Victorian Material Culture
Tatiana Kontou, Kara Tennant, Tatiana Kontou, Kara Tennant
- 362 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Victorian Material Culture
Tatiana Kontou, Kara Tennant, Tatiana Kontou, Kara Tennant
About This Book
From chatelaines to whale blubber, ice making machines to stained glass, this six-volume collection will be of interest to the scholar, student or general reader alike - anyone who has an urge to learn more about Victorian things. The set brings together a range of primary sources on Victorian material culture and discusses the most significant developments in material history from across the nineteenth century. The collection will demonstrate the significance of objects in the everyday lives of the Victorians and addresses important questions about how we classify and categorise nineteenth-century things. This collection brings together a range of primary sources on Victorian material and culture. This volume, 'Fashionable Things', will focus on Victorian fads and fashions ranging from chatelains to insect jewellery.
Frequently asked questions
PART 1 Embodying Fashionability
1.1 Context
1.1 Context
[t]he manufacture of the simplest-looking modern gown, closely sheathing two-thirds of the body [âŠ] has become an affair demanding not only an inordinate degree of skill in the fitter, but a ruinous amount of time, patience and money on the part of the person fitted.15
Notes
- 1 H. R. H., âA Complaintâ, The Ladyâs Newspaper, 9 January 1847, p. 26.
- 2 C. Palmer, âColour, Chemistry and Corsets: Mary Philadelphia Merrifieldâs Dress as a Fine Artâ, Costume, 47(1), 2013, pp. 3â27 (p. 4).
- 3 Palmer, abstract to âColour, Chemistry and Corsetsâ, p. 3.
- 4 See K. Tennant, âFemale Space, Feminine Grace: Ladies and the Mid-Victorian Railwayâ, in K. Hill (ed.), Britain and the Narration of Travel in the Nineteenth Century: Texts, Images, Objects (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 53â72 (p. 58), for further consideration of this series. In this chapter, a different instalment is discussed from that which we include in this volume, namely, that published in August 1857. It is also worth noting that there was some inconsistency within the âConduct and Carriageâ series in other installments; while in our selection on Mourning attire, the seriesâ young protagonist is named Gertrude, elsewhere she is called Geraldine.
- 5 [Anon], âConduct and Carriage; Or, Rules to Guide a Young Lady on Points of Etiquette and Good Breeding in her Intercourse with the Worldâ, The Ladiesâ Treasury, June 1857, pp. 119â120 (p. 120).
- 6 [Anon], âConduct and Carriageâ, p. 120.
- 7 [C. Stephen], âThoughtfulness in Dressâ, The Cornhill Magazine, September 1868, pp. 281â298. The article is attributed to Stephen by sources including S. D. Bernstein, âDesigns after Nature: Evolutionary Fashions, Animals, and Genderâ, in D. D. Morse and M. A. Danahay (eds.), Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2017 [first published in 2007 by Ashgate Publishing]), pp. 65â79 (p. 68).
- 8 [Stephen], âThoughtfulness in Dressâ, pp. 287, 292.
- 9 [Stephen], âThoughtfulness in Dressâ, p. 290.
- 10 For a brief consideration of âthe much-revered styleâ of French ladies, see K. Tennant, ââBuying in Styleâ: sartorial sensibilities and Victorian popular fictionâ, in J. Hatter and N. Moody (eds.), Fashion and Material Culture in Victorian Fiction and Periodicals (Brighton: Edward Everett Root Publishers, 2019), pp. 87â100 (p. 90).
- 11 [Anon], âA Ladyâs Question: What Shall We Wear?â, London Society, May 1869, pp. 410â414 (p. 412).
- 12 [Anon], [Mrs Eliza Lynn Linton], âThe Girl of the Periodâ, The Saturday Review, 14 March 1868, pp. 339â340 (p. 340). This article is introduced and reproduced in Mitchell, pp. 65â70. Lintonâs article is discussed in K. Tennant, âThe Discerning Eye: Viewing the Mid-Victorian âModernâ Womanâ, in I. Parkins and E. M. Sheehan (eds.), Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2011), pp. 103â123 (p. 107); this chapter also addresses the concept of âfastnessâ, pp. 106â111. Tennant also very briefly addresses âfastnessâ in âFemale Space, Feminine Graceâ, p. 59. For further discussion of Linton and âThe Girl of the Periodâ, see H. Fraser, S. Green, and J. Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 21â26, as well as V. Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 128â130.
- 13 E. P. [Emily Pfeiffer], âThe Tyranny of Fashionâ, The Cornhill Magazine, July 1878, pp. 83â94. As Rosy Aindow notes, the article is generally agreed to have been authored by Pfeiffer. See R. Aindow, Dress and Identity in British Literary Culture, 1870â1914 (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), p. 57.
- 14 [Pfeiffer], âThe Tyranny of Fashionâ, p. 83.
- 15 [Pfeiffer], âThe Tyranny of Fashionâ, p. 84.
- 16 [Pfeiffer], âThe Tyranny of Fashionâ, p. 85.
- 17 Haweis, Mrs. H. R. [Mary Eliza], âImportance of Dressâ, in The Art of Beauty (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1878), p. 16.
- 18 Mitchellâs anthology includes an illuminating section on dress reform; see R. N. Mitchell, Fashioning the Victorians: a Critical Sourcebook (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018), pp. 61â64, as well as for an article by Florence Pomeroy, who was President of the Rational Dress Society (pp. 77â83).
- 19 [Anon], Statement and âEditorial Noteâ, The Rational Dress Societyâs Gazette, January 1889, p. 1. Also included within this extract is an âEditorial Noteâ that refers to Miss [Lydia] Becker, advocate for womenâs suffrage and editor of the Womenâs Suffrage Journal. Yet, as Christine Bayles Kortsch notes, Becker âtook a conservative stance on dressâ, opposing the abolition of the corset, directing women to âstick to [their] staysâ [corsets] and, as our extract details, only advising against tight-lacing. See C. B. Kortsch, Dress Culture in Late Victorian Womenâs Fiction (London and New York: Routledge, 2016 [originally published by Ashgate Publishing in 2009]), p. 91. See also V. Steele, The Corset: A Cultural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 59.
1 H. R. H., âA COMPLAINT.â The Ladyâs Newspaper, 9 January 1847, p. 26
TO THE EDITOR OF THE LADYâS NEWSPAPER.
âSIR, â A point to which I would call your attention is this: â In nearly all books of fashion, the ladies are represented as tall elegant figures, on whom dresses cannot choose but look well. Now, I belong to the âdumpyâ class, and am constantly mortified at finding nothing to suit me. Again, my hair is not of the graceful, redundant and flowing character, so prettily described in your pages; I have lost much during severe illness, but as it is growing again, and as I[]want yet three years of thirty, I am unwilling to begin to wear caps, but I should like to see a neat, ladylike, morning head dress, equally opposed to the formal seoignĂ©, and the tawdry compound of laces, ribbon, and bugles, with which our shop windows are ornamented. May I hope to find in your paper a satisfactory reply to these queries?âYourâs [sic] obediently, âH. R. H.â