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The Early Modern Grocery Store: An Exploration of Gender, Empire, and Consumption

An essay about the intersection of gender, empire, and consumption through the experience of grocery shopping in early modern England.

Published onApr 26, 2023
The Early Modern Grocery Store: An Exploration of Gender, Empire, and Consumption
An engraving of a grocery shop at Christmas time. The windows are filled with displays and advertisements for tea, coffee, and fruits.

An engraving of a grocery shop at Christmas time.

Edmund Evans, The Grocer's Shop at Christmas, 1850, Wood engraving, The Bridgeman Art Gallery.

An eighteenth-century recipe for sugar cakes, a dessert resembling a modern shortbread, called for a pound of sugar, flour, and butter, six eggs, and “carryway seeds.”[1] Recipe books from early modern England reveal the interactions with local and foreign ingredients within the domestic sphere. Spices, ranging from carraway, cloves, and ginger, sugar, tea, and other consumable goods were brought to England from across the expanding empire. Many “exotic” goods became staples within the English diet throughout the early modern period. Although it is evident that these items made their way from the edges of empire into the kitchens and palettes of the English, it is less apparent how these goods entered the domestic sphere. Grocers, haberdasheries, apothecaries, and market stalls became part of the English culture of consumption. The experience of grocery shopping, the physical purchasing of goods, and the consumption of groceries highlights the intersection of imperialism, commercialism, and gender in early modern England.

The culture of consumption has been an area of interest for social, cultural, and economic historians for decades. Much research has been done on the theory of conspicuous consumption, in which individuals purchase goods or services to communicate their own wealth, and polite consumption, in which spending is used to imitate wealth and status, especially in the upper and middling classes of early modern England.[2] Elizabeth Kolwaleski-Wallace’s Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century explores the gendering of consumption, connecting descriptions of women to descriptions of goods for sale, ultimately arguing that the female body both consumed and was consumed through these social and economic practices of production and selling during this period.[3] Kowaleski-Wallace even links these experiences of gender to broader industrial and imperial changes; however, she has been critiqued for her focus on displaying symbols and connecting women to products without furthering her introductory argument of the mutual construction of gender and consumption.[4] Further, most scholarship within consumption looks at the purchase of luxury goods or goods with distinct social capital, rather than looking at “necessities” and more mundane items. Jon Stobart’s Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650 - 1830 has made a significant attempt to reconstruct the experience and meaning of grocery shopping within the period; however, it notably does not use gender as a tool for analysis.[5] This paper seeks to bridge the gap in scholarship by looking at groceries themselves and the practice of grocery shopping as a means of understanding the changing experience of gender, economics, and empire in early modern England.

Women shopping for fruit with their children. Displays of local and exotic fruit appear in the windows of the store.

Women shopping for fruit with their children

James Pollard, The Greengrocer, 1819, Watercolor, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.4098.

Constructing the early modern grocery store is a difficult task due to the diversity of shops and shopping experiences described within pamphlets and books and demonstrated in engravings and prints within the period. Shops could come in many forms ranging from a wooden “lock-up,” market stalls throughout town, to a stationary storefront. Estimates of the number of grocery shops and general retailers are educated guesses as many individuals continued to sell in formal and informal ways; however, contemporary writers expected the number of stores in London alone was between fifty-thousand and a hundred-thousand.[6] Throughout the early modern period, spaces for acquiring groceries became increasingly found in fixed retail shops, permanently built stores for the purpose of selling.[7] Selling was distinct from manufacturing, thus grocers and general stores were not attached to workshops. Groceries became localized spaces for consumption within a community. The size of the fixed shop increased throughout the eighteenth century and also became more stylized. Distinct architecture, like fascia boards, hanging signs, projecting and bow windows, and painted borders, demarcated the urban grocery store.[8] The intended class of consumer played a major role in the construction and decoration of the grocery store as shops targeting upper class customers were filled with decorative molding, arches, pillars, cornices, and screens.[9] Fine goods would be displayed in glass cabinets with “mahogony frames” and oak drawers “lind with velvet.”[10] Mirrors and pictures hung on the walls of these shops, further communicating that status of the desired shopper and connecting aesthetic to material conceptions of wealth. In stores targeting less affluent customers, goods were more frequently displayed outside of the physical shell of the shop. Produce and other items were stacked on windows instead of shut away in display cases. Cloths were draped and hung from upper story windows.[11] Design and display of grocery stores were essential to bringing consumers into the space of consumption.

 In The art of memory so far forth as it dependeth upon places and idea's, the author John Willis muses on his ability to construct vivid images of scenes and experiences as a display of his intellect. In one of his visions, he describes a grocery store in great detail. Willis recalls the “common custome of Grocers shops,” in which boxes of labeled spices were displayed along the side wall.[12] Opposite from this display is the counter where the Grocer “weigh[s] pepper in a pair of ballance” using silver scales.[13] Willis' recollection reveals that the grocery store had its own unique construction within the minds of seventeenth century Englishmen and women. Consumers held certain expectations for store appearance, the kinds of goods being sold, and the experience of shopping. How a store looked helped to communicate sales methods, standard of goods, and intended customers. Further, shop design also established business credibility and identity. Despite differences in store construction, each of them became centers for consumption within their community and at the individual level.

