By Ronda Jerrard
Edited by Saundarya Mitter and Mark Potter
During the nineteenth century, people expressed and defied their gender through the medium of fashion and appearance, aided by the new retail revolution. Gender did not only encompass the biological sex, but also the social and cultural differences and expectations of a person. The Victorian period focused intensely on the gender roles of the man and the woman, and the separate spheres they could exist within. Gender was not only something that you were born into, but a way of life that had to be followed. Fashion could be used to adhere to ideas of class and respectability. Fashion, however, could also be used to defy the model of ‘gendered fashion’ through cross dressing and the subversion of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ clothing, entering a less-restrictive, more androgynous expression of oneself. As such, fashion could be used to expel gendered expectations and allow freedom of expression, but not without its criticisms and backlash. Thus, it will be argued that fashion and appearances were used as a social code to be expressed and read by others, acting as an unspoken dialogue, with the ability to send messages and conform or rebel against rigid expectations of gender. As the 1847 Quarterly Review stated, “Dress becomes a sort of symbolic language... the study of which it would be madness to neglect".[1]
Fashion and appearance were used in the Victorian period to express class-based ideas of
respectability and conformity. Clothing embodied social hierarchy. This argument is supported by historian Helene Roberts, suggesting that clothing signalled the role of the wearer and fashion reminded the wearer of their responsibilities. ‘Not only could clothes transform a person's appearance, it could influence the actions and attitudes of both the wearer and the viewer’.[2] Middle and upper-class women reflected their position of wealth through flamboyant clothing. Hence, fashion can be viewed as a uniform to achieve status, enable social mobility, and indicate class. As Elizabeth Wilson states, ‘to achieve status, each woman must wear the uniform of fashion’.[3] Fashion was more than clothing; it reflected the ‘self’ - identity and gender reflected through appearance. The retail revolution, growing consumerism and creation of department stores resulted in more freedom for women within the new public sphere. Department stores were viewed as an acceptable domain for the woman outside the private domestic sphere, yet they already had the advantage of living a moderately liberal lifestyle compared to the lower classes. The creation of this new female space created new jobs. Therefore, the department store became a meeting point between the classes and a gendered space. Women were able to access more freedom and leave the domestic sphere. The leisurely lifestyle and fashion available however, were distinctly different between the classes. Working women lived in poor conditions, working long hours with low pay. Lower class women had a desire to emulate upper-class fashions but were not completely able to; the crinoline was too large, impractical, and dangerous to wear around work. Dresses were made from more durable, washable materials like cottons, rather than silks, as the price had significantly dropped. Accordingly, fashion segregated women into their respective roles in society and acted as a reminder of their identity within it. Fashion expressed an individual’s class outwardly but was also read and judged by society. It was the position of the woman in the dress that made her appearance pleasing or displeasing, proper or improper. An upper-class woman would be named ‘refined’; yet a working-class woman in the same attire was ‘shoddy’ or ‘showy’. This depicts the power and relation between fashion, appearance, gender, and class.
Fashion’s ability to be read by individuals and society applies to the subjects of prostitution,
clothing, and appearance. Again, the working woman could not simply elevate her class
through appearance. There was a belief that morally corrupted women focused on ‘finery’
rather than ‘honest dress’, as argued by Mariana Valverde.[4] Valverde states that finery refers to the exaggerated, showy dress, seemingly cheap despite being in fashion, only because the woman wearing it was a ‘cheap imitation of upper-class womanhood’. [5] Ergo, one could question what made the Victorian woman’s appearance – was it the reflection of her gender and role of her sex? Female fashion reflected gender with constrictive clothing, limiting movement and making women less active, bright colours and lace trimmings, perceived as synonymous with the frivolity of women, and tiny waist/defined silhouettes, revealing delicate femininity. Social status however, had a much bigger impact on perceptions of women, as class and respectability were bound to fashion, gender, and appearance. Consequently, the prostitute could never be perceived as respectable and refined despite the mirroring of upper-class fashion. The perceptions of women and fashion depended on the social, economic, and moral status of the wearer. Prostitutes, known for love of finery, wore lavish dresses to attract high-class customers, usually showing their ankles, and wearing shorter skirts/crinolines (see figures 1 and 2). This was another way fashion was utilised as a ‘uniform’, as dresses were traded and loaned. As Valverde states, a prostitute’s best clothes were her working clothes, so ‘her trips to the pawnshop were like those of male workers with tools’.[6] Clearly, fashion was a tool, gaining customers, elevating rank, and allowing gender and sexual difference to be identified.
