INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 3I3n61-4700 800tS21-o600 FABRICATING IDENTITIES: DRESS IN AMERICAN REALIST NOVELS, 1880 - 1925 by Carolyn L. Mathews A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1996 UMI Number: 9715597 Copyright 1996 by Mathews, Carolyn Louise All rights reserved. UMI Microfonn 9715597 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 MATHEWS, CAROLYN L., PH.D. Fabricating Identities: Dress in American Realist Novels, 1880-1925. (1996) Directed by Or. Kelley Griffith. 378pp. The vital connection between self and the clothed body forms the basis for this study of representative American realist novels set during the decades spanning the years 1875 to 1925. American social history of these decades is marked both by the swelling of a middle class defined through respectability and by the emergence of a consumer culture that promised through its proliferation of images and commodities that the "good life" was within the reach of all. This history sets the scene for these literary works. In examining female characters' attempts to construct selves outfitted for this new social order, I argue that in these characters' quests to move beyond the domestic sphere, a model for social change emerges. Through focusing on novelists' descriptions of clothing and through mapping out the cultural grid that brings symbolic meaning to these descriptions, this study aims toward recreating what Mikhail Bakhtin called "the social atmosphere of the word." A complex weave of cultural meanings is illuminated through attention to dress and to the social backdrop against which it etches its fashion statement. Unravelling the "living dialogic threads" weaving themselves around images of draped and bustled skirts, gigot sleeves, or serpentine teagowns, a reader can begin to expose the warp of social class and gender expectations integral to selfhood and examine the emerging constructions of the female self. In the novels selected for this study--Henry James's The Portrajt of a Lady, Kate Chopin's The AwakeMng, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Willa Cather's My Antonia, and Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground--various female characters accept. challenge, contradict, or oppose the social forces impinging upon self. As each takes from a closet of possibilities the womanly practices and womanly images that suit her, some select in a willy-nilly fashion a hybrid ensemble that pulls from opposite ends of cultural poles. This new ensemble--partaking in dominant forms but rearranging and thus amending them--works to outfit at least some of these fictional characters for change. Informed by Bakhtin's socio-linguistic theory of the novel. reception theories that examine triadic models for meaning-making, and work of material historians and cultural critics, this study provides a model for using images of dress as a tool for interpreting literary texts. © 1996 By Carolyn L. Mathews APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Date of Acceptance by Committee !) e I 0 h-VL ), 4 I cr 9 (, Date of Final Oral Examination i i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the following people who have helped me in the creation of this dissertation: To my committee, Professors Kelley Griffith, Hephzibah Roskelly, Keith Cushman, Gregory Meyerson, and Nan Enstad, each of whom has guided me in his or her unique way toward clearer perceptions about literature and culture, toward a greater awareness of writing as a tool both for understanding and for communicating that understanding to others. To Kelley Griffith, especially, who first prompted my study of American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and who has continued throughout this project to inspire intense work and the confidence to continue. I deeply appreciate his guidance and his reminding me of the astonishing power of a teacher's belief in a student's work. To Nan Enstad, whose expertise, insightful questioning, and generous teaching have furthered my thinking and sustained me through this study. To my parents Lloyd and Geraldine Mathews, who fostered my initial love of language, story, history, and reading; parents whose unfailing love and support have urged me always toward my goals and whose lives have been examples to me of learning and of love of work. To my friend Tom McGahey, who has listened long and encouraged endlessly and who will remind me always of the power of narrative; to Marsha Holmes, whose warmth strengthens me and whose ideas kindle my thinking daily; to Beth Baldwin, whose friendship, sense of humor, and keen insight delight me. To my friends Marcy Rice and Katharine Purcell for their questions, encouragement, and offers of tea; to my sister Joanne, to Grace Wells and to Ann Reddy Damon for their love and friendship. To my writing partner and friend Anita Rose, whose careful reading and questioning facilitated this work more than she can ever know. Thanks, Anita. i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ........................................................ i i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................... i i i CHAPTER I. The 'vital touch of becomingness': Dress, Se 1f, and Socia 1 Change ........................... II. The Lady in James's Portrait I Womanhood On the Move. • . • . • . 41 II. Fabricating the Solitary Self: Dress in Kate Chopin's The Awakening•........•............. 85 IV. 'Who wants a dingy woman?': Pigs, Cloaks, and Class in Wharton's The House of Mirth ..•.............. 135 V. When Lace Collars Speak: Desire and the Fashioning of Self in Dreiser's Sister Carrie •..•...•..... 204 VI. 'Material Out of Which Countries Are Made': Immigration and Becoming American in Cather's MyAnton ia ......•......•.. •.••......•...................... 269 VII. 'You can't farm in skirts': Cultivating Self Through Work in Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground ............. 313 WORKS CITED ........................................................ 351 iv Chapter One The rvital touch of becomingness': Dress, Self, and Social Change In a key scene of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer and Madame Merle debate the seemingly trivial question of dress as they begin to unravel a deeper enigma. "What shall we call our rself'?" Madame Merle demands. "Where does it begin? where does it end?" Then proposing that the self "overflows into everything that belongs to us (172), Madame Merle asserts that her self is "in large part . the clothes [she] chooses to wear" (172). In her view, clothes do make the woman. For James's Madame Merle clothing becomes the self as the self becomes the clothing. In this dialectical relationship between garment and wearer, the becoming garment pleasingly clothes its wearer, but it does much more: it initiates a coming to be. Becoming clothes, 1 ike some magical cloak picked up and slipped on, mysteriously transforms the wearer. He or she becomes someone new. Florence Winterburn's 1914 treatise, Principles of Correct Dress, acknowledges the power of clothing to metamorphose the wearer. Advising women to use as their guiding rule for the selection of gowns the "vital touch of becomingness" (emphasis hers 68), Winterburn proposes that a gown's cut, color, and fabric should act as a boon to the wearer's body type and complexion. Such attention to "toilette," she maintains, enables the wearer to take on "the character belonging of right to [the] raiment" (178). Then retelling an old tale 2 of a princess transformed into a beggar by a change of c 1othes, she writes, "The very speech and sentiments of the poverty-stricken wretch became her own, impossible to be improved while the fetters of rags hung about her" (180). Clothing, through the process of becomingness, once again