The practice and experience of grocery shopping became deeply tied to gender during the eighteenth century. Throughout the early modern era, widespread professionalization and commercialization excluded women from participation in skilled trades ranging from goldsmithing to grocer. In a list of over four thousand names of grocers in the seventeenth century, only fifty were identifiably female.[14] Broader shifts of production and consumption to outside of the domestic sphere redefined women’s work and made it difficult, if not impossible to fully participate in the professional world. During this period women moved out of production, while men moved out of consumption.[15] The separation of masculine and feminine identities with regard to expectations of work and economic production combined with contemporary expectations of women’s proper role as wives and mothers allowed women to occupy a new role as domestic managers. Women became responsible for buying provisions and necessities for their families as well as maintaining the status of the family through acts of consumption.[16] The role of women as primary consumers initiated changes to the process of selling goods within the world of the grocery store. Advertisements and shop design were specifically used to entice women, bringing them into stores. Pamphlets were published to help women make wise purchases. In The Experienced Market Man and Woman, the author advises their readers to ask to check cheese for worms and maggots, look at their eggs in the sun to determine their freshness and to look at the stems, soft spots, and coloring of fruits like oranges before purchasing to ensure their are not rotten.[17] Common law held men legally liable for family debts, yet, women were allowed to make purchases on behalf of their husbands and even use their husbands’ credit for necessities.[18] Women who lacked the ability to even own property achieved a limited degree of economic power through their role as consumers. Account books from this period were used to track family spending and were often kept by women within the household highlighting the idea that women are responsible for the domestic sphere and the shifting reliance of the household on consumption. The gendered segregation of consumption had become institutionalized by the early modern era.

In addition to reflecting contemporary understandings of gender, grocery stores also reflected economic changes in the period. Historians have debated in recent years whether these economic developments in early modern England constitute a “consumer revolution” or emphasize the long term expansion of the ownership of consumer goods.[19] This essay does not seek to argue the degree of economic transformation in the period, but rather seeks to acknowledge how those changes were experienced by consumers within the context of the grocery store. Cash sales and setting prices for goods became popular during the early modern era. The Complete English Tradesman reflects on this change, claiming “now Money being the common receipt, and standard of all the World as to commerce and community one with another.”[20] The standardization of purchases through currency rather than the barter system or the exchange of “like” goods affected both the process of buying and selling goods. Spices and housewares had a specified monetary value that could be understood by both consumers and grocers and thus communicated an understanding of personal wealth and worth. In a culture of conspicuous and polite consumption in which the purchasing and usage of goods were deeply tied to personal identity, value, and status. The ability to buy more expensive spices or sugar communicated wealth, embodying conspicuous consumption.

The commercial changes of the early modern era were tied closely to colonial expansion.  The consumption of colonial foodstuffs increased exponentially during the eighteenth century from two thousand pounds in 1700 to eleven million pounds by 1785.[21] Tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate were envisioned as exotic, luxury goods, but had become understood as everyday items for the contemporary consumer.[22] Grocery stores offered ranges or gradations of these exotic products which enabled a more diverse population to participate within their consumption. The labeling of groceries from different colonial locations also further contributed to conspicuous consumption and directly connected the experience of English men and women to the empire. Individuals could go to the store and buy Jamaican rum, Barbados sugar, and Brazilian tobacco.[23] The mass participation in empire within the domestic sphere through grocery consumption can be found in recipe books throughout the period. In a survey of four recipe books from 1663 to 1760, sugar is found in approximately a third of all recipes and was the most used grocery in all but one the books.[24] Pepper, nutmeg, mace, and cloves were also included in a relatively high proportion of English recipes, furthering the reach of empire books through English diets.[25] Through the consumption of groceries, English men and women became active participants in empire. Consumers of colonial goods economically encouraged current and further imperial projects by continuing to provide a market for these imperial while also developing their English cultural identity in response to their relationship a foreign other.

Throughout the early modern period, the grocery store served as a space for participation in the culture of consumption. Women’s primary involvement in grocery shopping yet exclusion from store ownership reveals the sharp gendering of consumption where wives and mothers function as domestic managers who were stripped of their role as producers. The grocery store became a space in which broader economic changes like the standardization of currency and prices played out in the public sphere. Finally, grocery shopping became an outlet English women and men to become active participants and agents of empire.

Works Cited:

Defoe, Daniel. The Complete English Tradesman. London: 1726.

Kolwaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Schmidgen, Wolfram M. “Disciplinary Dilemmas in the Study of Persons and Things”, Journal of British Studies 38, no. 2 (1999).

Shannon, Brent Alan. The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006.

Stobart, Jon. Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650 - 1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

The Experienced Market Man and Woman: Or Profitable Instructions, to all Masters and Mistrisses of Families, Servants and Others, to Know the Goodness of all Sorts of Provisions, and Prevent being Cheated and Imposed on ... Butchers Meat, to Know Whether Young Or Old, Fresh Kil'd Or Stale ... how to Know all Sorts of Poulterers Ware ...to Know the Goodness of Badness of all Sorts of Fish ... Directions to Prevent being Defrauded in Buying Butter, Eggs, Cheese, Bread, English and Outlandish Fruits, and Other Things that may Turn to Much Profite and Advantage. Edinburgh: 1699.

“To Make Sugar Cakes.” 2023. In MS.7746, English Recipe Book, Early 18th Century. https://domesticknowledge.pubpub.org/pub/5ebuhlg5.

Walsh, Claire. “Shop Design and the Display of Goods in Eighteenth-Century London.” Journal of Design History 8, no. 3 (1995).

Willis, John. The Art of Memory so Far Forth as it Dependeth Vpon Places and Idea's[Sic] Written First in Latine, by Iohn Willis Bachelour in Diuinitie: And Now Published in English by the Said Author, with such Alternations Thereof as Seemed Needful [Mnemonica, sive reminiscendi ars. Book 3.]. London: 1621.

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