ABSTRACT
In a landmark ruling protecting free speech in shopping malls, the New Jersey Supreme Court argued that commercial space has emerged as the de facto civic public in late twentieth-century America. This chapter examines the conflict between civic and marketplace publics as it shaped the discourse on women consumers in late nineteenth-century France. The department store developed as a controversial new arena for bourgeois women. For the critics of big commerce, the advent of the department store signalled a change not simply in the structure of commercial life, but in the very nature of the relationship of the individual to society. Where women were concerned, the dangers of excessive individualism were perceived to be particularly potent. Not only were the spectacularly displayed commodities in the department store said to whet the dormant appetites and incite the prurient desires of the kleptomaniac, but the shopper was easily wrought to frenzy in the presence of unruly crowds.
