Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Poplett, Patricia (2015) Textiles in Texts: Literary Representations of Women's Textile Crafts. Master of Philosophy (MPhil) thesis, University of Kent, N/A. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/49525/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html The University of Kent School of European Culture and Languages Comparative Literature Research Study MPhil. Thesis - 2015 Textiles in Texts: Literary Representations of Women’s Textile Crafts Patricia M Poplett - Student No. 10902668 Supervisors: Dr. A.K. Schaffner Dr. P.A. March Russell [email protected] Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to my supervisors Dr. Anna Schaffner and Dr. Paul March Russell for their encouragement and assistance in the completion of this thesis. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 A Distinctly Female Tradition……………………………………………..1 The Organisation of the Study……………………………………...........2 The Importance of Textiles to Human Existence..................................6 Mythological Archetypes…………………………………………………..9 Text and Textile Connections…………………………………..............13 Chapter One - Texts and Textiles Convergences………………………….16 Texts and Textiles Shared Feature …………………………............16 Textile Tradition and the Female Greek Poets…………………………22 Women’s Weaving in the Homeric Epic.………………………………..27 ‘Talk and Tell’ – Textiles and Storytelling……………………………….37 Commonalities in the Process of Construction…………………………46 Volatility and Style in Texts and Textiles………………………………..51 Reading Textiles…………………………………………………………...54 Chapter Two - The Nineteenth-Century Politics of Women’s Textiles in Bront and Phelps ………………………………………………………….56 The Organisation and Industrialisation of Textile Production…………56 The Woman Question……………………………………………………..58 Textile Representations in Charlotte Bront’s Shirley ………………...62 Textiles and the Inculcation of Femininity……………………………….64 Patterns of Femininity……………………………………………………..68 The ‘Jew-basket’…………………………………………………………...72 The Victorian Myths of Womanhood……………………………………..78 Challenging Gender Stereotypes………………………………………...85 Poverty and Women’s Textiles…………………………………………...91 The Silent Partner………………………………………………………….96 Women’s Textiles and Industrial Change……………………………...106 Chapter Three – The Making of Female Space: Twentieth-Century Representations of Women’s Textiles in Lawrence and Walker…………………………………………………………………………….110 The Creative Processes…………………………………………………110 Textiles and Modernist Myth in D.H.Lawrence’s The Ladybird …….112 The Thimble………………………………………………………………118 The Representation of Isis………………………………………………127 Women’s Needlework in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple…………..132 Postmodernist Elements of the Text…………………………………...136 A Female Space………………………………………………………….141 The History of Quilting…………………………………………………...146 The Intervention of Shug Avery…………………………………………151 A Needle not a Razor…………………………………………………….155 Textiles and Female Creativity………………………………………….158 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………162 The Text and Textile Relationship……………………………………..162 Text and Textiles Convergences……………………………………….163 The Politics of Nineteenth-Century Textiles…………………………..168 The Making of Female Space…………………………………………..171 Women’s Textiles in Texts………………………………………………175 Women’s Textiles the Contemporary Perspective……………………177 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..181 Introduction A Distinctly Female Tradition Throughout long periods of time the story of women has remained hidden. Accounts of the past are primarily male-authored, their focus directed towards the recording of masculine achievements and activities. Before the nineteenth century women had few opportunities to participate in the process of chronicling their lives as for generations the majority of women were excluded from literary culture due to limited access to education. It is for this reason that the traditional handicrafts of women, their spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing and embroidery, have fulfilled a special need. These crafts offered women a means of communication and of self- expression that defied expectations of the passive role of women in society. The textile tradition of women may, however, be considered in a broader context than one of personal expression. The production of textiles is an important signifying practice, one that pre-dated texts as a means of preserving and transferring information. To the present day, in cultures throughout the world, it is accepted that textiles possess and convey meaning. Indeed, in many early civilisations significant events were recorded in textile form. Women have always been substantially involved in this activity. Writing of the 20,000 year-old history of women’s textiles Elizabeth Wayland Barber (1995) catalogues the ancient remains of tools and of fragments of cloth that confirm the practice of textile making for millennia before the first texts were created. Sources of evidence, including archaeological and ethnological studies, conclude that the main responsibility for this work fell to women. Regrettably, textiles are susceptible to decay so few stand the test of time. As a consequence, as with so much of the work and experience of women, material evidence of the part played by women in establishing the origins of cultural 1 communication is lost. It is for this reason that the contribution of women and their handiwork to systems for the exchange of information, and subsequently to the development of civilisation remains substantially unacknowledged. It is largely through written texts that it is possible to identify and to define the communicative aspects of women’s textile making. Therefore, the foremost objective of this study is to use literary representations from different periods to attempt to show the scope, function and influence of women’s textiles. The study explores two main strands of investigation. The first is to determine the nature and the extent of the relationship between women’s textile crafts and texts. The second is to establish the capacity of textual representations of women and their textiles to reflect hidden aspects of female history and culture, and how these relate to critical moments and crucial themes of textile history. Through this dual focus it is proposed to evaluate the contribution of women’s textile crafts to both cultural and literary advancement and to the illustration of female experience over time. The Organisation of the Study This investigation of the connections between textiles and texts and assessment of the signifying capacity of women’s textiles is organised into three chapters: ‘Texts and Textiles Convergences’; ‘The Nineteenth-Century Politics of Women’s Textiles in Bront and Phelps; and ‘The Making of Female Space: Twentieth-Century Representations of Women’s Textiles in Lawrence and Walker’. This structure allows the study to progress chronologically through time from antiquity until the late twentieth century. The limited space in this study and long and complex history of women’s textiles means that it is not possible to provide a complete picture of the literary representations of the female preoccupation with textiles from antiquity to the present day. Instead, the study concentrates on detailed close-readings of 2 paradigmatic case studies. The chapters are specifically themed to reflect the most significant periods and themes in the literary representation of the history of textiles. The focus of chapter one is the identification of the characteristics that are shared by texts and textiles, and the exploration of the qualities and continuity of these connections in texts of the ancient world. In the chapter questions are posed as to whether or not the shared etymology of the crafts has led to a linkage that is merely metaphoric, or if the existence of commonalities in terminology and process are indicators of a more substantive connection, and that textile making has influenced the production of texts. Two intertwined constituents are investigated in this part of the study. The first of these is the exploration of analogies between women’s textiles and texts. The second is the connection between women’s textile work and the oral tradition of storytelling. These issues are explored via close readings of a number of ancient literary texts including fragments of the poems of the female Greek poets, Sappho, Erinna and Nossis, and the poems of Homer and Ovid. These texts allow access to early literary representations of women’s textile by both female and male authors, providing confirmation of the antiquity of textile practices and insight into aspects of female culture at this time. Examples of the identifiable