A Woman's World: Department Stores and the Evolution of Women's Employment, 1870-1920

Abstract

In the 1840s Aristide Boucicaut opened a small retail shop for dry goods and clothing in Paris. This shop became the Bon Marche, the world's first department store, and soon the idea was emulated by other commercial entrepreneurs throughout the world. The department store helped to create a new religion, as Emile Zola described the passion for consumption nurtured by the department stores' retailing revolution. As churches were being deserted, Zola argued, the stores were filling with crowds of women seeking to fill their empty hours and to find meaning for empty lives.' The cult of the soul was replaced by a cult of the body-of beauty, of fashion. The department store was pre-eminently the world of women, where women were encouraged to find their life's meaning in conspicuous consumption and where they increasingly found a role in selling. Thus, the department store played a highly significant role in the evolution both of contemporary society and of woman's place in that society. The department stores came to dominate retail trade by introducing novel merchandising principles. Most obviously, they were much larger than traditional retail establishments and united a wide variety of goods under one roof; specialization was retained only in the rayons or departments into which the stores were divided.2 De-