Representative of the Victorian society by abiding the ideals of its age intensely, the ladies in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford deem “appearance” and “propriety” in every conceivable way of utmost importance. In Cranford, we are presented a population formed of elderly ladies who either got divorced, got widowed, or had never been married. Their only income – bearing in mind that they are not involved in trade or labour-work as they consider such occupations as “vulgar” – is most probably family fortune. However, the rise of a laborious, industrial middle-class that forms the nouveau-riche capsizes the previously established class system, leaving aristocracy, hence the ladies of Cranford, without the economic power they hitherto had. The ladies of Cranford thus exert their “aristocratic power” by holding on to their noble titles and elegant past through their behaviour and outwear – elements that form their idea of “appearance”. Headwear especially has had great significance in terms of displaying power and status in Europe through centuries yet blooms in the Victorian era, having an immense effect. Ergo, in such a society, the obsession Cranford ladies have with fashionable headgear to carry on a certain aristocratic image is justified. However, none other than the turban stands for paradoxical concepts on its own. I will therefore analyse how a turban symbolizes binary opposites in Cranford: Occident versus Orient; “civilized” versus “savage”; aristocracy versus lower-class and female versus male by doing close-readings of relevant passages from the novel.
For the Western world in general, for the Victorian society – and for the ladies of Cranford especially, turban is believed to be oriental, exotic, yet forei...
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...istocracy give this discourse another dimension.
Turban, finding its place within the Victorian society through the expansion of the Empire becomes a fashionable object. Paralleling to Veblen’s theory, it thus becomes an item of “conspicuous consumption” since its usage is a way to publicly display economic power in order to maintain social status. By both being an Eastern piece of cloth worn by religious men and a Western fashion item worn by aristocratic women, it demonstrates binary oppositions by itself. On the one hand, we have a "desire" of turban, on the other "fear" of it; and this certainly is a dominant notion in Gaskell’s Cranford.
Works Cited
Gaskell, Elizabeth. (2011) Cranford. New York: Oxford University Press.
Veblen, Thorstein. (1899) Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. New York: Macmillan.
the rise of the Second Industrial Revolution was directly proportional to the rise of the Leisure class in Europe. The Second Industrial Revolution made many parts of daily life easier. Things were cheaper, better, faster, and more efficient. As a result, a new class was formed - the leisure class. Many members of the leisure class had inherited money early on from past relatives, and therefore had no incentives to work for a living. Ones time could then be spent on more frivolous matters, such as fretting over what watch to wear or what cane to carry. People’s outward appearance became a major priority. Thorstein Veblen, interested in the arrival of the leisure cla...
No matter how much based on Queen Victoria’s imagery as ‘being steady and proper’, Cranford society at some point faces changes and gives in resistance to them. The gentility rules of everyday life and hierarchy to maintain the peace of the society remain incapable when time changes in the industrialized Britain and newcomers arrive in Cranford town. It is a rural town away from urban area in which the dwellers live in tranquility and in order, by following some rules. These gentility rules are determined by upper-middle class people to maintain the order in daily life and keep a distance to working class. Actually, in 18th century, they mimicked and adopted the legitimacy of aristocratic class as a model of proper behavior according to writer
In Visibly Muslim, Emma Tarlo discusses the visibility of ethnicity in a contemporary urban setting. Emma Tarlo asks ‘why and how all types of clothing that identify the people that wear them as Muslim are usually grouped together and perceived by people outside as monotone, retrograde and repressive,’ when, in fact, ‘far from promoting an image of dull uniformity, the headscarf is often the most self-consciously elaborated element of an outfit, that has in recent years beco...
Elizabethan fashion was the start of fashion itself. This was the time of Christopher Columbus and other explorers who united the world. International trade routes had been discovered and global trade had officially began. Before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people just wore clothes to keep warm and to conceal themselves. Attire was plain and simple; it did not have flair or style. New fabrics and dyes were now readily available from all over the world. The Elizabethan Era was the first time the wealthy began to invest large sums of money and time into their clothing. Apparel distinguished the rich from the destitute. Both genders cared significantly about their clothing; it was not just a women’s hobby. The monarchs of the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries headed this new desire for gorgeous clothing, especially Queen Elizabeth herself. The Sumptuary laws were passed to keep certain styles specifically for the monarchs and nobility. The common people were prohibited from wearing those styles. The exquisite designs and shapes of clothing reflected the monarch’s influence on society and the novel Renaissance desire for a specific body shape; there were dissimilarities in attire among the people of different social classes due to the Sumptuary restrictions.
By the 1820’s and 1830’s, politeness had so definitely given the ground over to fashion that those seeking a social reputation started to talk about entering fashionable rather than polite society (Li 34). The fashionable society offered a better barrier between social classes than the polite society had. The rise of fashion was closely related to the popularization of the idea of fashion via mass printing. Once fashion was able to be a part of the mass printing it became the hallmark of a transformed and expanded pop culture (Li 38). So even in history fashion was a major part of society. The fashionable quality of the upper class, the exclusiveness of social events, and the behavior of the macaroni’s all suggests that modern fashion was shaping the polite world in very significant
In the Victorian era, in New York City, men and women roles within the society were as different as night and day. A man regardless of his extra curricular activities could still maintain a very prevalent place in society. A woman’s worth was not only based family name which distinguished her class and worth, but also her profession if that was applicable.
