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Dress and deception: women's dress and the eighteenth-century British novel

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Dress and deception: women's dress and the eighteenth-century British novel

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Content DRESS AND DECEPTION: WOMEN’S DRESS AND THE EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL by Kathryn Strong A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) May 2009 Copyright 2009 Kathryn Strong ii Acknowledgements I cannot thank sufficiently the committee members who were gracious and generous enough to serve on my dissertation and qualifying exam committees. But I am pleased to take the opportunity to tell Leo Braudy, Paul Alkon, Emily Anderson, Lois Banner, Joe Boone, Hilary Schor, and Nancy Troy that I am deeply grateful for their assistance, guidance, mentorship, and good humor. I must single out my dissertation chair, Leo Braudy, for his unflagging patience and for his high standards; I can’t say that I am able to live up to those standards as much as I would like, but they have been the most beneficial goals imaginable. To my dissertation group, Ruth Blandón and Alice Marie Villaseñor, I owe debts of intellectual gratitude that are only surpassed by the debts of friendship I owe them. Because they supplied me with invaluable feedback on sections of my dissertation, I am deeply appreciative to Nancy Armstrong, Catherine Gallagher, and Michael Rotenberg-Schwartz. For providing me with a breadth of knowledge both in and out of their classrooms, I also thank Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Anne Friedberg, Kate Frost, Carla Kaplan, Jim Kincaid, Rebecca Lemon, Philippa Levine, Richard Meyer, Lisa Moore, Alex Pettit, Tom Preston, Susan Rather, David Román, Meg Russett, and J. Don Vann. I have also been fortunate enough to have many other people to help me, cheer for me, and serve as sounding boards for my ideas throughout my time in graduate school. I owe enormous thanks to Chris Abani, Rima Abunasser, Tony Barnstone, iii Elson Bond, Leslie Bruce, Beth Callaghan, Jay Carter, Margo Bond Collins, Tara Czechowski, Mariko Dawson Zare, Laura Fauteux, Bill Gerke, Nora Gilbert, Nikki Chism Griffin, Andy Hakim, Becky Sayers Hanson, Tanya Heflin, Lucia Hodgson, Ted Johnson, Flora Ruiz, Andrew Sanford, Laurie Sanford, Matt Sanford, Rick Sanford, Jeff Solomon, Eliza Strong, Elizabeth Suarez, Linda Veazey, LuAnn Venden, Dave Tomkins, Kaye Watson, Wendy Witherspoon, and Erika Wright. For awarding me funding to assist the completion my dissertation, I thank the University of Southern California’s College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences; the University of Southern California-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; and the Henry E. Huntington Library. A portion of my second chapter appears as the book chapter “Pamela’s Investment in Virtue” in Global Economies, Cultural Currencies of the Eighteenth Century (AMS Press). Most of all, I am inexpressibly grateful to William and Roberta Strong, who gave me more than anyone has a right to expect. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract vi I. Introduction – “Language is the dress of thought” Clothing in the eighteenth century 1 Dress and deception 11 Fiction’s deceptions 16 Vision and deception 20 Women’s dress 22 Tracing the change 26 II. Chapter One – The Possibilities of Dress: Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina Women and dress 32 Literal dress 36 Figurative dress 47 Representation and simulation 53 “Fantomina’s” visual narratives 57 Simulation and identity 68 The hoop petticoat 73 The heroine as author 78 The threat of power 82 III. Chapter Two – Samuel Richardson: Fashion, Commerce, and Virtue The move toward virtue 89 Pamela’s questionable virtue 94 Clothing and commerce 100 Dress and virtue 110 Pamela’s station 115 Anti-Pamela 117 Clarissa’s disinterest in fashion 122 Clarissa’s interest in fashion 129 Clarissa seen commercially 138 Misinterpreting Clarissa’s clothes 145 Richardson’s endorsement of sartorial paradox 151 v IV. Chapter Three – Henry Fielding and Charlotte Charke: Crossing Gender and Genre Boundaries The riding habit 157 The tradition of cross-dressing women 163 Charke’s “madcap” antics 179 Charke’s mimicry of her father 183 Fielding’s Female Husband 193 Generic instability 202 V. Chapter Four – Frances Burney and the Restrictions of Clothing Mistrust of vision 208 Evelina’s and Cecilia’s distance from dress 216 Camilla and cultural expectations 219 Camilla’s dress and impropriety 226 The Wanderer and external surfaces 238 Surfaces and depths 250 Seeing past the surface 258 V. Conclusion – “From pride, ignorance, or fashion” 263 Bibliography 274 vi Abstract My dissertation establishes women’s dress as a gendered means of negotiating reality’s relationship to fiction in the early eighteenth-century novel, and charts the cultural forces that increasingly thwart the effectiveness of such negotiations. Whereas earlier narratives depict women using dress to fulfill desire, mid-century texts reflect a shift in dress’s abilities toward the broadcasting of virtue. Yet dress’s perceived deceptiveness vexes the relationship of dress to virtue, and by the end of the century, novels depict dress as a trap for women. The shift in the depictions of dress develops alongside a shift in novel. In this era, the novel invokes deception because many critics equate fiction with untruthfulness. In response, the emerging genre of the novel shifts from including overt (but deceptive) truth claims to asserting itself as a disseminator of abstract truths. In “Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe: The Power of Dress,” I analyze how dress allows the protagonists of Fantomina and Moll Flanders to enjoy great freedom. “Samuel Richardson: Fashion, Commerce, and Virtue” reads Pamela and Clarissa to show that the relationship between fashion and commerce suggests a growing inability of dress to work in the service of conventional feminine virtue. “Henry Fielding and Charlotte Charke: Gender and Genre Boundaries,” employs Charlotte Charke’s The Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke and Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband to examine how boundaries of genre correspond to vii and extend the gender blurring in which their central characters engage. These coextensive boundary-crossings heighten anxieties about how dress and the novel can misrepresent reality. In “Frances Burney: The Restrictions of Clothing,” I discuss how Burney’s works demonstrate the idea of woman as trapped by clothing and also attempt to redefine the novel as didactic and virtuous. This examination of eighteenth-century dress allows for an enhanced understanding of the relationship of the novel to eighteenth-century culture and of the extent to which the novel questioned its own veracity. Eighteenth-century ideas about the novel and women’s dress indicate the difficulty of breaking the perceived truth/fiction binary, which is at the heart of the genre as it develops over the eighteenth century. 