Papers presented by Susan Ingalls Lewis since 2019
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"Hiding in Plain Sight: Female Microentrepreneurs in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend"
Susan Ingalls Lewis, State University of New York, New Paltz
Abstract:
Historians of nineteenth-century businesswomen in the United States, Britain, the British Empire, and Europe have discovered a wide range of female entrepreneurial activities, from the proprietorship of major local businesses such as stores and hotels, to operating tiny home-based shops or taking in boarders. A study of nineteenth century fiction reveals an even wider range of micro-businesses operated by women. (I define business as any economic activity that generates a profit in contrast to employment for wages or salaries, and identify micro-businesses as those in which a sole proprietor with four or fewer helpers -- often family members -- acts as both owner of and worker in their own venture.) Minor characters in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) include four female micro-entrepreneurs: a tavern-keeper, the owner of a pawn shop, a dolls’ dressmaker, and a child-minder who is also a laundress, later turned itinerant peddler. Each woman represents a different level of prosperity, power and autonomy; together they suggest the variety of micro-entrepreneurial options available to women in Victorian London. Supplementing this analysis with evidence from Henry Mayhew’s London Labor and the London Poor (1840s-1861) enables us to explore the panoply of tiny, quirky entrepreneurial ventures available to women (and men) in the modernizing, industrializing cities and towns of the mid-nineteenth century.
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2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform
"Breaking Barriers, Thinking Bigger "
Susan Ingalls Lewis, State University of New York, New Paltz
Abstract:
(Individual abstract for proposed roundtable) My contribution will consider the value of collaboration and embracing a global viewpoint for the analysis of nineteenth-century women’s business history. Despite significant support from the business history community, the study of female entrepreneurs in the United States remains a relatively small field. Research on women in business around the globe has been even more limited, and often dependent on U.S., British, or European models. The collaboration of scholars in an edited volume and associated workshop broke barriers and encouraged unexpected connections. A very wide range of nineteenth-century women’s business activities – from piracy in China, to management in Japan, to philanthropic endeavors in Turkey, to laundering in Mexico, to cookbook authorship in Australia, complicated our definition of business. At the same time, patterns of female proprietorship (particularly shop-keeping) were clearly evident when comparing Europe, North America, and the British Empire. Comparisons across continents and cultures were intriguing, though we realized that we were only taking the first halting steps in what must be a long-term process. Our common experience of being located “on the margins” of business history, as well as the women’s history of our own regions, inspires us to think about broader issues, larger networks, and ways to shape both business and women’s history in the future. I will speculate that the most valuable aspect of this collaboration is less in finding answers than in formulating new, bigger questions. In particular, we must ask: what was the contribution of women owned-and-managed businesses to the economy of the long nineteenth century, and what was the impact of the major economic changes of this period on female proprietors.
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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina
"Breaking Barriers, Thinking Bigger"
Susan Ingalls Lewis, State University of New York, New Paltz
Abstract:
My discussion will consider the value of collaboration and embracing a global viewpoint for the analysis of nineteenth-century women’s business history. Despite significant support from the business history community, the study of female entrepreneurs in the United States remains a relatively small field. Research on women in business around the globe has been even more limited, and often dependent on U.S., British, or European models. The collaboration of scholars in an edited volume and associated workshop broke barriers and encouraged unexpected connections. Although some of the participants knew each other well, others were familiar only by reputation, and still others were newcomers to the specialization. A wide range of nineteenth-century women’s business activities – from piracy in China, to management in Japan, to philanthropic endeavors in Turkey, to laundering in Mexico, to cookbook authorship in Australia, complicated our definition of business. At the same time, patterns of female proprietorship (particularly shop-keeping) were clearly evident when comparing Europe, North America, and the British Empire. Comparisons across continents and cultures were intriguing, though we realized that we were only taking the first steps in what must be a long-term process. For example, although our group represented research on regions around the globe, areas such as India and South East Asia remained under-represented. In addition, most scholars researching women in business were themselves from Europe, Britain and its former colonies, or the Americas – again, limiting the scope of our project. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this collaboration was less in finding answers than in formulating new, bigger questions. Our common experience of being located “on the margins” of business history, as well as the women’s history of our own regions, inspired us to think about broader issues, larger networks, and ways to shape both business and women’s history.