Eirinn Larsen

Mixed feelings: Women, Jews, and business around 1900

At the turn of the 20th century, women in Norway possessed all the necessary rights to engage in business. An important reason for this legal development was the principle that unmarried women should be able to provide for themselves and avoid being an economic burden on their families or the authorities. The result was that in the first decades of the 20th century, many women were engaged in business and small-scale trade in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. However, social acceptance of these businesswomen did not follow automatically. With a departure point in theories of emotion, we demonstrate that businesswomen evoked mixed feelings in the public, as well as amongst the female proprietors themselves. By analysing the naming of their businesses, the rhetoric in the female trade society, and magazines, as well as their chosen areas of trade, we observe that while emotions such as shame guided their behaviour, material needs and the joy of work tended to even out these feelings. As Oslo was an immigrant city at the time, we have included a comparison with female members of the Jewish community, an important part of the entrepreneurialism of the times.

A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe

George Thierack, took a personal risk when he helped the Engländers leave Germany is interesting. The subsequent sentences about his career after this incident (p. 193) seem quite irrelevant. The eagerness to inform might also touch upon ethical questions: of what relevance is it, for instance, that Karin Boye (pp. 247–8) – and her partner – eventually committed suicide for the role they played as friends and helpers for Hans Holewa? It is also striking that while many persons with defined positions in the cultural or intellectual fields are extensively presented as important agents, Herbert Connors’ co-musician at many concert lectures only bears the title ‘his wife’ in the context (p. 302). Her maiden name, Elsbeth Kempf, is found only 20 pages earlier (p. 279), where she bears the title ‘his future wife’. But she was evidently also a musician, a singer? The author, who gives a fair explanation of the massive dominance of male characters in the book in the introduction, ought to have been more aware of opportunities to present women as agents, when they actually turn up. Despite such drawbacks, I am impressed by the huge amount of material Henrik Rosengren has studied and the way he structures and presents it through his core concepts of ‘loyalty’, ‘protest’, and ‘sorti’. Writing music history off the ‘great composers’ track, following musical personalities that have contributed as much as writers, teachers, researchers, and musicians, is challenging, but produces valuable insights, not least in the social networks and mechanisms of power and ideology that are otherwise often ignored.

The American introduction of “maternalism” as a historical concept

Abstract The concept of maternalism has, in recent years, gained currency among both American and European feminist scholars. Since its introduction in the United States in the early 1990s, maternalism has become a key concept in many feminist writings about gender and the welfare state. But, even though maternalism is both well known and well used, it is hard to find any unambiguous definition of this concept. In other words, maternalism is a rather slippery concept, because of its multiple definitions and applications. Hence to continue using this concept, we need to clarify its meaning more closely.