By Georgia Wood
Edited by Jaina Debnam and Mark Potter
Shopping, fashion and appearances allowed people to express themselves and their gender
identity. In the growing consumer economy of the latter half of the nineteenth century,
however, shopping, fashion and appearances were used to dictate and – in some cases – degrade people due to their gender because of their relationship to this expanding economy. This essay will focus on the latter half of the nineteenth century because of the introduction of amenities, such as the department store, that elevated these aesthetic ideas to the forefront of public consciousness. Similarly, this discussion will chiefly focus on the middle and upper classes, because of their increased spending power, but I will discuss the role of the shopgirl in the retail landscape because of their sweeping impact on the commercial terrain. I will argue that, whilst shopping, fashion and gender was a way to express some aspects of gender identity organically, the media and social ideals of the time often codified gender relations to the expanding visual commercial market to fit gender expectations and stereotypes. To highlight the importance of these factors I will discuss the role of women in society, attitudes to men in society, especially regarding dandyism, and how the media influenced the expanding market.
The constructed ideals the Victorians had about women created a storm of controversy when
amenities like the department stores opened to the public. Shops like Whiteley’s carved out
comfortable spaces for women outside the domestic sphere. Additions like toilets and
restaurants in department stores afforded women comfort outside the home, which in turn
increased purchases because these new additions allowed women to spend more time in shops.[1] The angel of the house doctrine, which has been disavowed by historians such as Jeanne Peterson, was severely challenged by the flood of women entering the market
place.[2] Concerns over female immorality being encouraged by department stores and moving away from being the angelic moral centre of the home is highlighted in liquor license concerns. Mr Whiteley’s denied request for the ability to sell alcohol in his premises resulted in opponents raising the spectre of the ‘Great Social Evil’ of prostitution and ‘loose’ women. These concerns about women being surrounded by alcohol and the possibility to purchase frivolous items emphasises the social restrictions women faced because of gender prescriptions. In this way, women’s increased involvement in the marketplace was less an expression of self-determined gender and instead a popular denouncement of women in public life. In his defence of his request for an alcohol permit, however, Mr Whiteley employed the dogma of the angel in the house for his own argument. Those who would encourage women to enter the department store put forth the idea that women – as the moralising angel- could manifest a virtuous economy.[3] This diverse use of principles highlights how female gender was weaponised to further- largely male-agendas. Respectability and fulfilling one’s duty were crucial to the role of the middle-class housewife of the later nineteenth century. Erika Rappaport is convincing in her argument that women were able to shape a place in the public market as part of their role as the domestic consumer in their role as angel in the house.[4] Women were the traditional consumer of ‘necessary’ goods and the enforcer of respectability, especially in the rising middle class. As the burgeoning middle class needed to define themselves in contrast to the upper and working
classes, and most crucially one another, purchasing power, respectability, and being fashionable became barometers for people’s place in society. Women were often emblematic of their family wealth, as Deborah Cohen highlights, arguing that the middle class ‘derived
their identities in significant measure from their consumerist habits... What they bought, how they shopped, where they lived: these things came to define who a person was.’[5] Then, as now, women were afforded the ability to choose and define their personal gender identity through their fashion choices; while there may have been critics of women entering the expanding consumer market ‘critics never questioned the assumption that it was a natural “feminine” pastime.’[6] The expanding consumer market allowed women a place outside their home where they could begin to show individuality, however, the social pressures of the Victorian era meant this was seen as fulfilling duties or transgressing social norms.
