FASHION and NATIONALISM in VICTORIAN NOVELS a Dissertation by AMY LOUISE MONTZ Submitted to the Office Of

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 iii 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. iv 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 vii 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 viii 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. ix 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 ...............................................................................................

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