Fashion and appearances were also used to defy gender through expressing sexual identity and defiance of gendered expectations. During the 1880s, sexologists identified the ‘sexual invert’: a person appearing male or female, but ‘inverted’ internally. A relationship between sexual identity, fashion and appearance can be found. There has always been an interplay between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ clothing, and despite views that men’s clothing during the
nineteenth century became demure, there is a correlation between the mirrored silhouettes of clothing – including tapered waistlines, and fanciful decoration. This was particularly true for the ‘dandy’, the cosmopolitan, single man who wore long coats, bloomers, flowing collars,
bows and ruffles (see figure 3). The ‘feminine’ dandy fashion meant that art and caricatures
aligned them with sexual deviance. Additionally, cross-dressing had become popular both on
the stage and in subcultural locals like circuses.[7] Connections between cross-dressing and male sex work were found, with men who dressed ‘effeminately’ and wore makeup were often
arrested for sodomy. The relation between a dandy’s appearance and sexuality depicts how
fashion was being read by society. Dominic Janes suggests that ‘because gender was strongly
characterized by sexual roles assumed to be natural to men and women, images of effeminate
men were still constructed in relation to notions of physical desire and bodily desirability’.[8]
Therefore, some perceived the feminine styles of clothing as revealing the more innate identity of the wearer. Janes does not however acknowledge that this was not the case for all men. Some chose to wear flamboyant fashion, opting for more aesthetic dress in response to the sober, darker men’s fashions. For others, it was a political ‘result of the revolutionary
upheavals of the late eighteenth century’.[9] Famous examples of the ‘dandy’ include Oscar
Wilde and Lord Byron. The fashion and appearance of the ‘dandy’ stood out in protest against conventional men’s wear, acting as an ‘anti-fashion’ or oppositional dress.[10] This notion was also utilised by others, such as those in the suffrage movement.
As Wilson argues, ‘since the nineteenth century, social rebellion has frequently fastened in
sexual behaviour and sexual identity, expressed through dress, as an appropriate vehicle’.[11]
This was how lesbians utilised their image to set a president against the gendered expectations of women and their expression of sexuality. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis indicated that in all women, there resides some masculine, and in all men, some
feminine.[12] Therefore, similar to the psychology of the ‘invert’, and correlations in male and female fashion, there is an interplay between the genders and how that gender is portrayed during the Victorian era by individuals. Anne Lister’s diaries reveal her female lovers whom she performed ‘marriage’ ceremonies with.[13] She presented herself mostly in ‘masculine’ clothing, dark colours, and high necklines (see figure 4), like other lesbians in this period. Katrina Rolley argues, ‘the communication of identity through dress, like its expression, is of particular significance for lesbians’.[14] This is because many messages can be inferred through fashion and appearance. Radclyffe Hall (born 1880) who wrote the Well of Loneliness, a lesbian novel in 1928, and Una Troubridge (born 1887) are another example of a lesbian couple. These women dressed gendered in their chosen roles, Una - the woman, and Radclyffe (called John privately)- the man. Radclyffe wore tailor-made suits and short hair to appear more ‘masculine’ (see figures 5 and 6). Therefore, dress allowed women like Radclyffe to ‘create certainty out of confusion’; defining oneself as 'inverted' ‘gave women who 'weren't women' a gender, a sexuality and an identity, so dress enabled them to triumph over their female bodies to express and communicate this identity’. [15] Subsequently, fashion allowed freedom of expression and appearance, sometimes revealing sexuality beyond gender, and defying the model of the perfect woman, or ‘the angel of the house’.
