Shopping for Pleasure

by Rappaport, Erika

• ISBN13: 9780691044767
• ISBN10: 0691044767
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-08-20
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

InShopping for Pleasure, Erika Rappaport reconstructs London's Victorian and Edwardian West End as an entertainment and retail center. In this neighborhood of stately homes, royal palaces, and spacious parks and squares, a dramatic transformation unfolded that ultimately changed the meaning of femininity and the lives of women, shaping their experience of modernity. Rappaport illuminates the various forces of the period that encouraged and discouraged women's enjoyment of public life and particularly shows how shopping came to be seen as the quintessential leisure activity for middle- and upper-class women. Through extensive histories of department stores, women's magazines, clubs, teashops, restaurants, and the theater as interwoven sites of consumption,Shopping for Pleasureuncovers how a new female urban culture emerged before and after the turn of the twentieth century. Moving beyond the question of whether shopping promoted or limited women's freedom, the author draws on diverse sources to explore how business practices, legal decisions, and cultural changes affected women in the market. In particular, she focuses on how and why stores presented themselves as pleasurable, secure places for the urban woman, in some cases defining themselves as instrumental to civic improvement and women's emancipation. Rappaport also considers such influences as merchandizing strategies, credit policies, changes in public transportation, feminism, and the financial balance of power within the home.Shopping for Pleasureis thus both a social and cultural history of the West End, but on a broader scale it reveals the essential interplay between the rise of consumer society, the birth of modern femininity, and the making of contemporary London.

Author Biography

Erika Rappaport is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: "To Walk Alone in London"	p. 3
"The Halls of Temptation": The Universal Provider and the Pleasures of Suburbia	p. 16
"Young London": The Making of a Suburban Shopping Center	p. 19
The Spectacular Universal Provider	p. 27
"When Ladies Go 'Shopping'"	p. 29
"Our Local Regent Street"	p. 40
The Trials of Consumption: Marriage, Law, and Women's Credit	p. 48
Credit: "The Shopkeeper's Temptation"	p. 50
The Wife's Authority and Husband's Liability	p. 55
Consumption on Trial	p. 65
Ready Money, Married Women, and the Department Store	p. 70
"Resting Places for Women Wayfarers": Feminism and the Comforts of the Public Sphere	p. 74
Pleasure in the Public Sphere	p. 76
"Either Ladies Didn't Go Out or Ladies Didn't 'Go'"	p. 79
Female Clubland	p. 85
"A Social Ark for Shoppers"	p. 93
"Shopland Is My Club"	p. 101
Metropolitan Journeys: Shopping, Traveling, and Reading the West End	p. 108
The Women's Press and Consumer Culture	p. 111
"The Best Exhibition in This Modern Babylon"	p. 115
"Ballade of an Omnibus"	p. 122
"Madame's More Comprehensive Feminine Glance"	p. 126
The Lady Guides' London	p. 132
"A New Era of Shopping": An American Department Store in Edwardian London	p. 142
"London's American Phase"	p. 144
Selling Selfridge's	p. 154
"A Time of Profit, Recreation, and Enjoyment"	p. 159
"Man's Best Buying Center"	p. 171
"British Shes Should Shop at British Stores"	p. 172
Acts of Consumption: Musical Comedy and the Desire of Exchange	p. 178
"Going Up West"	p. 180
Selling to the Modern Audience	p. 184
"The Romance of a Shop Girl"	p. 192
The Shopper's Character	p. 203
Theater of Desire	p. 206
Epilogue: The Politics of Plate Glass	p. 215
Notes	p. 223
Bibliography	p. 281
Index	p. 315
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