1 Introduction – “Language is the dress of thought” Clothing in the eighteenth century In The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime, Daniel Roche writes of a sea change that transpires in France over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that depends upon enhanced methods of clothing production. Calling the previous view of clothing a sartorial “ancien regime,” Roche asserts that, by the end of the eighteenth century, it was possible for a greater number of people “to present an appearance,” and the wearers’ clothing choices “never wholly coincided with either wealth or status” (504). Ideas about dress had changed. These ideas were not confined to France, however; advancements like the spinning jenny (1767), power knitting machine (1768), steam-powered loom (1785), and cotton gin (1793) brought enhanced production capacity to England and the United States, changing the amount of clothing that the average person could afford (Sterlacci xviii-xix). Two French versions of fairy tales popular at this time are vestiges of Roche’s ancien regime. “Cinderella” and “Donkeyskin” (sometimes variously called “Catskin”) depend upon the notion that personal wardrobes are limited, and that an individual can be readily identified by her clothing. In “Cinderella,” a young woman mistreated by her stepfamily escapes their household by catching the eye of a prince through exquisite dress provided to her through magic. “Donkeyskin” similarly catches the attention of her future royal husband through her magically-provided dresses that showcase her 2 beauty and status, but she also escapes the incestuous desires of her father by wearing the ugly hide of a donkey. Each woman’s family members cannot recognize her in different dress; Cinderella’s and Donkeyskin’s families are utterly incapable of seeing past the heroine’s clothing. Both “Cinderella” and “Donkeyskin” were first published in English in the eighteenth century, with Charles Perrault’s versions published in England in 1729. 1 They rely on the transformative power of dress to shield women’s identities from the gaze of onlookers. In these tales, dress has the power to reshape identity, and through dress, the central characters achieve unbelievable wealth and happiness. In both stories, shabby dress conceals the heroines’ personalities while their true moral worth blazes out in magnificent dresses. Cinderella’s fairy godmother creates for her a splendid gown allowing her to demonstrate that she is a worthy companion for a prince. Donkeyskin acquires a gown the color of the sky, a gown the color of the moon, and a gown as shining as the sun, and a prince falls in love with her when he sees her wearing these unique dresses. Both of these moral and longsuffering heroines find their happiness through an accessory that uniquely identifies them, with Cinderella’s true identity being discovered because a slipper fits only her foot, and Donkeyskin because a ring fits only her finger. These stories show that clothing is 1 These tales were translated into English by Robert Samber (See Jacques Barchilon and Peter Flinders. Charles Perrault. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981. 100). 3 both a means of power and protection as well as the means through which these women’s identities can be seen by other worthy characters. These tales exhibit a very period-specific view of dress’s powers, holdovers from Roche’s ancien regime. Yet iterations of such tales continue into our own era. Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1916) and Garry Marshall’s film Pretty Woman (1990), for example, present fairy-tale-like narratives of women whose change in clothing transforms them into someone new and unrecognizable. Television programs like What Not to Wear (2003-present) edit the experiences of their participants to conform to a similar narrative, with these participants frequently (indeed, almost always) expressing the internal difference that they feel due to the change to their clothed exteriors. These tales of sartorial transformation demonstrate how clothing shapes identity, and by extension, imparts meaning. However, these tales also reveal the different attitudes of their times: in the eighteenth-century stories, the way that onlookers perceive identity relies on clothing (i.e. individual identity resides in clothing), but in the contemporary stories, clothing is expected to conform to the wearer’s identity (i.e. individual identity resides within each individual). The eighteenth-century relationship of clothing to identity is distinctive because of “the possible literalness with which dress was taken to make identity rather than merely to signify its anterior existence [...] if clothing was in once sense the anchor of identity, in another it was of course precisely the opposite of an anchor, 4 indicating instead [...] the mutable and nonessential nature of what can be assumed or shed at will” (Wahrman 177-8). While our current conceptions of dress allow for the possibility, even the probability, that wearers can choose clothing to reflect their identity, late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century conceptions of dress present clothing as a way of making, rather than simply reflecting, identity. Like Cinderella being recognized as the prince’s love because a slipper fits only her foot, clothing was strongly – even exclusively – associated with its wearer, and people were believed to be what their clothing “said” they were. This relates to the belief system undergirding sumptuary laws, which sought to regulate clothing so that it transparently correlated to its wearer’s social station. Sumptuary laws worked to ensure that dress readily and visibly labeled its wearer’s social status, gender, and even occupation. “The Duke of Norfolk’s Order about the Habit the ladies are to be in that attend the Queen at her Coronation” (1685) exemplifies the kinds of sartorial minutiae with which sumptuary legislation was written. The order gives detailed information about the coronation wear of baronesses, viscountesses, countesses, marchionesses, and duchesses. The order allows the dress of a baroness to have decoration befitting her rank: The Train of a BARONESS, a Yard on the Ground, the Ermin Cape to be Poudred with Two Bars, the long Mantle to be Edg’d round with Ermin Un-poudred an Inch broad, the Sur-coat to be of Crimson Velvet, as well as the Mantle, made straight-Body’d, and Clasp’d before, Edg’d with Ermin Two Inches broad, and Scallop’d down the 5 sides from below the Girdle, with a Train a little shorter than the long Robe, Sleeves of Velvet (Scallop’d, Edg’d with Ermin, and Fringe of Gold or Silver,) to reach a little below the Shoulder, the Cap to reach only a little above the Rim of the Coronet. (England and Wales) A duchess, however, was allowed to dress with more embellishment, and her garment would also contain more cloth: A DUTCHESS’S Train to be Two Yards upon the Ground, the Cape Poudred with Four Rows of Ermin, the Mantle Edg’d with Five Inches of Ermin, the Sur-coat to be of Crimson Velvet as well as the Mantle, close Body’d, Clasped before, Edg’d with Ermin Two Inches broad, and Scallop’d down the sides, with a Train about half a Yard, Velvet Sleeves Edg’d with Ermin, Scallop’d and Fring’d with Gold or Silver, to reach a little below the Shoulder, the Cap only to reach a little above the Rim of the Coronet. (England and Wales) The difference in the size of the trains of the gowns is substantial, the duchess’s train being twice the length of the baroness’s, and would have made a clear visual statement about their wearers’ relative social importance. Similarly, the specified measurements of ermine trim for the mantles of these dresses would signal to viewers the elevated status of the duchess and the lower status of the baroness. Five inches of ermine trim versus two may seem like a small difference, but note how similarly these dresses are described: both are assumed to have scalloped surcoats (or outer robes) and mantles of crimson velvet, both are described as “straight-Body’d” or “close Body’d,” and the descriptions of the sleeves and caps are identical. The elements conveying