I met Amy last year when I contacted many fellow authors who write stories set in the 1920s (or thereabouts) for the Historical Fiction Gift Guide (more about this year’s Guide to come shortly!). Amy actually writes stories set in 1912 Milwaukee.
Yet, only this year I managed to read her two books in the Sophie Strong series – and I loved them!
She is clearly a history buff, and I love this too!
Her books are so vividly set, are full of great details, and the characters are people of their time.
I found it so strange how the 1910s are similar, and yet so very different from the 1920s. It’s a testament to the great job Amy did that I could pick up those similarities and, above all, those differences.
You can read my reviews of the novels here and here.
I loved both, but I have to admit the second one really absorbed me, not only for the clever mystery (there’s a clever, action-packed mystery in the first book too) but because of the setting: a department store, specifically the millinery department.
That is the best way to get you into the 1910s because the military department and the fashion that created it are so very much characteristics of the 1910s. At least, for me.
Amy describes working in the military department so in detail that, even if I knew nothing of that kind of environment, I felt I was right there!
In her afternotes, Amy wrote that the department stores were instrumental in advancing women’s independence, both as workers and as customers.
I found it so very interesting that I asked her if she felt like expanding the subject in an article for my blog, and she was so kind to accept.
I hope you’ll enjoy this article as much as I did.
Enjoy!
Freedom, Fripperies, and Fun
by Amy Renshaw
“Sophie quickened her step. In a blur, she sailed past bright carnations at the flower stand, gem-like perfume bottles on elegant trays, sleek gloves and stockings, tidy bins of thread and buttons in the Notions Department, and even a ticket booth for plays and concerts around the city.”
—Strong Temptations: A Sophie Strong Mystery
As a historical fiction author, I love delving into women’s roles and challenges in past ages. But I tend to take for granted some of the freedoms I enjoy today. A little over a century ago, women weren’t allowed to move about independently in public or wield the purchasing power we now hold.
The Invention of Shopping
It’s hard to imagine a time before shopping was considered a leisure pastime, and not simply the means to purchase necessary goods. Our consumer culture was nurtured by the birth of department stores, those multi-storied wonderlands that carried a full selection of household goods and furnishings. In the late 1800s, they became a new public space available—and primarily devoted—to women.
Before the dawn of department stores, retail outlets in the U.S. fell into two general categories: the small-town general store, which stocked a wide range of groceries and dry goods, or the urban specialty store, which focused on a specific category, such as books, hats, or shoes. Typically, you visited such a place with a definite need, your items were fetched from shelves or a stockroom by a clerk, and money exchanged hands. You were expected to make a purchase if you darkened the door. Prices were flexible, usually negotiated through bargaining between the owner or clerk and the customer.
In the late 1800s, department stores launched a new era. Names like Macy’s, Hudson’s, Marshall Field’s, and Gimbels became part of the American vocabulary. Many started as small outlets and burgeoned into giant palaces of commerce. As stores grew in size and staff, a one-price system was necessary; owners couldn’t trust over 100 clerks to effectively negotiate on their behalf. Refunds were cheerfully available if a customer was unsatisfied. And a consumer could enter freely and browse without being required to buy—which led to the “impulse buying” that retailers still rely on (and encourage) today.
Freedom, Fripperies, and Fun by Amy Renshaw – Department stores were a new consumer experience that proved very successful for the economy – and had unexpected social benefits. Share on X
A Women’s World
Department stores played a pivotal role in fostering women’s freedom. Until the mid-1800s, home was considered the only safe place for middle- and upper-class women. They were expected to socialize within their own parlors. Men ventured out into the dangerous workplace and other social spaces. Many restaurants, stores, and theaters refused to serve unescorted women. Servants were sent out to purchase needed goods, and some items were brought to the home by traveling merchants. But respectable women weren’t seen strolling down the sidewalk or lingering in public. If a woman had legitimate business in a city center, she was expected to move through the space quickly and unobtrusively.
As industrialization brought more variety and products to stores, including mass-produced clothing, retailers needed more consumers. They began to target women with money to spend. Department stores offered urban spaces where ladies could move and congregate outside of their homes without the protection of husbands, fathers, or brothers. Gradually, it became commonplace to see women among the pedestrians on sidewalks and the passengers in streetcars. Restaurants and theaters that once turned away female customers began to cater to them.
Journalist Rheta Childe Dorr described the setting in 1910: “Buying and selling, serving and being served—women. On every floor, in every aisle, at every counter, women . . . a moving, seeking, hurrying, mass of femininity, in the midst of which the occasional male shopper, man clerk, and man supervisor, looks lost and out of place.”
