FASHION AND NATIONALISM IN VICTORIAN NOVELS A Dissertation by AMY LOUISE MONTZ ...

311 Pages·2008·2.41 MB·English

DRESSING FOR ENGLAND:
FASHION AND NATIONALISM IN VICTORIAN NOVELS

A Dissertation
by
AMY LOUISE MONTZ

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2008

Major Subject: English
DRESSING FOR ENGLAND:
FASHION AND NATIONALISM IN VICTORIAN NOVELS

A Dissertation
by
AMY LOUISE MONTZ

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved by:
Chair of Committee, Mary Ann O’Farrell
Committee Members, Melanie C. Hawthorne
Sally Robinson
Lynne Vallone
Head of Department, M. Jimmie Killingsworth

August 2008

Major Subject: English
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ABSTRACT

Dressing for England: Fashion and Nationalism in Victorian Novels. (August 2008)
Amy Louise Montz, B.A., Louisiana State University;
M.A., Louisiana State University
Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mary Ann O’Farrell

Victorian women were not merely the symbols of nation nineteenth-century
imagery would suggest in an era marked by the images of Queen Victoria and the
symbolic representation of Britannia. They also were producers, maintainers, and even
protectors of England at a time when imperial anxiety and xenophobic fears called the
definition of Englishness into question. Dress, particularly fashionable dress, often was
viewed as a feminine weakness in Victorian England. At the same time women were
chastised for their attentions to the details of their clothing, they also were instructed to
offer a pretty and neat presentation publicly and privately. Novels by George Eliot,
Elizabeth Gaskell, William Thackeray, and H. G. Wells and manners and conduct texts
by such authors as Sarah Stickney Ellis, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Margaret Oliphant
demonstrate how Victorian women used fashion and dress to redefine and manipulate
the socially accepted understanding of traditional English womanhood and to
communicate national ideologies and concerns without violating or transgressing
completely the more passive construction of Victorian femininity.
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By declaring their nationality through the public display that is fashion—dress
designated by its appeal to a sophisticated, cultured, and perhaps continental society—
these fictional and non-fictional women legitimized the demand for female access to
social and cultural spheres as well as to the political sphere. Through an examination of
the material culture of Victorian England—personal letters about the role of specific
dress in Suffragette demonstrations, or the Indian shawl, for example—alongside an
examination of the literary texts of the period, “Dressing for England” argues that the
novels of the nineteenth century and that century’s ephemera reveal its social concerns,
its political crises, and the fabric of its everyday domesticity at the same time they reveal
the active and intimate participation of Victorian women in the establishment and
maintenance of nation.
v
DEDICATION