status would stand out all the more starkly when the dresses were fundamentally so similar. Clothing could thus legibly articulate its wearer’s identity for all to see. But the very 6 existence of sumptuary laws suggests that not everyone adhered to established rules. In this era, a person was what she wore, but viewers were beginning to wonder how much they could rely on dress to ascertain with certainty the identity of the wearer. The growing social and cultural concerns with this shift in views of dress make the eighteenth century this dissertation’s era of inquiry. Two texts serve as rough chronological boundaries: Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704) and Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-4). These two works demonstrate the period’s changing views of dress, with Swift’s text employing clothing as an allegorical expression of approaches to religion. While Swift’s work relies on dress as a clear indicator of its wearer’s inner state, Carlyle’s work uses dress to convey the impossibility of knowing things themselves; instead, Sartor Resartus suggests that we can only ever know the appearances of things. A Tale of a Tub takes as its starting point the deathbed speech of a man with three sons. He tells his sons that he has left each of them a new coat, and that they “are to understand that these coats have two virtues contained in them: one is, that with good wearing they will last you fresh and sound as long as you live: the other is that they will grow in the same proportion with your bodies, lengthening and widening of themselves so as to be always fit” (34). These coats are the allegorical garments of true religion, but all three sons follow fashion and load their coats with decorations such as fringe and shoulder knots. Peter (representing Catholicism) keeps his coat over-decorated, while Jack (representing 7 radical personal belief) so zealously strips his coat of all the added decorations that he ruins the construction of his garment. Martin (representing Anglicanism) moderates his views between the two extremes of Peter and Jack, removing what decorations he can but keeping those that it would ruin the coat to remove. Each son is known to onlookers by his coat, reflecting the period’s commonplace assumption that clothing functions to indicate its wearer’s identity, and the correlation of the coats to religion implicitly grants clothing symbolic power. However, by the time Carlyle writes Sartor Resartus, the function of clothing differs significantly. Carlyle writes: Whosoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole external Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES. (57-8) Carlyle’s choice of delimiting the range of clothing to the “external” Universe is telling; by the point at which he writes this, clothing correlated to externality, superficiality, and shallowness. Swift’s work introduces the possibility that “man was an animal compounded of two dresses, the natural and the celestial suit, which were the body and the soul; that the soul was the outward, and the body the inward clothing [...] By all which it is manifest that the outward dress must needs be the soul” (37). While the satire of the soul being merely a suit of clothing makes for a good joke, 8 Swift here at least admits the possibility of dress being more than simply an external element; this is a possibility that Sartor Resartus does not allow at all. One of Carlyle’s concerns in Sartor Resartus is the way in which fiction is misleading, since Carlyle’s subjects, Professor Teufelsdröckh and his book Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, their Origin and Influence), are entirely fictional yet presented as real. What was clearly allegorical in Swift becomes more generically muddied in Carlyle; the externals of narratives have become misleading alongside the shift from clothing being perceived as powerful symbols to being perceived as deceptive coverings. As Swift’s and Carlyle’s texts demonstrate, clothing is imbued with much meaning, but that meaning is inconsistent and uncodified. A liminal object, dress “which is an extension of the body yet not quite part of it, not only links that body to the social world, but also more clearly separates the two. Dress is the frontier between the self and the not-self” (Wilson 3). Dress can not only convey to onlookers a glimpse of its wearer’s identity, but can also propel onlookers into sensing erroneous data about that identity. Viewers can “read” dress if they acknowledge its participation in a vast network of coding, coding that is informed by historical and cultural specificities, but like all objects to be read, dress can be easily misinterpreted. Terry Castle identifies the instability of dress’s meaning as important in Western culture’s longstanding disdain for dress: “The massive instability of sartorial signs, 9 and their susceptibility to exploitation, may account for that deep contempt in which clothing has been held in Western culture. Clothing has always been a primary trope for the deceitfulness of the material world [...]. Inherently superficial, feminine in its capacity to enthrall and mislead, it is a paradigmatic emblem of changeability” (56). The mistrust of dress relates to mistrust of fictions, as the relationship between dress and reading is suggested by the etymological link between “text” and “textile.” 2 As Roland Barthes pronounces, “text, fabric, braid: the same thing” (Barthes, S/Z 160). The link between text and fabric extends far back in Western history, and is seen in mythological accounts of textiles and language. In a large number of cultures, the deities associated with weaving tend to be female, and these “deities identified with textile production are also associated with linguistic development (including Athena, especially Athena Parthenos as patron of literary arts [...] )” (Kruger 24). 3 2 As J. Hillis Miller explains, the word “text comes from texere, to weave” in Latin (Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines. 8). The OED provides a rare definition for “text” as “texture, tissue” from the Latin textus, meaning tissue, furthering the etymological link between text and textile (The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Volume II, P-Z. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971. 3274.). 3 These deities of textile production include “Isis of Egypt (who invented weaving with the help of her sister, Nephthys), Ixchel of the Mayans, Tlazolteotle of Mexico, Spider Woman of the Navajo (Dine), Mokusa of Russia, Uttu from ancient Sumer, Toci of pre-Columbian Mexico, Athena of Greece, Ukemochi of Japan, and Brahma/Maya of India” (Kruger 24). While I focus upon Western views, links between fabric and writing exist in Eastern traditions as well. For example, Lu Ji’s advice to Chinese writers, The Art of Writing, overtly references the association of textiles and writing. Lu (261-303 BCE) wrote that thoughts and words can “flame like a bright brocade,” and warned: “Even when your own heart is your loom, / someone may have woven that textile before” (“Making It New.” The Art of Writing: 10 The Greek goddess Athena not only governs textiles and literature, but also creates an important deception in Hesiod’s Theogony (late 8 th -century BCE). Athena helps Zeus seek revenge on mortals for Prometheus’ crime of giving fire to mankind. In a misogynist gesture, the revenge takes its form in the “gift” of womankind. Specifically, Athena uses dress to make Pandora a “sheer trick, irresistible to men” (Hesiod 62, line 589): “Owl-eyed Athena sashed [Pandora] and dressed her / in silver clothes; she placed with her hands a / decorated veil on her head, marvelous to see” (Hesiod 62, lines 573-5). Athena helps deceive mankind through her skillful use of clothing to make Pandora too appealing for men to resist, and through Pandora – in other words, through woman – come all of the evils in the mortal world. For her part, Pandora “delighted in the finery from the great father’s / owl-eyed daughter” (Hesiod 62, lines 587-8), demonstrating the longstanding belief that women inherently (or perhaps are biologically predisposed to) love dress and personal ornament. Athena’s cleverly constructed trap for mankind showcases how Athena uses textiles and cunning, or metis, an attribute of Athena’s, together. These longstanding links between text, dress, deception, and women inform and underline my argument, in which I examine the Barthesian braid of codes surrounding dress. Teachings of the Chinese Masters. Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, trans. Boston and London: Shambala, 1996. 14.). 11 Dress and deception I trace a shift in dress that transpires over the eighteenth century in Britain as well as a concomitant shift in attitudes about the genre of the novel. Women’s fashions change drastically over the course of the eighteenth century. Hoop skirts and luxuriously excessive yards of cloth characterize women’s dress in the earlier part of the century, giving way to gowns of less showy material and less yardage of cloth at the mid-century point. “Masculine” elements such as riding coats hallmark the fashions around the 1770s, yet simultaneously there is a vogue for exaggerated feminine styles such as towering headdressess. The century ends with dresses inspired by the elegant simplicity of Grecian drapery. Parallel to these revolutions of fashion are changes in the way women’s dress figures in narratives, the subject that forms the bulk of my discussion. I establish women’s dress as a visual bid for freedom from restraint in the early eighteenth-century novel, and chart the historically contingent forces that increasingly thwart the effectiveness of such attempts. At the beginning of the century, narratives show that dress holds immense potential for women in that it can transform the way that they are perceived, even when such perceptions are based on deceptions and untruths. As a result, dress can also transform those women’s statuses in reality. By the century’s end, however, female novel characters that focus too overtly upon dress register as shallow and superficial. 12 Dress was – and is – widely associated with deception. Roland Barthes writes that “fashion is lying. It is hiding behind social and psychological alibis” (Barthes, “On The Fashion System” 101). Perhaps clothing relates so easily to deceit in the popular imagination because of clothing’s capability to function as costume; in plays, costume works as a means of perpetuating the fiction of a character’s existence within a narrative. Because costume is a function of clothing, the association of costume with something not true in reality can implicate clothing itself. Theatrical or masquerade costumes are acknowledged deceptions, and it is highly unlikely that anyone assumed that individuals wearing such costumes were what the clothes presented themselves to be. But in contrast, everyday clothing is assumed to correlate to reality, and becomes threatening when supposedly real dress (as opposed to costume) is calculated to mislead. If a wearer uses dress to indicate a status, rank, gender, or occupation that that wearer does not possess, onlookers will have a very difficult time in figuring out the truth. The concept of fashion also evokes costume and the theatrical. “Fashion” carries ideas of superficiality and falsity through a combination of its definitions “outward action or ceremony; a mere form, pretence” and “conventional usage in dress, mode of life, etc., esp. as observed in the upper circles of society” (OED). 4 Jean Duvignaud explains, “fashion corresponds to a need for a theatricalization in our lives 4 Definitions 7 and 8, respectively, for “fashion.” 13 as they become less and less authentic. We are going towards [...] the need to create a false existence which we then want to become true” (Barthes, “Fashion, a Strategy of Desire” 89). Fashion is suspect to some because it is change for change’s sake, the “false existence” of which Duvignaud speaks. A fashion wanes not because a garment wears out or becomes threadbare, but because a new fashion replaces it, suggesting that the rapid change of styles cannot allow for one consistent (or “authentic”) self to be represented through dress. In this view, fashion is deceptive because it forces the fragmentation of an authentic self into many conflicting selves. Sartorial critiques sometimes portray women themselves as in danger of being deceived as to the abilities of dress to make them beautiful, but more often they criticize dress for deceiving onlookers, who tend to be male. An early-century conduct book that focuses primarily on rules for dress, John Essex’s The Young Ladies Conduct (1722), shows how closely dress and deception are allied at this point. In his preface, Essex writes: How Contemptible is Craft in a Woman; it always proceeds from a mean and a little Spirit, and generally procures a shameful Uneasiness to those who study to avoid Shame and Disgrace; for Women are most Crafty and Tricking, when they are acting something which they desire to be concealed; hence they bring Shame upon themselves by the very Artifices which they practice to hide it. (ix) One of the reasons to set forth rules on the proper uses of dress, then, is to thwart women’s propensity for craft or artifice and lead the deceptive fair into more virtuous 14 behavior. Essex’s advice shows the popularity of excess and decoration in the early part of the century. He advises women that “too great Extravagance of the spreading Hoop; the Gold and Silver Clocks, and Diamond Buckle to the Garter, are the direct means to forbid a Virtuous Lover. I mention these, because there is nothing brings a young LADY’S Virtue sooner in Question, than too fond a Complyance with the Extravagant Modes of the World” (74-5). Does Essex hint that a woman’s virtue is questioned because she is immoderate in her expenditures, or because these decorations deceive a man into associating the wearer of such ornaments with beauty and rank? His earlier critique of women’s artifice suggests the latter, a fear that appearances will mislead men into marriages with economically unfit women or perhaps with women who hide illicit pregnancies under “the spreading Hoop.” A woman’s lack of virtue becomes hidden under the hoop’s costume of seeming morality. Dress’s relationship to deception is also evident in its frequent use in the eighteenth century as a metaphor for deceiving, hiding, or misleading. For instance, Sir Joshua Reynolds writes in his third Discourse about the superiority of the Ancients in their proximity to the simplicitus mundi, arguing “the Ancients [...] had, probably, little or nothing to unlearn, as their manners were nearly approaching to [...] desirable simplicity; while the modern artist, before he can see the truth of things, is obliged to remove a veil, with which the fashion of the times has thought proper to cover her” 15 (Reynolds 111). Reynolds’ veil metaphor and invocation of fashion demonstrate the mistrust with which clothing was viewed; dress opposes the noble idea of simplicity and creates a barrier to transparency and truth. When Samuel Johnson wrote “Language is the dress of thought” in Lives of the Poets (1779-81), he expresses much the same idea. Vulgar words will contaminate the most splendid ideas “as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rustics or mechanics,” Johnson writes (380). He follows that pronouncement with one about truth: Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be concealed in baser matter that only a chemist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebian words that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities as not to pay the cost of their extraction. (380) Truth is a constant, but a deceptive covering might not “pay the cost of extraction,” or make worthwhile the endeavor to uncover the truth. By this reasoning, a truth degraded by shoddy “garb” might as well be false. The metaphorical expressions conveying similar ideas through invoking cloth and clothing are many: ideas are skirted, lies are woven out of whole cloth, and stories are spun, just to list a few examples. 