CRIPPLED CAPITALISTS: THE INSCRIPTION OF ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE AND THE CHALLENGE OF FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

Abstract

This article examines how women's efforts at capital accumulation and wealth production in late nineteenth-century United States were shaped and channeled by gender stereotypes. These stereotypes influenced the public attitudes held by both men and women that called into question women's financial capabilities, their relationship to money and the financial markets, and their capacity to translate their wealth into political power. Popular American ideals about an individual's ability to make and remake himself or herself competed with equally significant essentialist ideas about what constitutes a man and a woman. While women achieved gains, they did so despite huge challenges that limited their ability to exercise the power Americans commonly associate with financial success.

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