“Woman's Place is in the Tea Room”: White Middle‐Class American Women as Entrepreneurs and Customers

Abstract

There is perhaps no more pre-eminently a field than that of feeding the public. There is no barrier, no prejudice, no tradition against activity in the eating world .... [T]hat place is in the tea room has been accepted as an inevitable corollary of woman's place is in the (Ware and Ware 565) The tea room played an important role in bringing housebound late-nineteenth-century elite and middle-class women into the world. A study of these cozy restaurants is important because tea rooms evolved into an early-twentieth-century cultural institution, one initiated by women. Tea rooms are also important because they impacted popular dogma regarding females, giving women opportunities beyond traditional domestic chores. In 1890, more than ninety percent of females over the age of thirty-five were married (Kessler-Harris 109). Middle-class women were cloistered at home, charged with being cheerful, and running orderly households. Housewife was the only suitable role because society frowned on women earning a living. Distaff tea room owners launched changes in that social doctrine, shrouding their eateries in housewifely attributes and channeling domestic skills into operating successful enterprises. Because tea room entrepreneurship did not breech feminine decorum, it became an acceptable occupation for elite women. In essence, domesticity's restricting tenets became a bridge to a cultural sensation. Tea rooms-or tea houses, as they were also called-began in northeastern cities as ventures owned and operated by elite white women, for elite white women. They were moderately priced, atmospheric restaurants-often of one room-catering to women's preferences and sensibilities. Initially owners served only light lunch and afternoon tea. The latter was a ritual in elite nineteenthcentury homes, with the lady of the house presiding. Families consumed dainty sandwiches and ate cake with cups of tea. Because men worked in the public sector at tea time, which was no later than 5 o'clock, the ceremony became the domain of women. It spawned social activity. Friends gathered. According to Agnes Morton, a nineteenthcentury doyen, the friends chat[ted] for awhile over a sociable cup of tea . . . all at ease, every one the recipient of a gracious welcome from the hostess (Morton 67-68). Understandably, when elite white women opened tea rooms to service females of their class, afternoon tea was a staple. It was not the only domestic element finding its way to the tea room. A commonality existed between tea rooms and women's duties at home. Accordingly, proprietors viewed tea rooms as an extension of their domicile. If you like housekeeping, said one owner, but want bigger money returns and more human contact than one house can give you, it is logical that a tea room should ... be a good business (Brandimarte 11). Added another: [M]anaging a modern tea room means exactly what managing a large means. The most successful tea room is one that preserves the atmosphere of a pleasant, well ordered home (Gleason 146). Giving tea rooms the look and feel of old fashioned dining rooms was one means of capturing hominess. A customer described this congenial atmosphere: On sturdy legs that long have stood, The tables show their dark old wood; The chairs were new ten decades since; The curtains flaunt stiff folds of chintz That multiplies a purple bird With crested head and wings absurd, Entangled in a wreath of vines. The candle sticks are brass that shines Unflecked, unscathed. The candle fires Burn high in straight upstanding spires . . . The narrow spaces of the room Take shape in patterned light and gloom, Dusk mellowed where along the wall Old mirrors duplicate it all. (Brandimarte 6-7) This homelike ambiance characterized tea rooms. …