The field of entrepreneurship has grown substantially over the last two decades and there is an increasing interest in exploring how family issues influence entrepreneurship as well as how entrepreneurial activities impact business families (Chrisman, Chua & Steier, 2003; Cliff and Aldrich, 2003). In this paper, our aim is to generate ‘novel’ knowledge about gender and identity dynamics in relation to women entrepreneurship in a family context. Women play an important direct and indirect role in entrepreneurial activities, but there is still a need for research on women in entrepreneurship and family contexts (Brush, 1992; Nelton, 1998; Danes and Olsen, 2003; Sharma, 2004). In a family context, relevant work on female entrepreneurs often concentrates on the role of co-entrepreneurs or copreneurs (e.g., de Bruin & Lewis, 2006). Recently, entrepreneurship researchers have argued to take into account the ‘everydayness’ of entrepreneurship (Steyaert and Katz, 2004), family and household contexts (e.g., Aldrich, & Cliff, 2003) and its social context (e.g., Davidsson, 2003). This takes on particular importance with regard to women in entrepreneurship; as such a perspective will draw attention to the ‘more silent feminine personal end’ of entrepreneurship (Bird & Brush, 2002: 57).

To make a contribution towards this knowledge gap, we turn to two classic novels that will serve as the basis for generating new insights about the role of women in entrepreneurial processes in a business family context. What we especially focus on are historical socio-economic structures, work, family, and organized social life from a gender and identity-dynamic perspective. Interpreting the representations of the two women in our novels from this perspective, we are also able to forge a link to the representations of women in related contemporary research literature thereby unfolding present-day challenges for women in entrepreneurial activities in the family businesses arena.