Ladies' Cafés and Gentlemen's Coffee-rooms
Bourgeois Women's and Men's Separated Spaces in the Late Nineteenth Century
This article deals with the sex-divided spaces in Stockholm in the late nineteenth century. According to bourgeois values the women of this class were associated with the private, domestic space and men with the public. Women who entered the public sphere without chaperon or escort were connected with dubious moral. The men moved freely in the public space. They could meet men from the same class at the coffee-rooms, where no women were allowed. About this time women step by step enlarged their sphere of mobility and made part of the public space to their own. Department stores and cafés are examples of spaces where they could dwell without protecting company. By entering this new half-public women-spaces the women stretched the limits of accepted femininity. In spite of this the conception about their immorality continued, but partly with different contents than before. Ladies in department stores were seen as wasteful, extravagant, spending their husbands money on futilities. Women at cafés were considered as spreading gossips and wasting their time. The presumed danger consisted in not taking their role as housewives seriously, that they would neglect their home and family.
