West End Commercial Development and the Need to Redefine Gender Identity in 19th Century London

by nicolemarie (student)

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

West End Commercial Development Meets Need to Redefine Gender Identity in 19th Century London

Gender and class identities in early 19th Century London were fairly well defined within a patriarchal context. Men were typically expected to be the “breadwinners” and had freedom to move about as they please within areas appropriate to their class. Flaneur is the term used by Lynda Nead to describe an identity of a modern male who was at home in public spaces. Women of different classes however had very different lives and expectations. While there wasn’t really a female version of the flaneur, working women, or prostitutes, had a certain degree of freedom in the ability to move about and be herself . A bourgeois woman on the other hand, had a very limited role identified by her family. She was a mother, a wife, and a source of morality uncorrupted by the urban city and limited to the private sphere of the home. Nead describes female respectability as “exclusively defined in terms of its identification with the private domestic sphere.” This woman does not have a very developed sense of her own self identity outside of these roles. I could compare it to some people today who spent most their lives identifying themselves by the same sort of roles as wife, mother, caretaker, etc. They were fairly content in these roles to start, but after time, it gets hard to live defining yourself by others and these people end up unhappy needing to find some way to see themselves apart from others. They may not even realize what is really wrong, only that something is missing as they begin the journey of self discovery. This is in a day when women do have freedom and rights to do as they please (within legal limits) so I can only imagine the difficulties such a role places on middle class women of Victorian London. I would feel this was a setting that naturally would lead to revolution in order to allow for more fulfilling roles for bourgeois women in Victorian London. The 19th century commercial development of London’s West end anticipated and met the need for change in a sound capitalist fashion.

According to Lynda Need in Victorian Babylon, shopping “presented an escape route for middle-class women from their gilded cages into the excitements of the city.” The man with the business sense to understand how women could be a new market demographic to break into was William Whiteley. He revolutionized ways of selling from traditional specialized retail by offering multiple types of products together. In the process he created a new consumer culture and defined a new market in middle class women.

He challenged popular beliefs that women should remain in the private sphere of home by creating ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

He challenged popular beliefs that women should remain in the private sphere of home by creating a sort of faux private sphere within his department store. It was a safe, luxurious place that “encouraged customers to spend an entire day shopping.” It was believed in Victorian society that women were moral, but that they could be corrupted by interactions in the city. To combat these fears, Whiteley promotes his department store as a safe, member’s only place that protected women from the moral depravity in the city. As with any revolution, this process met with much opposition from society. There were still widespread fears regarding unfair competition, urbanization and the decline of society throughout this process. This is seen in the reasons given to restrict him from selling liquor on the grounds of immorality. This was also reflected in the new laws and policing powers created by the “first Obscene Publications Act in 1857,” which was intended to protest women from obscenity. The revolution continued though, and in the 1870s, shops started showing up all over that would cater to middle and upper-class women. Newspapers were taking notice how much women loved to shop. Whiteley truly became a “Universal Provider” who through commercial development provided for a revolution not only in the shopping process, but also in thought processes redefining class and gender identities in 19th century Victorian London.

Bibliography

Nead, Lynda. Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Nead, Lynda. “Mapping the Self, Gender, Space and Modernity in Mid-Victorian London,” (n.d.) pp 167-185 reprinted in ULF ANTH 110 London Society and Space Course Reader. (University of California London Semester Program, 2012)

Rappaport, Erika D. ““The Halls of Temptation”: Gender, Politics, and the Construction of the Department Store in Late Victorian London,” (n.d.) pp 58-83 reprinted in ULF ANTH 110 London Society and Space Course Reader. (University of California London Semester Program, 2012)

Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London, p. 67 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

Nead, Victorian Babylon: p. 68

Lynda Nead, “Mapping the Self, Gender, Space and Modernity in mid-Victorian London,” reprinted in ULF ANTH 110 London Society and Space Course Reader. (University of California London Semester Program, 2012) p. 167

Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 69

Erika D Rappaport, ““The Halls of Temptation”: Gender, Politics, and the Construction of the Department Store in Late Victorian London,” reprinted in ULF ANTH 110 London Society and Space Course Reader. (University of California London Semester Program, 2012) p. 66

Rappaport, “Halls of Temptation,” p. 71

Nead, “Mapping the Self,” p. 176

Rappaport, “Halls of Temptation,” p. 76

Rappaport, “Halls of Temptation,” pp. 58-83