16 Fiction’s deceptions Johnson had earlier made overt the connection between clothing and deception in Rambler 96 (16 February 1751): “The Muses wove in the loom of Pallas, a loose and changeable robe, like that in which Falsehood captivated her admirers; with this they invested Truth, and named her Fiction” (Spacks 1). Falsehood needs her ever- changing robe, which suggests that fashion resonated as deception. But also key in Johnson’s critique is the way that fiction associates with deception. Fiction here is, in essence, a lie. The shift in the depictions of women’s dress in this era develops alongside a shift involving the novel; the emerging genre of the novel works to establish itself as an instrument of moral truths rather than an agent of entertaining lies. These coextensive shifts reflect a larger concern with the transparency or, more threateningly, the opacity of deception, because critics saw both dress and the novel as dangerously allied to deception. Malcolm Barnard points out that the common criticism “that fashion and clothing are deceptive in that they may be used to mislead, applies equally well to all means of communication” (Barnard 20), and this criticism of misleading deception and the creation of conflicting versions of reality often appeared against the novel. 5 5 For instance, Thomas Gisborne complains in 1797 “that even of the novels which possess great and established reputation, some are totally improper, in consequence of such admixture [the contamination of “incidents and passages unfit to be presented to the reader”], to be perused by the eye of delicacy” (An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1974. 215). Priscilla Wakefield writes that “Plays and 17 Ros Ballaster traces anti-novel sentiment to anti-romance sentiment, arguing that the romance was the site of challenges concerning gendered conceptions of reality: “The struggle over definitions of fact and fiction, then, in relation to the romance, is revealed to be a gendered conflict over the nature of the ‘real’, in which the female ‘reality’ of the world of love, reproduction, and art is privileged over the male ‘reality’ of a world of war and production” (47-8). This struggle over reality was feared to have especially pernicious consequences for female readers, whose less robust intellectual capacities could not discern the fiction of novels from the reality of their own lives; critics of fiction worried that confusion of the two, especially concerning matters of romance, could lead a woman to transfer the improprieties of romance into her own life. 6 Nancy Armstrong points out that, until “well into the novels, with every work tending to inflame the passions, and implant sentiments of the omnipotence of love and beauty, should be most carefully excluded from their sight, AS CONTAINING A BANEFUL POISON, DESTRUCTIVE OF EVERY PRINCIPLE THAT IS ADAPTED TO DEFEND THEM FROM THE ALLUREMENTS OF VICE” (Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex; With Suggestions for Its Improvement. London: J. Johnson, 1798. Huntington Library shelfmark 356515. 142-3). 6 I am indebted to much scholarship establishing the importance of women as readers and writers, including (but not limited to) Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987); Ros Ballaster’s Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Eve Tavor Bannet’s The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Ellen Gardiner’s Regulating Readers: Gender and Literary Criticism in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (London: Associated University Presses, 1999); Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Jane Spenser’s The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 18 eighteenth century the reading of fiction was considered tantamount to seduction” (17- 18), and a seduced woman was a fallen one. Mary Astell reflects late seventeenth- century views of fiction as unhelpful to women when she argues, “[t]here is a sort of learning indeed which is worse than the greatest ignorance: A Woman may study Plays and Romances all her days, and be a great deal more knowing but never a jot the wiser” (23). Fiction here is pernicious to women because it transmits a false knowledge, a sense of awareness of a world that does not reflect the real experiences, dangers, and needs of women. This reality is constructed in distinction to superficial elements like dress and fiction as “a stock of solid and useful knowledge, that the Souls of Women may no longer be the only unadorn’d and neglected things” (Astell 21). The early novel works to distance itself from romances, often through overt truth claims in prefaces. Authors frequently pose as editors of found letters, journals, or other documents to create an aura of truth for their narratives: “In the early eighteenth century at any rate – at a time when Hume was still calling poets ‘liars by profession’ – the pretense of factuality in the prefaces to first-person novels like Robinson Crusoe was clearly an attempt to escape the charge of falsity by escaping the charge of fiction, or vice versa, or both at once” (Cohn 3). Yet these truth claims became so commonplace that readers were increasingly aware of them as conventions 1986); and Janet Todd’s The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800 (New York: Columbia UP, 1989). 19 of the genre, and extensions of the novels’ fictionality. As the century progresses, however, the novel gains respectability. 7 Elizabeth Bergen Brophy explains, “the eighteenth-century novel gained respectability in large part because it was thought that its focus on the true rather than the fantastic made it an instrument for imparting knowledge and encouraging moral improvement” (233). The novel becomes less of a target for critics in part because of its entertaining way of disseminating morals, but also because its audience becomes more aware of generic conventions. Novels were popular enough and, increasingly, recognizable enough, that fewer readers could confuse these stories with journalistic reporting or real-world accounts. While “[t]he early-eighteenth-century antinovel discourse promotes the fear that novel reader will become absorbed in an unconscious mimicry” (Warner 143), the later-century novel is more recognizable as fiction, or as something that is not, literally speaking, truth. Vision and deception If appearance could be made to shape the perceptions of others, the means through which this happened was vision. The sense of sight has long enjoyed prominence among the senses, and even before Plato’s time, “philosophical thinking in the Western world was drawn to the tuition, the authority, of sight. But also, we can see that these philosophical teachings repeatedly insisted on calling to mind all the 7 For a sustained examination of how the novel becomes increasingly accepted as a literary form rather than simply entertainment, see William B. Warner’s Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: The University of California Press, 1998. 