The shopgirl was a quintessential part of the expanding commercial industry in the latter half
of the nineteenth century and the Edwardian era. Female shop assistants were important to the changing landscape of female presence in the expanding marketplace, as they not only forged a new frontier of women’s work, but these women also crystallised aspects of gender relations previously undiscussed in the public sphere. The tide of women that flooded into shop work as more openings became available highlights that the prospect of working in this booming industry was a favourable one; by 1900 a quarter of a million women worked in shops.[7] Despite the shop being a new and extensively more public facing work arena for women, which did cause a significant backlash, this type of work was an extension of other feminine careers of the time. Female shop assistants, much like their domestic service counterparts, often lived in their place of employment and experienced a similar, often paternalist, relationship with their employer.[8] Pamela Cox and Annabel Hobley highlight the experience of Eliza Close whose master, who lived with his 7 assistants in rooms above his drapery, refused to let her go dancing and ensured her church attendance.[9] Close would work over twelve hours a day and earn only half to two thirds as much as her male counterpart, which makes it shocking that this extremely tiresome life was seen as preferable to ‘solitary’ country life.[10] Punch even noted the exhaustion this form of employment caused in a cartoon highlighting the gulf between a shopgirl and the shopper, wherein the shopgirl is offered a chair and is visibly weary (Figure One). This restrictive and exhausting life, that was seen as superior to many other forms of employment, highlights the importance that the respectability a shop job leant to these women in this period. Adverts for openings required ‘respectable,’ and ‘knowledgeable’ girls of ‘good character.’[11] This language suggests that women may have been using this prestigious role for a sense of pride within their gender where it was not granted in other forms of employment. Being depicted favourably and earning between £10 and £60 a year, equivalent to between £4,000
and £22,000 today, whereas ladies’ maids earned £32 a year, would give women an ability to
earn a decent, if not living, wage because of their gender.[12] One crucial finding shopkeepers made was the alienation female customers felt when dealing with male attendants. Cox and Hobley use the account of Lady Jeune to show why female employment in shop assistant roles grew at three times the rate of men. These accounts highlighted that women felt bullied by shopmen and pressured into purchasing items they did not want. They never indulged in extra items, however, and ‘by the early 1860’s, such brusque, even bullying shopmen were out of touch with the times.’[13] Lady Jeune felt women were more adept than men at quickly grasping what customers desired, which was desirable to employers who spent money developing a comfortable environment to increase spending.[14] The expansion of the role of the shopgirl increased women’s choice of employment; while they were still restricted to gruelling physical work, the possibility of increased respectability and clothing that was tasteful “but beyond her class” was important to gender expansion.[15] The exploitation of female bonds and young women being in a ‘respectable’ employment allowed for aspects of the female gender to enter the public sphere and become normalised.
One interesting microcosm of the pressure men experienced in using fashion and their
appearance to express their gender is the narrative that was constructed around the dandy.
Arguably, the most famous dandy was Oscar Wilde, and the connotations around his name of
brilliance and homosexuality is synonymous with how the dandy came to be codified. The
dandy is defined as a performer; Baudelaire saw dandyism as the search for perfection and these men were rebellious regarding fashion – as they would sometimes forgo a hat.[16]
Appearances were crucial to the establishment of a dandyish reputation, as Stephanie Green
argues these aesthetic choices is how Wilde crafted his specific literary and social
identity.[17] The centrality of a dandy’s appearance in how the public understood these men is demonstrated in the coverage of Wilde’s release from prison by the The East & South Devon Advertiser. The Advertiser wrote of Wilde that he ‘dressed, as usual, with scrupulous care.’ Dressed in a dark frock-coat and a silk hat, he ‘walked, erect and self-possessed, with all the old air of being superior to, and untouched by, circumstances.’[18] This focus on appearances at a time where it was Wilde’s sexuality was under sharp scrutiny highlights how the specific rebellious way that Wilde presented himself came to be associated with his gender and sexuality. Elizabeth Wilson argued that, since the nineteenth century, social rebellion has been fixed to sexuality and expressed through appearances.[19] In this way, Wilde’s dishevelled beauty that he constructed using fashion did allow for gender expression. Another aspect of male gender in relation to fashion is highlighted by John Flugel. Flugel- a UCL psychologist- posited the theory of ‘The Great Masculine Renunciation,’ wherein men ‘abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful and henceforth aimed at being only useful.’[20] In his work on male beauty in modern Britain, Paul Deslandes highlights the work of Shannon who rejects the idea of a male renunciation. Shannon instead demonstrates that men were an integral part of the burgeoning consumer market and that concerns around physical appearance and the purchase of male corsets and shaving soaps were thrust upon consumers as ‘logical, focused and masculine.’