In Shopping 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 Pleasure uncovers 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 Pleasure is 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.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

INTRODUCTION "To Walk Alone in London" 3

CHAPTER ONE "The Halls of Temptation": The Universal Provider and the Pleasures of Suburbia 16

"Young London": The Making of a Suburban Shopping Center 19

The Spectacular Universal Provider 27

"When Ladies Go 'Shopping'" 29

"Our Local Regent Street" 40

CHAPTER TW0 The Trials of Consumption: Marriage, Law, and Women's Credit 48

Credit: "The Shopkeeper's Temptation" 50

The Wife's Authority and Husbands Liability 55

Consumption on Trial 65

Ready Money, Married Women, and the Department Store 70

CHAPTER THREE "Resting Places for Women Wayfarers": Feminism and the Comforts of the Public Sphere 74

Pleasure in the Public Sphere 76

"Either Ladies Didn't Go Out or Ladies Didn't 'Go'" 79

Female Clubland 85

"A Social Ark for Shoppers" 93

"Shopland Is My Club" 101

CHAPTER FOUR Metropolitan Journeys: Shopping, Traveling, and Reading the West End 108

The Women's Press and Consumer Culture 111

"The Best Exhibition in This Modern Babylon" 115

"Ballade of an Omnibus" 122

"Madame's More Comprehensive Feminine Glance" 126

The Lady Guides' London 132

CHAPTER FIVE "A New Era of Shopping": An American Department Store in Edwardian London 142

"London's American Phase" 144

Selling Selfridge's 154

"A Time of Profit, Recreation, and Enjoyment" 159

"Man's Best Buying Center" 171

"British Shes Should Shop at British Stores" 172

CHAPTER SIX Acts of Consumption: Musical Comedy and the Desire of Exchange 178

"Going Up West" 178

Selling to the Modern Audience 180

"The Romance of a Shop Girl" 192

The Shopper's Character 203

Theater of Desire 206

Epilogue The Politics of Plate Glass 215

NOTES 223

Bibliography 281

INDEX 315
 

Erika Rappaport is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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