Fashion and appearance were used within the suffrage movement, by those both pro and anti-suffrage, to dictate narratives of the movement. ‘At the turn of the twentieth century, fashion, art, and feminism were intimately intertwined’.[16] As Wendy Parkins wrote, ‘through the use of fashion and specific colours the suffragettes forged a public identity for themselves’.[17] Yet, despite the efforts of Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) members to present themselves as respectable ‘feminine’ women, the media portrayed them as the opposite – frumpy, dishevelled and unpleasant. This image of the suffragette was popularised by caricaturists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, even shaping the modern image of the feminist today. The WSPU used an anti-suffrage tactic by occasionally using dress to discredit or ridicule their critics, such as being old-fashioned.[18] This highlights that fashion and appearance were used as a discourse above simply being pieces of clothing but representing something more about the individual. One of the main critiques of the suffragettes was their representation as ‘masculine’ in their appearance and action – their violent tactics conflicting with modest Victorian femininity. Punch magazine was particularly prolific in their negative imaging of the suffragette. Figure 7 shows an image of a suffragette being restrained by a constitutional suffragist, with the caricaturists relying on dress as a signifier of the suffragette’s ‘unnatural’ character.[19] The suffragette is pictured as a gaunt, angular, squat woman with short hair, in an unflattering, scruffy old-fashioned ‘masculine’ suit. Her resulting hysteria was used to propel the ‘sensible’ sister in her efforts with the Cause. Consequently, it suggested that the ‘shrieking’ sister, seemingly lower class compared to the refined, graceful, well-dressed, Edwardian suffragist, was stunting the Cause.
Punch utilised the radical activism of the suffragettes to popularise their image of the
movement – as unruly, dangerous, and undignified. Again, Punch presents the suffragette as
unwomanly and ‘masculine’ in figure 8. The caricature mocks the suffragette hunger strikes.
The dumpy suffragette, with a ‘masculine’ appearance, short hair, and glasses, in a tweed skirt, shirt, tie and lace-up boots stands in stark contrast to the fashionable feminine ideal. As Rolley states, ‘when the ideal woman is voluptuous the caricature must be skinny, and when the ‘real’ woman is slender, the suffragette is fat. She remains masculine, since masculine is always in opposition to femininity’.[20] As such, all images of suffragettes in the media showed them to be opposite of the ideal female fashion and appearance. ‘The critical potential of suffragette dress came from its challenge to the cultural intelligibility of women’s fashionably dressed bodies as docile and ornamental. The dissenting body, dressed in a Liberty dress and a hat from Derry and Tom’s, was a defiant display which challenged onlookers to look again’.[21] People were threatened by the ‘New Woman’, well-dressed, seemingly ‘feminine’, educated and living outside the domestic sphere of the home, involved in several public spheres such as politics and sports. Hence, the media sought to quench this image in negativity. It can be understood that appearance and fashion was utilised by both sides of the suffrage movement, creating a positive and negative discourse, and commenting on the gender ideals of the Victorian period. Through this it can be inferred that fashion and appearance were used as a social code of expression and to be read by others.
There is a relation between the genders in the rhetoric and actions of the suffrage movement,
just as there is an ongoing relation between the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’ in Victorian
fashion and psychology. Clothing was their ‘uniform’; white dresses evoked imagery of purity, innocence, and femininity, yet their actions/activities seemed more masculine. This
juxtaposition underpins the movement and its responses, as ‘to invade male public space, invite public gaze, become involved in violent confrontations with men, destroy property and be imprisoned should have been so ‘unfeminine’ as to be impossible’.[22] This indicates that despite their adherence to the Victorian feminine ideal in their appearance, they had to adopt
‘masculine’ tactics in order to be visibly seen and heard. Fashion had originally been used to
reminded women of their inferiority and submissiveness, with tight corseting and large
crinolines (which had but disappeared by the twentieth century). Despite the WSPU’s
adherence to mainstream fashion, they were far from the Victorian ‘Angel of the House’. ‘The
self-conscious use of mainstream fashion to maintain a non-threatening and therefore
acceptable feminine appearance should be understood as a potentially disruptive phenomenon in and of itself’.[23] Some suffragettes even cross-dressed as men to avoid arrest, such as Lilian Lenton and ‘General’ Flora Drummond.[24] This conveys how fashion was fluid, women were able to dictate their appearance to either express or defy their gender and its expected ‘look’. It was this that the suffragettes successfully utilised in accordance with their Cause.