[21] While consumer products may have been advertised as a masculine imperative, as in a 1906 Vogue advert in the section ‘The Well Dressed Man’ it was stated ‘Naturally one wants to look ones best at such times when the life is purely social, when one is likely to meet new people,’ but this was an extension of the constructed ideas of middle class men as constantly furthering their own prospects.[22] Men in the latter Victorian and Edwardian era were expected to be bread winning and unconcerned with feminine frivolities. In an 1881 Punch cartoon, however, while of course this is exaggerated for comedy, the caption shows the split between the narrative of intellectual supremacy and the known importance of aesthetics (Figure 2). This further
demonstrates how, while gender prescriptions may have advised against frivolities such as
concerning oneself with appearances, meeting social expectations required men to build their image using fashion and appearances. Rebels like Oscar Wilde, despite subverting the
expectations of his gender appearances, used his façade to show his difference from the
prescribed masculine ideal. With prescribed gender ideals and the influence of increasing
advertisement to encourage purchase, male gender was both expressed as part of individual
identity and as a way to conform to ideals.
Media was crucial, as it is now, in influencing consumer behaviour and affecting gender
relations to fashion, appearances and shopping. The first British women’s fashion magazine
was launched in 1875 and it marked a ‘distinct shift,’ both within the industry and wider culture towards the attitude around femininity and how it was reflected in fashion.[23] Each publication that wrote on the subject of women in the marketplace emphasised their own view and one commentator, Mrs Lyton, was particularly divisive. Lyton birthed the idea of the ‘Girl of the Period’ in the columns of ‘The Saturday Review’ in 1868. Lyton campaigned against the independent, financially liberated readers of journals who ‘threatened to overturn the Madonna model of docile femininity for a screaming, shopping Magdalen.’[24] The invention of a caricatured young woman obsessed with personal adornment, writing in ‘The Saturday Review:’ ‘Her main endeavour in this is to outlive her neighbours in the extravagance of fashion. No matter whether as in the time of crinolines she sacrificed decency, or, as now in the time of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness... she makes herself nuisance,’ highlights the association of young women with frivolity.[25] In his work on the media surrounding journal coverage of femininity and consumption Christopher Breward displayed the divergent narratives around female consumption. Compared to Lyton, the periodical ‘Myra’s Journal of Dress and Fashion’ advertised children’s clothes as well as the typical fare, suggesting that keeping up a family’s appearance was of high importance to their target audience of young women and mothers.[26] Attempts such as this can be seen to fit consumerism into the understood acceptable preoccupations for women. Breward argued that women had to construct dual femininity as women who appeared fashionable in public would be slandered as a virtual prostitute but had to keep up appearances and be visibly fashionable. Women were demanded to be ‘goodness and beauty, innocent and sexual attractiveness’ which was impossible to reconcile.[27] This is exemplified in an 1868 Punch cartoon wherein a woman is depicted wearing a judges outfit with the description ‘Probably the next absurdity in ladies' winter costumes’ but the focus of these cartoons on women’s fashion highlights how central it was to society at this time that a women was fashionable (Figure Three). Oscar Wilde’s tenure as editor of ‘The Woman’s World’ highlights how connotations of women and fashion were deeply entrenched by the late 1880s. Katharine Worth suggests that Wilde took on the magazine out of a “serious interest in women's gift for redefining themselves through looks.’[28] This redefinition was once again seen when Wilde was relieved of his post and the journal became increasingly conservative in response to public anxiety about social roles for women.[29] The media’s focus on fashion, which created an entire sect of publishing, both shaped the fashions of each season-with prescribed trends for each season- and swayed the public perception of these ideals. In creating women’s magazines, gender was codified and expressed in the publications but would
often deny these pleasures when there was opposition.[30]
Overall, shopping, fashion and appearances were important in creating public spaces for
women and in identifying individuals’ class and predilections. The social standards of the day
desired angelic domesticity from women but also required appearances to be kept up to ensure social standing and asked for stoic productivity of men. The importance of respectability for both genders shaped their relationship to the expanding commercial market, which both allowed expression for some and forcibly denied other aspects of gender. Key advancements in fashion, the increasing prevalence of universal credit, and the advent of the department store are a few of the reasons why fashion and appearances were so closely attached to gender. The diversity of opinion that shrouded these aesthetic concerns made fashion, shopping and appearances able to both deny and express gender.
