At the mercy of their clothes : modernism, the middlebrow, and British garment culture / Celia Marshik.

Author
Marshik, Celia [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • New York : Columbia University Press, [2017]
  • ©2017
Description
xiii, 247 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks PR478.C58 M37 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Modernist latitudes [More in this series]
    Summary note
    In much of modern fiction, it is the clothes that make the character. Garments embody personal and national histories. They convey wealth, status, aspiration, and morality (or a lack thereof). They suggest where characters have been and where they might be headed, as well as whether or not they are aware of their fate. At the Mercy of Their Clothes explores the agency of fashion in modern literature, its reflection of new relations between people and things, and its embodiment of a rapidly changing society confronted by war and cultural and economic upheaval. In some cases, people need garments to realize themselves. In other cases, the clothes control the person who wears them. Celia Marshik's study combines close readings of modernist and middlebrow works, a history of Britain in the early twentieth century, and the insights of thing theory. She focuses on four distinct categories of modern clothing: the evening gown, the mackintosh, the fancy dress costume, and secondhand attire. In their use of these clothes, we see authors negotiate shifting gender roles, weigh the value of individuality during national conflict, work through mortality, and depict changing class structures. Marshik's dynamic comparisons put Ulysses in conversation with Rebecca, Punch cartoons, articles in Vogue, and letters from consumers, illuminating opinions about specific garments and a widespread anxiety that people were no more than what they wore. Throughout her readings, Marshik emphasizes the persistent animation of clothingand objectification of individualsin early-twentieth-century literature and society. She argues that while artists and intellectuals celebrated the ability of modern individuals to remake themselves, a range of literary works and popular publications points to a lingering anxiety about how political, social, and economic conditions continued to constrain the individual. -- Amazon.com.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-230) and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction: At the mercy of their clothes
    • What do women want? at the mercy of the evening gown
    • Wearable memorials: into and out of the trenches with the modern Mac
    • Aspiration to the extraordinary: materializing the subject through fancy dress
    • Serialized selves: style, identity, and the problem of the used garment
    • Coda: Precious clothing.
    ISBN
    • 9780231175043 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    • 0231175043 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    2016022756
    OCLC
    950448431
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