‘Dress has long been accepted as a medium of both expression and communication, a silent
language through which, consciously or unconsciously, we 'speak' our race, age, class, sex,
occupation’.[25] Victorians expressed and defied their gender through fashion and appearance, which acted as an unspoken language, sending messages, and expressing the individuals views on their gender. Fashion and appearance could be read by society as either an outward or inward expression of an individual. Some women used fashion to adhere to class-based ideas of female respectability, maintaining their feminine image. This can be seen through upper-class flamboyancy. Dress, however, did not always define the person. Fashion was not simply about clothing, to be ‘fashionable’ in the Victorian era, a woman had to fit inside certain gendered criteria - adherence to female expectations and class. Working class women and prostitutes were never regarded to in the same light as upper-class women, despite their adherence to mainstream fashions. Others used fashion as a way of expression against the gender norms of the 1800s. This is seen through the discourse between fashion, appearance, gender, and sexuality. The suffrage movement maintained the image of the respectable Victorian but acted opposingly. Caricaturists linked feminism with mannishness and unnaturalness, all related to appearance and fashion, elucidating how powerful fashion and appearances were in defining public opinion. Juxtaposition between the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ can be related to all expression through fashion, while female and male clothing were mimicking silhouettes. Furthermore, some men and women deliberately chose to dress contrary to the gendered expectations around them. All of this consolidates how fashion, appearance and shopping acted as a social code, designed to be expressed and read by others.
Figure 1: George Ellington, The Woman of New York, or the Underworld of the Great City
(New York: New York Book Co., 1869)
Figure 2: ‘The Haymarket Midnight’, in Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London
Poor, Vol 1V (1861), p. 60
Figure 3: ‘Newest Paris dandy's fashion’, Redingote closed with brandebourgs, top hat,
woollen tailcoat, satin waistcoat with flowery borders, cashmere trousers (and a bicorne) in
Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1831
Figure 4: Joshua Horner, Portrait of Anne Lister, 1830, Calderdale Museums,
<https://museums.calderdale.gov.uk/famous-figures/anne-lister> [accessed 5 Jan 2020]
Figure 5: Gladys Hynes, ‘Private View’, 1937, in Katrina Rolley ‘Cutting a Dash: The Dress
of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge’, Feminist Review, no. 35, 1990
Figure 6: Photography of Radclyffe Hall in The Bookman, May 1927, in Katrina Rolley
‘Cutting a Dash: The Dress of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge’, Feminist Review, no. 35,
1990
Figure 7: Bernard Partridge, ‘The Shrieking Sister’, Punch, 17 January 1906
<https://punch.photoshelter.com/image/I00001J3wesi3xmY> [accessed 5 Jan 2020]
Figure 8: Ricardo Brook, ‘Pastimes of the Great’, Punch, no. 145, 1913
<https://punch.photoshelter.com/image/I0000mbut0PzzAMc> [accessed 5 Jan 2020]
Notes
[1] Helene E. Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman”, Signs, 2/3 (1977), p. 554.
[2] Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave”, p. 554.
[3] Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (Iran: Rutgers University Press, 2003), pp. 122-123.
[4] Mariana Valverde, “The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse”, Victorian Studies, 32/2 (1989), p. 168.
[5] Valverde, “The Love of Finery”, p. 168.
[6] Valverde, “The Love of Finery”, p. 179.
[7] Dominic Janes, Oscar Wilde Prefigured: Queer Fashioning and British Caricature, 1750-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 191.
[8] Janes, Oscar Wilde Prefigured, p. 227.
[9] Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p. 182.
[10] Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p. 183.
[11] Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p. 179.
[12] Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p. 120.
[13] Calderdale Museums, Anne Lister <https://museums.calderdale.gov.uk/famous-figures/anne-lister> [accessed 5 Jan 2020].
[14] Katrina Rolley, “Cutting a Dash: The Dress of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge”, Feminist Review, 35 (1990), p. 54.
[15] Rolley, “Cutting a Dash”, p. 65.
[16] Justine De Young, Fashion in European Art: Dress and Identity, Politics, and the Body, 1775-1925 (United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), p. 207.
[17] Wendy Parkins, Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship (Oxford: Berg, 2002), p. 99.
[18] Katrina Rolley, “Fashion, femininity and the fight for the vote”, Art History, 13 (1990), pp. 57-59.
[19] Rolley, “Fashion”, p. 62.
[20] Rolley, “Fashion”, p. 67.
[21] Parkins, Fashioning the Body Politic, p. 107.
[22] Rolley, “Fashion”, p. 50.
[23] Young, Fashion in European, p. 220.
[24] Rolley, “Fashion”, p. 118.
[25] Rolley, “Cutting a Dash”, p. 54.
Bibliography
Calderdale Museums. Anne Lister
<https://museums.calderdale.gov.uk/famous-figures/anne-lister> [accessed 5 Jan 2020]
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