Margaret Oliphant, in Phoebe, Jr., expands on these company implications of cut. When the eponymous character, whose parents have success well(p)y climbed the tender lad- der, returns to visit her shopkeeper grandparents, she finds herself negotiating a difficult friendly breach, concretized by her queue. One observer thinks, How strange it was to see her. . . drift her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozers greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffle old man, about whose social position no one(a) could make the least mistake (118). When Phoebes grand- mother wants to dress her granddaughter up and show her off to the community, she asks Phoebe to put on silk and bright colors, a lace collar, a pad, and an ostentatious brooch-requests to which Phoebe courteously demurs, privately horrified at the implicit class transformation. So that Phoebes toilette, which would have been might- ily admired in a London drawing-room, could non be said to be a success [with her grandpar- ents] (121). much(prenominal) manuals as Etiquettefor Ladies and Gentlemen (1876) and Routledges manual of Etiquette (1875?) focus on these challenges of dressing for the nouveau riche: honest elegance versus coarse display. Isabella Beeton summa- rizes, [I]t is better to be under-dressed than over- dressed (10).
These rituals of dress were further clarify in the paraphernalia of mouring-in dress and its accessories, in stationery, seals, patterned deco- rations and other insignia-that might allow persons emergent from mourning to ruffle their social hand by the capable play of tease and calls (Davidoff 55 , 56). We can now appreciate the detest of ! the ladies of Gaskells Cranford when a widow woman appears in public dressed in rus- tling black silk, so soon after her husbands death, for bombazine would have shown a deeper sense of her vent (108). In a gendered politics of power, middle class puritanic women were subservient to men; but in a class politics of power, they cooperated and participated with...If you want to get a full essay, rig it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com
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