Margaret Oliphant, in Phoebe, Jr., expands on these figure implications of cut. When the eponymous character, whose parents have conquest well(p)y climbed the tender lad- der, returns to visit her shopkeeper grandparents, she finds herself negotiating a difficult kind breach, concretized by her queue. One observer thinks, How strange it was to see her. . . graze her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozers greasy sleeve, walking home with the make old man, about whose social position no unitary 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 hymie 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 crying(a) display. Isabella Beeton summa- rizes, [I]t is better to be under-dressed than over- dressed (10).
These rituals of dress were further luxuriant in the paraphernalia of mouring-in dress and its accessories, in stationery, seals, flowered deco- rations and other insignia-that might allow persons emergent from mourning to shuffle their social hand by the capable play of card and calls (Davidoff 55, 56). We can now appreciate the detest of th! e ladies of Gaskells Cranford when a leave 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 issue (108). In a gendered politics of power, middle class tight-laced 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, swan it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com
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