Fashion, Class, and Labor: Clothing in American Women's Fiction, 1840-1913

"Female factory operatives in the Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mills wrote and published The Lowell Offering in order to assert their own respectability. They define the operative in contrast to the fashionable ""lady do-nothing"" and reinforce the connection between dress and the labor that goes into producing it. In The Deserted Wife and Britomarte, the Man-Hater Southworth's attention to clothing highlights her central concern with women's economic dependence on men and the ways industrialism exploits women's labor. In her fiction, clothing brings the reader back to the material conditions of women's lives as they conflict with idealized representations. In The Minister's Wooing, My Wife and I, and We and Our Neighbors Stowe's characters are well dressed, but always in a way which emphasizes their productivity and contribution to society rather than any desire to compete in fashionable society. Wharton's treatment of clothing in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country indicates her shared concerns with the women writers of the nineteenth century."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Cavanaugh, Cheryl Lynn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baym, Nina

• Women's Studies

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9834659

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81480