Figure One: ‘Punch Cartoons about Fashion’, Punch, published 24 July 1880
Figure Two: ‘Punch Cartoons about Fashion’, Punch, published 4 February 1881
Figure Three: ‘Punch Cartoons about Fashion’, Punch, published 18 January 1868
Notes
[1] Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 82.
[2] Jeanne Peterson, 'No angels in the house: the Victorian myth and the Paget women', American Historical Review, 89/3 (1984).
[3] Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, p. 36.
[4] Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, pp. 6-49.
[5] Deborah Cohen, ‘Buying and Becoming: New Work on the British Middle Classes,’ The Historical Journal, 46/4 (2003), p. 999.
[6] Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, p. 5.
[7] Pamela Cox and Annabel Hobley, Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter (London: Hutchison 2014), p.XI.
[8] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, pp. 24-25.
[9] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, pp. 24-25.
[10] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, p. 2.
[11] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, p. 4.
[12] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, p. 50.
[13] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, pp. 9-10.
[14] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, pp. 28-29.
[15] Cox and Hobley, Shopgirls, p. 2.
[16] Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in dreams: fashion and modernity (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), p. 83.
[17] Stephanie Green, ‘Oscar Wilde's "The Woman's World,"’ Victorian Periodicals Review, 30/2 (1997), pp.179-185.
[18] Rose Staveley-Wadham, ‘The ‘Sensational’ Trial of Oscar Wilde – Reports of Ignominy, Shame and Tragedy,’ The British Newspaper Archive,
<https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2020/06/09/trial-of-oscar-wilde/ > [Accessed 20 December 2020].
[19] Wilson, Adorned in dreams, p. 179.
[20] Joanna Bourke, ‘The Great Male Renunciation: Men's Dress Reform in Inter-war Britain,’ Journal of Design History, 9/1 (1996).
[21] Paul Deslandes, 'The Male Body, Beauty and Aesthetics in Modern British Culture,’ History Compass, 8 (2010), p. 119.
[22] ‘Fashion: The Well Dressed Man,’ Vogue, 29/25, <https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/docview/904264247/C1060084A4549B3PQ/105?accountid=13375> [Accessed 20 December 2020].
[23] Chris Breward, ‘Femininity and Consumption: The Problem of the Late Nineteenth-Century Fashion Journal’, Journal of Design History, 7/2 (1994), p. 71.
[24] Breward, ‘Femininity and Consumption’, p. 76.
[25] Rebecca Mitchell (ed), A Critical Sourcebook Fashioning the Victorians (Great Britain:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), p. 66.
[26] Breward, ‘Femininity and Consumption’, p. 73.
[27] Breward, ‘Femininity and Consumption,’ p. 75.
[28] Green, ‘Oscar Wilde's "The Woman's World,”’ p. 105.
[29] Green, ‘Oscar Wilde’s “The Woman’s World,”’ p. 105.
[30] ‘Fashion: Winter Millinery,’ Vogue 14/20, <https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/docview/911821135/3706FCD7111F43F3PQ/20?accountid=13375> [Accessed 20 December 2020].
Bibliography
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