great wads of cash at designer accessories and speaking unironically about how retail therapy made her feel good, I was quite alarmed. In fact, I have been hysterical at times, worrying about her inability to hold on to money, her need for glamorous things, what it implied about her values and her mental health. I thought of extravagance as a special problem, unique to her, or perhaps peculiar to her generation.
So I felt the relief of recognition when I read in Middlemarch, which was first published in the 1870s, about the spendthrift Fred Vincy, who on his way to settle his obligations borrows and barters and digs himself deeper into debt.
Sadly, such characters rarely prosper in their passage through the pages, and their inability to handle their finances usually betokens fatal weakness.
But that's in literature. In life, anything is possible, no?
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