Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T03:00:59.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

POSSESSING DRESSES: FASHION AND FEMALE COMMUNITY IN THE WOMAN IN WHITE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2016

Casey Sloan
Casey Sloan*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Margaret Oliphant much preferredThe Woman in White (published serially 1859–1860) to Great Expectations (published serially 1860–1861). This partiality emerges in a comparative treatment of the texts in her oft-quoted 1862 treatise on sensation fiction, and it rests on the desirability of authors producing thrills using “modest and subtle means” (“Sensation Novels” 569) instead of “by fantastic eccentricities” and “high-strained oddity” (“Sensation Novels” 574). While the existence of an argument against the allegedly regrettable excesses of fantastical narratives will not shock any reader familiar with contemporary criticism of sensation fiction, or, for that matter, Romantic-era novels or Gothic works in general, the primary evidence Oliphant uses to argue her case might come as a surprise. In order to discredit Charles Dickens's ghostly accounts of Miss Havisham's bridal tomb in favor of Wilkie Collins's eerie images of Anne Catherick appearing on a moonlit moor, Margaret Oliphant turns to clothing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 801 - 816
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

“Aesthetic Dress.” Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Ed. Valerie Steele. Vol. 1. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005. 11–14. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.Google Scholar
“Art of Dress.” Quarterly Review 79 (1847): 375–99. American Libraries Internet Archive. Web. 2 July 2014.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. ProQuest. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Sara T. “‘In This Same Gown of Shadow’: Functions of Fashion in Villette .” The Brontës in the World of the Arts. Ed. Hagen, Sandra and Wells, Juliette. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008. 149–68.Google Scholar
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley's Secret. 1862. Ed. Taylor, Jenny Bourne. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998.Google Scholar
Byrde, Penelope. Nineteenth Century Fashion. London: B. T. Batsford, 1992.Google Scholar
Clark, Georgiana C. “Before the Mirror.” Belgravia: A London Magazine (Jul 1867): 92–99. ProQuest. Web. 2 July 2014.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. “Give Us Room!” Household Words 17 (13 Feb. 1858): 193–96. ProQuest. Web. 1 June 2014.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. 1862. New York: Dover, 1978.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. 1860. Ed. Bachman, Maria K. and Cox, Don Richard. Peterborough: Broadview, 2006.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Patricia A. Reforming Women's Fashion, 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art. Kent: Kent State UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Dress.” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 97.596 (Apr. 1865): 425–38. ProQuest. Web. 2 July 2014.Google Scholar
Elam, Diane. “White Narratology: Gender and Reference in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White .” Virginal Sexuality and Textuality in Victorian Literature. Ed. Davis, Lloyd. New York: State U of New York P, 1993. 49–64.Google Scholar
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character and Responsibilities. London: Fisher, 1842. Google Books. Web. 1 June 2014.Google Scholar
Entwistle, Joanne. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory. 2000. 2nd ed. Malden: Polity, 2015.Google Scholar
“Facts of Fashion.” Sharpe's London Magazine of Entertainment and Instruction for General Reading (Nov. 1862): 258–62. ProQuest. Web. 7 July 2014.Google Scholar
Gaylin, Ann. “The Madwoman Outside the Attic: Eavesdropping and Narrative Agency in The Woman in White .” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 43.3 (1 Oct. 2001): 303–33. JSTOR. Web. 28 May 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomel, Elana, and Weninger, Stephen. “The Tell-Tale Surface: Fashion and Gender in The Woman in White .” VIJ: Victorians Institute Journal 25 (1997): 29–58.Google Scholar
Heller, Tamar. Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Hughes, Clair. Dressed in Fiction. New York: Berg, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunzle, David. “Dress Reform as Antifeminism: A Response to Helene E. Roberts's ‘The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman.’” Signs 2.3 (1 April 1977): 570–79. JSTOR. Web. 2 June 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Graham and Maunder, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manly, Susan. “Mary Wollstonecraft and her Legacy.” A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Plain, Gill and Sellers, Susan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 46–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. “Dress and Its Victims.” Once a Week 1.19 (5 Nov. 1859): 387–91. ProQuest. Web. 1 July 2014.Google Scholar
May, Leila Silvana. “Sensational Sisters: Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White .” Pacific Coast Philology 30.1 (1995): 82–102. JSTOR. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliphant, Margaret. Dress. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1879. Hathi Trust Digital Library. Web. 20 April 2014.Google Scholar
Oliphant, Margaret. “Sensation Novels.” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 91.559 (May 1862): 564–84. ProQuest. Web. 20 April 2014.Google Scholar
Roberts, Helene E. “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman.” Signs 2.3 (1 April 1977): 554–69. JSTOR. Web. 2 June 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Lou. The Study of Dress History. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002.Google Scholar
The English Gentlewoman: A Practical Manual for Young Ladies, by the Author of “The English Matron.” 3rd ed. London: James Hogg & Sons, 1861. Google Books Search. Web. 4 April 2014.Google Scholar
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792. Ed. Lynch, Deidre Shauna. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.Google Scholar