20 dangers in placing too much trust in vision and its objects” (Levin 1). This tension between sight’s power and its potential to mislead is thus not specific to the eighteenth century, but Isaac Newton’s Opticks (1704) helped to reinvigorate the concepts of light and vision and keep them at the forefront of scientific thought. These discussions entered into the popular discourse as well, with poets rhapsodizing on Newton’s brilliance. 8 Versions of his theories were also published for different audiences, including Francesco Algorotti’s Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d For the Use of the Ladies (1739), which was translated into English by Elizabeth Carter. Algorotti sets out his optical explanations in the form of a narrative between a marchioness and a gentleman who undertakes to explain Newton’s Opticks to her. In Algorotti’s epistle dedicatory, he clarifies that he has attempted to make his work “agreeable to that Sex, which had rather perceive than understand” (v), perpetuating the popular view of women being more sensual or bodily than intellectual creatures. This belief contributes to the idea that women instinctively enjoy clothing; being more inclined to focus on their bodies (conventional thinking ran), women were led by their very nature to revel in dress as decoration for their bodies. Throughout this text, Algorotti’s male speaker repeatedly has recourse to dress to explain Newton’s theories in a manner that he seems to believe will be palatable to women. For example, he 8 Examples of such poetry include William Hinchliffe’s “Upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” (1718), James Thompson’s “A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton” (1727), and Allan Ramsay’s “An Ode. To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton” (1727). 21 exclaims, “How much Pains and Study are necessary to frame a right Philosophy! It requires no less Art and Labour, than to make those fine Silks which you Ladies are adorned with” (23). Algorotti’s male speaker also uses dress to explain different aspects of Newton’s discoveries, including the various colors of rays of light. “If you would not have a blue appear green by Candle-Light (which might disconcert the Harmony of a Suit of Cloaths, and cause innumerable Chagrins)” he asserts, “you must be careful to chuse it very clear, otherwise the blue Rays mixed with the yellow, which the Silk would reflect in greater Quantities by Candle-Light, might perhaps make it appear green” (119-120). Algorotti’s use of clothing to explain Newtonian thought to women demonstrates how deeply the ideas of dress, femininity, and deception were enmeshed at this juncture, implying that dress, like properties of light, uses appearance to confound and mislead. The marchioness expresses her worry about this when she laments, “I have only the Mortification of seeing that we are under a perpetual Delusion, since, if what you say be true, Things appear to us very different from what they really are. Bodies appear to us of a certain Colour, whereas there is really nothing else in them but a certain Disposition of Parts. They seem to us to be hot, cold, and yet they are possess’d of none of these Qualities” (78). Algorotti’s use of dress to explicate Newtonian thought shows the early century view of dress to be one that grants it the power to deceive. As Algorotti’s marchioness laments, things can appear to viewers as very different from what they really are, and one’s eyes 22 cannot be trusted. Dress itself is not trustworthy; not only might a blue silk appear green in varied lights, but a servant in court dress could be mistaken for a lady. If viewers cannot trust what they see, the ability to separate reality from untruths is compromised. Women’s dress In this argument, I center specifically upon women’s dress. Primarily, my choice reflects the eighteenth century’s tendency to connect women with dress, though admittedly that correlation neither emerges in nor is exclusive to eighteenth-century England. Joseph Addison writes, in Spectator 57 (5 May 1711), of the Iliad in a way that displays the early century’s view of this gender divide: When the Wife of Hector, in Homer’s Iliads, discourses with her Husband about the Battel in which he was going to engage, the Hero, desiring her to leave that Matter to his Care, bids her to go to her Maids and her Spinning: By which the Poet intimates, that Men and Women ought to busie themselves in their Proper Spheres, and on such Matters only as are suitable to their respective Sex. (Addison and Steele, Penguin 251) Addison’s interpretation of Hector’s admonition reinforces the belief that spinning and cloth production properly fall to the lot of women, but clearly this belief was also evident in ancient Greek texts. 9 Most Western cultures relegate cloth production and 9 This association can be seen in the occupations of the Fates, all figured as female: Klotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts the thread. The Odyssey provides an example of a female character taking advantage of the association of women and cloth in Penelope. Surrounded by suitors who believe Odysseus to be dead and therefore demand that she remarry, she staves off their advances by asking to finish weaving a shroud 23 clothing to the realm of the feminine, possibly as a result of Eve’s alleged responsibility for the creation of clothing in the Biblical account of the creation of the world. The story of Genesis tells that clothing became necessary when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and became able to see – and subsequently be ashamed of – their nakedness. Women’s dress in this era develops at a radically different pace than men’s dress. The men’s three-piece suit develops in this era, and has changed relatively little since. J.C. Flugel has called this late-eighteenth-century standstill in men’s fashion the “Great Masculine Renunciation.” 10 By the beginning of the early nineteenth century, men’s fashion was characterized less by showy embroidery or brilliantly-hued fabrics and more by excellence of tailoring. Anne Hollander theorizes that “[t]he advance of restraint as a quality of male dress may well have been hastened, spurred by the extremity of ladies’ fashionable excesses, of which the folly could only be something sane men should be clearly seen to avoid, even if they liked it on the ladies” (77). One explanation for this could well be that men, having a multitude of channels in which to assert their and power, did not need to wear yards of cloth to proclaim their importance. In The Analysis of Beauty (1752), William Hogarth provides for Laertes, her father-in-law. Every day she weaves, and every night she unweaves the shroud, and until her deception is revealed by a housemaid, Penelope is thus able to keep her suitors at bay. 10 For Flugel’s full discussion, see his The Psychology of Clothes, London: Hogarth Press, 1930. 