Customer Reviews

When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store

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Elaine S. Abelson's When Ladies Go A-Thieving is a remarkably ambitious book that seeks to examine numerous aspects of social history from roughly 1870-1914. While her primary area of investigation is the middle-class female shoplifter in the department store, her book undertakes serious examination of such varied concerns as class identity and class conflict, the rise of consumer culture, and the changing roles of women in society (and society's attempts to reconcile these new roles with existing gender stereotypes).

Abelson's thesis defies quick encapsulation, as it relies on several assumptions and takes form through multiple, equally important conclusions. As women's functions moved increasingly out of the home, and into the public sphere, one of her primary responsibilities was the acquisition of goods. That shopping was women's work (and leisure) was a widely understood stereotype. To address this demand, the department store developed as a place where a woman could see and acquire a large array of consumer goods. It also served to instill a "calculated arousal of desire" (11) and, according to Abelson, for many women the lure proved irresistible. They sought to acquire the coveted goods by any means necessary, and so they shoplifted them. Lower-class women, when caught, were dealt with as criminals.

Yet many middle-class women, who could ostensibly afford the items they stole, were also caught in the act. This reflected poorly on the department store's model of mass consumption, if not mass consumption in general, and it also upset contemporary stereotypical notions of female moral superiority and incorruptibility. Thus these middle-class crimes were swept under the rug with a diagnosis of kleptomania. A woman was seen as weak-willed, ill equipped by her very nature - her gender itself - to control her desire for consumption. The store thus could not be held accountable for its "successful stimulation of consumer desire" and the respectable woman could not be held personally responsible for her regrettable actions (196). Consumerist ideology would remain unscathed, as womanhood itself could be depicted as the ultimate culprit.

Abelson's book was particularly well received by critics, who found it very well written and full of interesting ideas, and found that the research carried implications across wide-ranging historic disciplines. A few questioned whether the evidence was sufficient for Abelson's broad conclusions. Specifically, Mark C. Carnes, writing for The Business History Review, questions Abelson's almost exclusive use of trade journals in her analysis of the extent of the shoplifting phenomenon, and wonders whether the "dire pronouncements of merchants ... accurately reflect the magnitude of shoplifting."8 Perhaps, he suggests, shoplifting wasn't so common as Abelson supposes. Carnes' perceptive review also calls into question Abelson's complete dismissal of kleptomania as a legitimate medical pathology, a point also made by several other reviewers. For Abelson, the only pathology is the pathology of consumption, and Carnes sees this as an "over-broad indictment." Shifting at least some of the blame back onto the women themselves, Carnes writes "To the Victorian men and women who placed so high a premium on self control, shoplifting was almost by definition symptomatic of psychological infirmity."

Anita Clair Fellman, in The American Historical Review, finds Abelson's book "well put together and suggestive" but faults her for failing to "elaborate the implications of her findings" and poses some questions to this end: "Is it significant that the stores' first pitch should have been toward women ... by no means the most powerful members of society? Does this tell us something about the ways in which middle-class women as a subordinate group were essential to the development of consumer capitalism? Might the acceptance of women's tendencies to kleptomania have contributed to the gradual demise ... of the notion of women's moral superiority?" Fellman is troubled that Abelson depicts women as being so susceptible to the "manipulation of merchandisers" and points out that this conclusion is at odds with that reached by Susan Porter Benson, whose Counter Cultures (1986) "assesses women customers as giving as good as they got in the ongoing struggle with department stores."

These qualms hardly detract from the ultimate achievement of Abelson's work. Indeed, it could be argued that many of Fellman's criticisms fall completely outside the scope of the book. Abelson's endnotes and annotated bibliography show that she has made exhaustive use of those sources that are available, from diaries, trade journals, and court records to contemporary parodies of shopping culture. She convincingly demonstrates that the shoplifting phenomenon, whatever its extent, was exacerbated by the deliberate enticement of the department store set-up and that it was dealt with, among the middle class, by shifting blame to a nebulous (though gender-specific) pathology. Along the way, she is able to illustrate numerous interesting aspects of consumer culture, such as its inherent class-conflicts and the redefining of women's roles and expectations. As such, the book is a well-conceived examination of numerous aspects of history.

Having read this book for a seminar course in gender and consumerism, I found it very useful. Abelson spends a good amount of time (the first five chapters, in fact) focusing on the development of the department store and setting up the class dichotomy between the shop girls and the shoppers. She then spends the last two discussing the various ways shoplifting was diagnosed (such as by the creation of kleptomania). My issues with the book, however, were that Abelson never really discusses the issue of race (EVER), and also does not mention ethnicity. She also makes some very good arguements, such as when discussing the class dichotomy, but I feel that she could have gone further than she did with her arguements. However, I found it to be a useful and interesting read.