Buildings and displays grew more attractive and inviting to entice women inside. Stores were designed to be architecturally pleasing and beautifully decorated, with marble, skylights, lush carpets, polished wood, and electric lighting. Window dressing developed into an art form, and window shopping became an acceptable diversion for women. Delivery service enabled ladies to shop without the burden of carrying packages. Technological advances like elevators, telephones, cash registers, and pneumatic tubes were quickly adopted to offer the height of convenience and modernity.
Store managers began to add more and more comforts to encourage shoppers to linger. The department store was a combination of an elegant home for women to visit and a refuge similar to a men’s social club. Lounges with comfortable seating, magazines, and newspapers were available to refresh one’s energy. Tearooms and restaurants offered meals that catered to women’s tastes. “These giant emporiums told their patrons in myriad ways that shopping was not just purchasing but an agreeable and leisurely diversion in luxurious surroundings,” writes scholar Susan Porter Benson.
The stores had a dizzying selection of goods and services, including book departments, specialty candy counters, and even radio stations. A thriving store might include a childcare facility, an emergency hospital staffed by a nurse, a post office, telegraph office, theater ticket booth, and hair stylist. Some offered art exhibitions, live music, and children’s theaters with performances on Saturday afternoons.
The online Department Store Museum memorializes the stores with photos, histories, and even department listings for a huge variety of stores. The robust comments section includes posts from nostalgic shoppers reminiscing about childhood excursions.
Working Girls
Women’s freedom was fostered on the other side of the counter too—department stores created new jobs for women. It became increasingly acceptable for single women to live and work on their own. While only 8,000 U.S. women were employed as clerks in 1880, that number leaped to 58,000 in just ten years. Meanwhile, nearly all decision makers and store managers were men.
Journalists, suffragists, and reformers made efforts to expose difficult working conditions that shopgirls endured. The pay was low, and days were long—up to sixteen hours a day at busy times. Sitting on the job was forbidden and could get a girl fired. Being late for work could lead to fines—at one store, saleswomen making seven dollars a week could be fined thirty cents for being ten minutes late. They also faced sexual harassment from male customers and employees. In addition, class and race prejudices limited opportunities. Women of color weren’t hired for these public-facing positions. White women needed enough education or poise to speak to higher-class customers with dignity.
Over time, saleswomen were trained in selling techniques. They were encouraged to act as welcoming hostesses and to greet customers as guests, with respect and empathy. They learned to suggest a hatpin, gloves, and purse to complement a lady’s fashionable new hat. At the same time, due to the low wages, shopgirls were surrounded by goods they had no hope of ever owning.
Still, there were some advancement possibilities for women in the department store world. They could become buyers in charge of stocking an entire department, free to make merchandise decisions up to a certain dollar limit. The role might even involve international travel. Some women became supervisors or managers. But no matter how successful, they nearly always encountered the “marriage bar”—upon marriage, they would be dismissed or encouraged to resign.
Whether as consumers or employees, department stores were instrumental in creating new roles and opportunities for women in the early 1900s. I was delighted to explore this aspect of the retail world in my historical mystery Strong Temptations, where journalist Sophie Strong takes an undercover assignment as a shopgirl at Gimbels department store in 1912 Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While selling hats in the millinery department, she learns firsthand about the trials of sales work, then stumbles upon a murder mystery to investigate. At a time when women were fighting for equality in many realms, including the right to vote in political elections, I have found there were always women like Sophie who broke barriers and exploded stereotypes. Their courage and determination are still inspiring today.
Amy Renshaw
Amy Renshaw fell in love with mysteries as a kid, when she discovered Nancy Drew books in her grandmother’s attic. She admires strong, smart women who blaze new trails with courage and determination. She’s the author of Strong Suspicions and Strong Temptations, the first two books in the ongoingSophie Strong Mystery Series.
When not writing mysteries, Amy works as the Senior Editor at Brilliant Star magazine, an award-winning publication inspired by the principles of peace and justice in the Bahá’í Faith. She lives in Wisconsin, where she hikes in the woods, enjoys jigsaws and crosswords, and loves anything chocolate. She’s also the author of the nonfiction book, Voyage of Love: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in North America. She loves to hear from readers. Reach out via email at amy@amyrenshawauthor.com or on Facebook or Instagram.
Resources
Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores 1890-1940, by Susan Porter Benson (1986, University of Illinois Press).
What Eight Million Women Want, byRheta Childe Dorr, 1908 (Project Gutenberg, 2004).
Woman Interwoven – “19th Century Department Stores: Between Women’s Emancipation and Consumerism,” by Iris Favand
The Department Store Museum, by Bruce Allen Kopytek: The on-line museum of North America’s independent department stores.
Organization of American Historians – “Disruptive Shopping: Women, Space, and Capitalism,” by Emily Remus
BBC Culture – “A History of the Department Store,” by Jonathan Glancey
“The History of Department Stores,” by Michael Lisicky
Sky History – “How 19th-Century Women Used Department Stores to Gain Their Freedom,” by Erin Blakemore