24 evidence that clothing size and exaggerated grandeur work as implicit arguments for their wearers’ consequence. “The robes of state are always made large and full, because they give a grandeur of appearance, suitable to the offices of the greatest distinction” Hogarth asserts. He makes a distinction between quantity and excess, however: “In a word, it is quantity which adds greatness to grace. But then excess is to be avoided, or quantity will become clumsy, heavy, or ridiculous” (36). The move in male fashion away from excess appears to follow Hollander’s supposition that men worked to distance themselves from women’s fashionable superficiality, and men’s retreat from the excesses of fashion only served to entrench dress more firmly in the cultural imagination as a feminine, and thus largely insignificant, pastime. Influential thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented a love of dress as natural to women, and this helped culture to align women with surface, ornament, and superficiality. Rousseau writes in Emile; or, On Education (1762) of the particular tastes that distinguish boys from girls, arguing that “girls prefer what presents itself to sight and is useful for ornamentation: mirrors, jewels, dresses, particularly dolls” (367). Because “little girls love adornment almost from birth” (365), “dissipation, frivolity, and inconstancy are defects that easily arise from the corruption of continued indulgence of their first tastes” (369). Girls’ interests were thought to revolve around the bodily and sensory, while boys’ interests incorporate curiosity and knowledge, echoing Algorotti’s views of gender. Perhaps due to these correlations, or perhaps 25 simply as a result of their natures, girls are constructed as deceptive. Rousseau warns that to judge girls’ “true sentiments, one must study them and not trust what they say, for they are flatterers and dissimulators, and they quickly learn to disguise themselves” (369). Rousseau’s insistence on connecting girls with needlework, and the associated link with deception, sparks an angry late-century reaction from Mary Wollstonecraft. Her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) takes Rousseau to task for this association, and she rebuts, “it is not indeed the making of necessaries that weakens the mind; but the frippery of dress” (Wollstonecraft 75). While Wollstonecraft’s stance on women’s rights was extreme for the period, she participates in a larger trend that increasingly labels dress as “frippery.” By the time Jane Austen writes Pride and Prejudice (1813), for instance, readers know that Elizabeth Bennet is worthy of admiration because she disregards clothing when muddying her petticoats to visit her ill sister; for Elizabeth, dress is not a possible way for a laudable woman to express individuality or seek freedom. Instead, she must ignore surface and outward show, much as Wollstonecraft recommended, to prove herself moral and properly feminine. Wollstonecraft’s argument suggests that the shift in women’s fashions over the eighteenth century functions as a constant means of negotiating cultural ideas about femininity. With so few arenas in which to excel, women sought power where they could. Yet dress and fashion are so yoked to deception that they blacken the perceived intentions of the women who use them. Wollstonecraft stridently opposes the idea 26 that women are innately fond of dress, declaring “I deny it.—It is not natural; but arises, like false ambition in men, from a love of power” (28). In encouraging women to seek virtue and depth by renouncing their interest in ornament and fashion, Wollstonecraft is aware that she advocates for women to eschew something that has granted them power. But by the end of the eighteenth century, virtue and love of dress were opposing ideas. Tracing the change I arrange my chapters chronologically to show the ways in which dress increasingly limits women. Chapter one, “Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe: The Power of Dress,” analyzes the ways in which dress allows the protagonists of Fantomina; Or, Love in a Maze (1725) and Moll Flanders (1722) to enjoy great freedom. In these texts, women control their sartorial display to gain monetary or sexual fulfillment that cultural convention disallows them. Defoe’s heroine blurs the divide between reality and fiction, demonstrating that deceptive use of dress can enable women to obtain a higher status. Haywood’s central character also maintains power through dress, but uses dress’s power to seduce one man repeatedly without his ever knowing her identity, raising Baudrillardian issues of the extent to which dress can make, rather than simply simulate, identity. I use the hoopskirt as an exemplar of a culturally contested item of clothing that was believed to give women a feared power over their use of space and even over their sexuality. 27 Chapter two, entitled “Samuel Richardson: Fashion and Propriety,” reads Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740-1) and Clarissa, Or the History of A Young Lady (1747-8) as its focal texts to establish a shift in the perceived possibilities of dress. In both of Richardson’s novels, the heroines work within the limits of ideas of feminine delicacy. From about the 1740s onward, “[n]ew constructions of fashionable femininity [...] stressed emotional innocence, prioritising familial and maternal ties above the stiff artificiality that had described the ideal woman in representations of the preceding decades” (Breward 122). Pamela demonstrates this idea of femininity through her careful deliberations about her clothing and the sources from which she obtains it. Clarissa’s dress demonstrates that she cares about clothing and exterior show only as a sign as her family’s social rank. Richardson’s characters must align their visual self-presentation with prevailing norms of femininity to operate within socially acceptable bounds. Despite these novels’ similarities, however, their differing outcomes (social elevation for Pamela, death for Clarissa) suggest a growing inability of dress to work in the service of virtue, largely because of the popular belief that dress is inherently deceptive. My third chapter, “Henry Fielding and Charlotte Charke: Crossing Gender and Genre Boundaries,” employs actress Charlotte Charke’s fictionally embellished “autobiography” The Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke (1755) and Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband (1746) as its bases for a discussion of the fears that 28 attend issues of cross-dressing. Charke wore men’s clothing both on and off stage, and she constructs an account that threatens the firmness of the identitarian barriers between genders through her use of dress. Fielding’s text titillates readers with the cross-dressed sexual liaisons of Mary Hamilton, but tries to contain the threat that Hamilton poses with visual exposure of her gender at the narrative’s closure. The authors of these texts cross boundaries of genre in ways that not only correspond to but also extend the gender blurring in which their central characters engage. This gender-blurring reveals itself in this era’s popular fashion of the riding habit, a women’s outfit directly modeled upon men’s fashion that was the subject of much cultural criticism. The threat raised by cross-dressed women helps lead to the shutting down of dress’s novelistic possibilities which I outline in chapter four, “Frances Burney: The Restrictions of Clothing.” This chapter begins with an analysis of Camilla; Or, A Picture of Youth (1796), in which Camilla learns that she must retain power over her appearance for others to “read” her sentiments and intentions properly. Camilla ignores dress, which readers recognize as part of what makes her admirable. But she allows another character to equip her in excessively expensive clothes, which causes Camilla to register as thoughtless and superficial. Camilla shows that paying no attention to dress can be just as pernicious as paying too much attention to dress. I conclude this chapter with a reading of The Wanderer; Or, Female Difficulties (1814), 29 which suggests that forming an identity through dress