Crazy for bargains: inventing the irrational female shopper in modernizing English Canada.
Between the 1890s and 1930s, anglophone politicians, journalists, novelists, and other commentators living in western, central, and eastern Canada drew upon established connections among greed, luxury, hysteria, and femininity to describe women who went shopping as irrational. Their motivations for doing so included their desires to assuage feelings of guilt about increased abundance; articulate anger caused by spousal conflicts over money; assert the legitimacy of male authority; and assign blame for the decline of small communities’ sustainability, the degradation of labour standards, and the erosion of independent shopkeeping. By calling upon stock stereotypes of femininity, and by repositioning them to fit the current capitalist moment, English-Canadian commentators constructed disempowering representations of women to alleviate their anxieties about what they perceived as the ills of modernization.
Donica
D
Belisle
D002170:Canada / Q000208:ethnology; D003132:Commerce / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D003256:Community Participation / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D057227:Femininity / Q000266:history; D005783:Gender Identity; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006794:Household Articles / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D006795:Household Products / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D006801:Humans; D040541:Marketing / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D057228:Masculinity / Q000266:history; D012919:Social Behavior / Q000266:history; D012922:Social Change / Q000266:history; D012923:Social Class / Q000266:history; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors / Q000266:history; D014930:Women / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D016387:Women's Health / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history