For my family
vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No work is created in a vacuum, and no dissertation writer completes this long
and arduous process without incurring many debts, and incurring them gratefully. I, like
Becky Sharp, incurred many of my debts both at home and abroad, and I wish to thank
those at home first for their help: the librarians and interlibrary-loan staff members of
Texas A&M University. I also want to thank those abroad for their help, the librarians
and curators in England: Elly Summers at the Fashion Museum in Bath; Siobhán
Summerfield and Eva White at the Victoria and Albert Museum Archives; all of the
workers at the Women’s Library in London, especially Sonia Hope, Beverley Kemp, and
Dianne Shepherd; all of the workers at the British Library; and Oriole Cullen and Sarah
Williams at the Museum of London. Most special thanks go to Beverley Cook at the
Museum of London, without whose help in the archives and, most importantly, via email
thousands of miles away, my suffrage chapter would have been impossible.
I am further indebted and very grateful to Texas A&M University’s College of
Liberal Arts, Women’s Studies program, English Department, Melbern G. Glasscock
Center for Humanities Research, and Office of Graduate Studies and the Senator Phil
Gramm Doctoral Fellowship for generous grants, fellowships, assistantships, and
scholarships in support of this dissertation and its research. I also wish to thank the
Museum of London for permission to reproduce images from its archives.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the staff of the English Department at
Texas A&M, particularly Martin Anderson, Teri Czajkowski, and Paulette Lesher, and
to the professors in the department and in the university at large, particularly, Dennis
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Berthold, Margaret Ezell, Jim Harner, Jimmie Killingsworth, Clint Machann, Howard
Marchitello, Pam Matthews, Larry Oliver, Paul Parrish, Jim Rosenheim, and Susan
Stabile. I am indebted to the intellectual community of the New Modern British Studies
Group, whose members provided much stimulation and companionship, particularly
faculty members Susan Egenolf, Marian Eide, Liz Ho, Kate Kelly, David McWhirter,
Claudia Nelson, and Victoria Rosner, and graduate students Laura Cheshier, Amanda
Himes, Emily Janda, and Sonya Sawyer.
Thank you to friends far and wide, whose offers and modes of assistance and
help are too numerous to name. They know what they have done, and how it has eased
mental, intellectual, and emotional burdens. Thanks to Andrea Adolph, Lindy Calzada,
Ki Yoon Jang, Dana and Nick Lawrence, Margot Reinhard, and Sharon Weltman. Also,
my academic work would have suffered greatly if not for the help of two friends and
colleagues who are amazing—that is, patient, kind, and strict—writing partners: Meghan
Gilbert-Hickey and Gina Opdycke Terry.
Thanks to my family for their support. To those still with us—my Montz and
Herbet cousins, uncles, and aunts, and my Rintala in-laws—thank you for your love and
encouragement. Particular thanks to my grandmother, Marvel Herbet, for love and
encouragement, and also for the closet of fashionable accoutrements with which I played
as a child. To those gone ahead: my grandfather, Robert Joseph Herbet, and my
grandparents Louise and Edward Montz, thank you.
The four people who have provided a lion’s share of the intellectual and
emotional help throughout this dissertation process are, of course, my four outstanding
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committee members. Thank you to Melanie Hawthorne, Sally Robinson, and Lynne
Vallone, who in their persons and in their work embody the very model of strong
mentorship. Your advice and support have been indispensable to me throughout this
dissertation process and throughout my graduate student career. Ultimately, and without
exaggeration, this project would not have been possible without my director, Mary Ann
O’Farrell; for words of advice and encouragement, for much-needed deadlines, for talk
of fashion (Victorian and contemporary) and fashionable things (crinolines and Project
Runway), and for being the professional and the personal woman I aspire to be, thank
you, always.
It seems easy to say that without my parents, this would not have been possible,
but I say it without hyperbole and with complete understanding of its import. My father,
Byron Montz, and my mother, Frances Montz, have worked their entire lives so that I
might benefit academically, personally, and socially. Thanks for your constant love,
attention, support, and guidance. I have lived my life the way you taught me, and I hope
I have made you proud.
And finally, to the person who has lived with this dissertation since its inception
as a brief idea for a seminar paper to a full-length project that required two trips abroad
(and only one with him), my husband, Anthony Rintala, I offer my life, my love, and my
deepest and most sincere thanks. You have supported me so that I might finish my
degree, but it is your and Harley’s love that has kept my head above water. This is my
song, clumsy and unwieldy as it is, but it is sincere, and I give it, with all my heart, to
you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii
DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................... vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER
I INTRODUCTION: LADIES’ BUSINESS, FEMININE WEAKNESS,
FASHIONABLE DRESS ..................................................................... 1

Reading Fashion and Conveying Nation in Popular Victorian
Novels ............................................................................................. 8
Exploring the Power of an “Interesting Feminine Weakness”:
Chapter Summaries ........................................................................ 16

II “THAT WICKED PARIS”: EMPIRE, XENOPHOBIA, AND
FASHION IN ENGLAND ................................................................... 25

The Preservation of Englishness: Empire and Gaskell .................. 31
“National Madness”: The Social War Between England and
France ............................................................................................. 47

III FASHION OUT OF PLACE: ENGLISHNESS ABROAD,
FOREIGNNESS AT HOME, AND THE NATURAL-ARTIFICIAL
DIVIDE ................................................................................................ 79

The French Invasion: William Thackeray’s Fashionable
Humbug .......................................................................................... 88
The “Natural” Englishwoman: William Thackeray’s
Unfashionable Darling ................................................................... 118

IV “THE WILL AND PLEASURE OF WOMEN”: THE FEMININE
LOVE OF FASHION AND ENGLAND’S RESPONSE .................... 139

“Those Painted Dressy Women”: Fallenness and the Fashion
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CHAPTER Page

Worker’s Plight .............................................................................. 149
“Their Own Taste and Convenience”: Fashion and Female
Autonomy ....................................................................................... 172

V WOMEN WHO DID: THE NEW WOMAN, DRESS REFORM,
AND THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT ............................................... 199

“Strength and Honour Are Her Clothing”: Suffrage,
Nationalism, and Fashion ............................................................... 205
“Now She’s All Hats and Ideas”: The New Woman and the
Public Response ............................................................................. 223
Shop Window Symbolism: The 1912 Suffragette Attack on the
West End ........................................................................................ 256

VI CONCLUSION: FASHION AND NATION FORWARD .................. 270

WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 275
APPENDIX A ........................................................................................................... 294
VITA ......................................................................................................................... 301