19th century
A01=Lisa Tiersten
advertising
aesthetics
Author_Lisa Tiersten
bourgeoisie
capitalism
Category=JBFS
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
commercialization
consumer culture
department stores
domesticity
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
etiquette books
fashion
female bourgeois
female consumer
female morality
france
french culture
french republic
french women
gender
gender roles
gender studies
good taste
la belle epoque
nonfiction
republican
women
womens studies
Product details
- ISBN 9780520225299
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Sep 2001
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In the late nineteenth century, controversy over the social ramifications of the emerging consumer marketplace beset the industrialized nations of the West. In France, various commentators expressed concern that rampant commercialization threatened the republican ideal of civic-mindedness as well as the French reputation for good taste. The female bourgeois consumer was a particularly charged figure because she represented consumption run amok. Critics feared that the marketplace compromised her morality and aesthetic discernment, with dire repercussions for domestic life and public order. "Marianne in the Market" traces debates about the woman consumer to examine the complex encounter between the market and the republic in nineteenth-century France. It explores how agents of capitalism - advertisers, department store managers, fashion journalists, self-styled taste experts - addressed fears of consumerism through the forging of an aesthetics of the marketplace: a 'marketplace modernism'. In so doing, they constructed an image of the bourgeois woman as the solution to the problem of unrestrained, individualized, and irrational consumption.
Commercial professionals used taste to civilize the market and to produce consumers who would preserve the French aesthetic patrimony. Tasteful consumption legitimized women's presence in the urban public and reconciled their roles as consumers with their domestic and civic responsibilities. A fascinating case study, "Marianne in the Market" builds on a wide range of sources such as the feminine press, decorating handbooks, exposition reports, advertising materials, novels, and etiquette books. Lisa Tiersten draws on these materials to make the compelling argument that market professionals used the allure of aesthetically informed consumerism to promote new models of the female consumer and the market in keeping with Republican ideals.
Lisa Tiersten is Assistant Professor of History at Barnard College.