Many individuals would define leisure as time free from paid work, domestic responsibilities, and just about anything that one would not do as part of their daily routine. Time for leisure and time for work are both two separate spheres. The activities which people choose to do on their spare time benefit their own personal interests as well as their satisfactions. While some people may enjoy one activity, others pay not. Leisure is all about personal interests and what people constitute having a good time is all about. Some may say that the process of working class leisure can be seen to contribute their own subordination as well as the reproduction of capitalist class relations. Self-produced patterns of working class leisure can lead to resistance to such reproduction. This leads to social class relations and inequalities, and the fact that it they can never be completely reproduced in the leisure sphere. This film Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, gives some examples of the role of leisure within a capitalist society dealing with issues such as class inequalities, and how they are different among various societies.
During the Victorian Era, society had idealized expectations that all members of their culture were supposedly striving to accomplish. These conditions were partially a result of the development of middle class practices during the “industrial revolution… [which moved] men outside the home… [into] the harsh business and industrial world, [while] women were left in the relatively unvarying and sheltered environments of their homes” (Brannon 161). This division of genders created the ‘Doctrine of Two Spheres’ where men were active in the public Sphere of Influence, and women were limited to the domestic private Sphere of Influence. Both genders endured considerable pressure to conform to the idealized status of becoming either a masculine ‘English Gentleman’ or a feminine ‘True Woman’. The characteristics required women to be “passive, dependent, pure, refined, and delicate; [while] men were active, independent, coarse …strong [and intelligent]” (Brannon 162). Many children's novels utilized these gendere...
Gendered bodies in the West are bodies of contrasts. A masculine, sharp, inverted triangular body is contrasted to the feminine, soft, hourglass shape. Humans, throughout history, have resorted to drastic measures to meet and exemplify gendered ideals of body form. One such measure that has been in place since the Victoria era is the wearing of corsets. In attempting this research, I thought that wearing a corset would provide an insight into the ways feminine bodily ideals are appropriated by women in a Western context. Putting on the corset proved to be a challenge; only with the assistance of my roommate could I put it on. She laced the back up to as tight as it went and I wore it underneath my normal daily clothes. My first thought when wearing it was that it felt like a hug, when your body is encapsulated within something; it was quite pleasant and had an almost motherly feeling about it. As soon as I wore it, I immediately realized that I had to learn to control my breathing because the corset would feel extremely tight every time I exhaled. Travelling in the car and on the train proved to be a challenge because the corset forced my body to arch my back and sit up straight, which is not the way I normally sit. When I slouched or moved in a way that the corset did not allow, it would dig into my stomach and ribs in a painful way. While walking, I realized that I was pushing my chest out and standing very straight. This made me feel like I was embodying the typical ‘empowered woman’ image that shows a woman as sexy, confidently striding along an urban landscape, independent and beautiful. However, as the day went on, the uncomfortable sweatiness that it brought me made me loath wearing it. Coming home, I took it off and wonder...
Rojek, C. (2000). Leisure and the rich today: Veblen’s thesis after a century. Leisure Studies, 19(1), 1–15.
In conclusion, Charles Dickens, a social critic of humble origins himself, has conveyed his conception of a true gentleman, which is such a good conception that it is commonly used in our society today. He shows that you can only be a true gentleman at heart and if you are not it will be revealed. Matthew Pocket’s metaphor that ‘No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself’ very successfully delivers and summarises Dickens’ message, that no matter how much you try to, your true identity will always be revealed. It also effectively reinforces Dickens’ treatment of the Victorian preconception of a gentleman as misconstrued and mistakenly engrossed with social status, wealth, birth, and apparel.
Peacock, John. The Chronicle of Western Fashion: From Ancient times to the Present Day. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Print.
Mrs and Miss Bates are genteel people and of genteel birth. They are well educated and well spoken and readily invited into the Woodhouse circle. This high class is illustrated at Boxhill during Mr Knightley’s vehement reprimand of Emma’s cutting remark: ‘she has seen you grow up from a period when her notice of you was an honour.’ Of course, they have since slipped in monetary value, but retain their social position nonetheless. Mrs. Elton has the money, but not the connections or character to be considered genteel. Her marriage to a vicar as Mr Elton has raised her a class, but she has clearly not had the breeding to be comfortable in such high society, as she shows by continually dropping Maple Grove into conversations, and justifying her talents: ‘well, my friends say…’ Harriet Smith obviously is not genteel by birth, being the ‘natural daughter of somebody’ but Emma invents her parentage for the sake of the love games. The original modesty and humility that Harriet enjoys are accentuated and extended under the careful care of Emma. Th...
The Victorians' obsession with physical appearance has been well documented by scholars. This was a society in which one's clothing was an immediate indication of what one did for a living (and by extension, one's station in life). It was a world, as John Reed puts it, "where things were as they seemed" (312).
The Victorian Era in England is usually associated with a high sense of morality and very specific ideas on the rightful places of genders in society. This is seen quite evidently in the period’s clothing, art, and literature. “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is no different. In this poem, a cloistered woman is doomed to labor night and day, absent from the outside world, lest she be cursed. In this way, Lord Tennyson epitomizes the sequestered lifestyle of the typical Victorian woman with his illustration of the Lady of Shalott.