Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping

by Rachel Bowlby

Asserting that a history of shopping was, until recently, a history of women, Rachel Bowlby trains her eye on the evolution of the modern shopper. She uses a compelling blend of history, literary analysis, and cultural criticism to explore the rise of department stores and supermarkets of the United States, France, and Great Britain.

Bowlby recalls the fascinating early days of these institutions. In the mid-nineteenth century, when department stores first developed, their fabulous new buildings brought middle-class women into town, where they could indulge in what was then a new a day's shopping. The stores offered luxury, flattering women into believing that they belonged in a beautiful environment. It is here, Bowlby argues, that the idea of the modern woman's passion for fashion and shopping took hold.

Developed in the twentieth century, supermarkets took an opposite they offered functionality, standardization, and cheapness. However, Bowlby claims, despite their differences, the two institutions belong together as emblematic of their respective eras' social the department store with the growth of cities, the supermarket with the proliferation of suburbs. With their dazzling lights and displays, both supermarkets and department stores were thought to produce in females an enhanced or trance-like state of mind.

For readers who regard shopping as a spectator or participatory sport, and for those who wish to understand our culture and the psychology of women, or those who simply enjoy a witty, literate romp through the aisles, Carried Away is the perfect purchase.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 2000

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I basically stumbled upon this book and I’m so glad I did. It is a history of shopping – or rather, more of supermarkets and department stores. The author covers so many interesting topics along the way. For instance, supermarkets are pretty well unthinkable without products being ‘packaged’ – this seems so obvious now that she has said it, but it isn’t really something I’d thought about before that. Or the other idea that the ‘drowse and pick and buy’ type experience that you have in a supermarket is really almost exactly the same as the experience you have always had in a bookshop – and book dust-jacket is nearly identical to other forms of product packaging that became necessary with the supermarket.

I found the discussion about shop windows and how to create one that might stop someone walking along for long enough to convince them they need to enter your shop and buy something awfully interesting. But what I found nearly as interesting was the idea that supermarkets generally don’t have windows at all. I mean, a window that shows products as if objects of desire. Again, part of me must have ‘known’ this – it really didn’t come as a surprise when she said it – but it had never really registered with me either – something I’ve always known, but never thought about. And this is the opposite of most department stores – for instance, in Melbourne a large department store is called Myer and its ‘windows’ are quite famous locally – particularly at Christmas. These stores require windows in ways that supermarkets avoid them.

Shopping remains highly gendered – and it is gendered ‘female’. Which makes the texts from the history of shopping psychology interesting too – particularly given the often very negative views psychologists (often men) had of women. In the early years of shopping women were considered to be essentially wandering about in a kind of daze in these stores and mostly prone to being deceived by the much more cunning and intelligent merchants - also men. This changed after the war where women suddenly became considered to be like walking computers able to calculate the best bargains and turn shopping into a kind of hunt.

I really liked the discussion on boxes of chocolates and what to put on the cover – and why images of sexy women might be a mistake - given boxes of chocolates are often bought by men for women. The idea being that women are only attractive while they are in fashion and that means the woman on the cover must be ‘up to the minute’ – which then would mean changing the box cover very frequently so the woman on the cover doesn’t start to look a bit past it - which then has problems according to brand identity. So chocolate boxes became almost defined by Black Magic – a simple, black box with just those two words on the cover. The point is in the elaborate packaging, with all of the individual wrapping and so on, rather than in the chocolates per se.

There was a bit in this that despite it not conforming to my experience I basically wanted to be true. You see, most of our shopping experiences now don’t involve sales people, we are left to sell the products to ourselves – you can go around a supermarket and not actually engage with another human at all now, if that is how your fancy takes you. But when you receive a telemarketing phone call it involves a person on the other end. While our previous experiences of having someone sell something to us was in the context of them being in a location that made that seem sort of reasonable – we had entered their shop, or they were standing on the main street – now we are being sold to in our own houses and this occurs without our having asked or wanted to speak to a sales person. The author says that most frequently the things being sold to us by telemarketing are to do with securing your house, buying health insurance or something in that sort of field - risk reduction. That is, products that reduce the threat of modern day life – which, in some ways, has been exemplified by the uninvited, unwanted home invasion that is the marketing call. Now, I would love for this to be the case – but I don’t think I’ve ever received a call from someone seeking to sell me any of these products – solar panels, yes, or holidays, but never insurance or home security systems.

Anyway, I thought this book was super interesting – real food for thought.

[Popup-ch · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not what I expected. I was looking forward to a history of the department store and the supermarket, but instead found an overview of shopping in literature. The book does contain a history of how the department store prepared the terrain for the self-service supermarket, but it's hidden away between the lines of how shopping has been described in the literature ever since the eighteenth century.

It was published in 2000, which is too early to include any substantial chapter on online commerce. This was still well after Aldi and Lidl started making inroads in the shopping scene by cutting margins even further, but neither features prominently. There's not even a chapter on Walmart. Not even barcodes come into this story.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tons of research and historical references.

Some of the history was about people and corporations that I don't know - because the author is British and I am American. But this difference between the author and me did not diminish my enjoyment of this book.

Splendid book to dip into for a while.

[Avital]

HC 79 C6 B69 2001