perpetuates an emphasis on appearances rather than reality. Its main character attempts to use simple, Grecian- inspired dress to hint at what she cannot say: she is a well-to-do woman forced by circumstances to leave France and keep her identity hidden. Her repeated attempts at self-sufficiency often involve dress (working for a mantua-maker, maintaining a millenary shop), however, and this close association with clothing brands her as deceptive in the eyes of her new community. While Haywood’s texts hint at the promising possibilities of dress as an instrument of identity construction and female power, Burney’s later works demonstrate the deep enmeshment of the idea of woman in the visual realm. My argument establishes that this enmeshment restricted women to roles that both condescendingly encouraged – and severely delimited – notions of personal display. This argument is not the first to discuss the ways in which dress benefited – or hindered – the eighteenth-century woman. Art historians and sociologists have long demonstrated an interest in dress, 11 and cultural historians have been devoting increased attention to many period-specific notions about clothing. For instance, Tita 11 A partial list of these works would include Malcolm Barnard’s Fashion as Communication. London & New York: Routledge, 1996; Quentin Bell’s On Human Finery. New York: Schocken Books, 1976; François Boucher’s 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1966; Christopher Breward’s The Culture of Fashion. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1995; Rene König’s A La Mode: On the Social Psychology of Fashion. New York: The Seabury Press, 1973; Alison Lurie’s The Language of Clothes. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1981, and Aileen Ribeiro’s Dress and Morality. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1986. 30 Chico explicates the role of the ladies’ dressing room in this era, arguing, “[r]econciling an appropriate attachment to dress to conceptions of virtuous femininity was to prove one of eighteenth-century literature’s most difficult tasks” (82). Jennie Batchelor’s Dress, Distress and Desire: Clothing and the Female Body in Eighteenth- Century Literature discusses how dress in the sentimental novel exposes the paradox of sensibility being legible on the body and therefore capable of being counterfeited. Terry Castle, in Masquerade and Civilization, argues that clothing “inescapably serves a signifying function within culture; it is in fact an institution inseparable from culture” (56). But while these works and others like them relate clothing to identity formation, they do not discuss how dress and gender intersect with perceptions of the novel as a deceptive genre. Alongside the shifts in fashion throughout the eighteenth century that my chapters delineate, I discuss how dress and its associations with deception resonate with novelists’ figuring of novels as true. From the early-century truth claims to end of the century defenses of the genre of the novel, writers’ nods toward the novel’s increasing acceptance and respectability become stronger over the course of this period. Fiction shifts from being seen as a lie to being a potential vehicle through which learning and moral improvement can be distributed. This enhanced profile that the novel enjoys come as dress loses ground as a vehicle for creativity. These two concomitant changes suggest a cultural refutation of deception. Dress’s close 31 association with deception and falsity ultimately results in its relegation to the province of thoughtless and shallow women. But the novel reconfigures its relationship to deception, fighting its way from frivolous and dangerous romance to moral preceptor, and in the process, rejects dress as a source of power for women. 32 Chapter One – The Possibilities of Dress: Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina Women and dress The practicalities of dress in the early eighteenth century were very different from those at the end of the same century. Women’s dresses start the century as large pieces of fabric pinned up into changeable, wearable forms that are capable of being unmade and remade easily, and end the century as finished garments, fully sewn together. This change can be seen through the development of the mantua, which “had originally been an informal, loosely fitting négligé gown” but it “lost its negligent appearance and the train became more elaborately fitted at the back” and “gradually became a formal dress” (Ribeiro 34). The typical early-eighteenth-century women’s garment was not stitched into one piece largely for reasons of frugality; this more flexible arrangement of cloth allowed its wearer to update the dress to reflect changes in fashion without excessive expenditure. 12 But the changing structure of the mantua also suggestively highlights a change in the development of conceptions of female identity over the eighteenth century, because self-fashioning possibilities 12 In Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Anne Buck explains that “the sewing in the construction of many gowns, particularly those of the first half of the century, shows a certain disregard of fine finish. It seems as if as little stitching as possible was done so that the expensive material could more easily be unpicked to make up again” (160). In fact, this practice has lead to a dearth of extant early eighteenth-century mantuas: “Very few mantuas have survived intact, as they were unpicked and the material used for new gowns” (Janet Arnold, “The Cut and Construction of Women’s Clothes in the Eighteenth Century.” In the Kyoto Costume Institute, Revolution in Fashion: European Clothing, 1715-1815. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989. 126-134. 127.) 33 existed at the beginning of the century that had become much more set, and much less flexible, by the century’s end. The greater involvement of women in the sewing of dresses played a role in this mutability of early eighteenth-century women’s dress. In general, men made seventeenth-century women’s clothing. Female dressmakers were called ‘mantua- makers’ in clear distinction from their male counterparts, called ‘tailors’. The difference in these terms is telling, for the term for men aligned them with the activity of making clothes (tailor/tailoring), while the feminine term mantua-makers highlights the product. 13 This reveals the then-accepted belief that men were more active and skilled than women. The term “tailor” references the cutting of material, an important skill because great care was taken to utilize every valuable scrap of cloth. Mantua- making was considered a lesser skill because cutting was much less a part of these women’s work activity. During most of the seventeenth century, mantua-makers had been the “seamstresses of underwear and accessories,” but in the early eighteenth century they “took over the making of the loose morning gowns, and when stiff- bodied gowns cased to be made, took over the making of all gowns” (Buck 160). 13 This close relation of women dressmakers and the products of their work holds true in English, but is not necessarily the case in other languages. For example, Claire Haru Crowston calls attention to the difference of the French terms of the period: “The French word for seamstress is couturière, often translated as ‘dressmaker’ or ‘milliner.’ These [English] choices are misleading, because the word was derived from the fact that they were women who sewed for a living, not from the specific articles of clothing they made. Couturière comes from coudre, to sew […]” (Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 2). 34 Greater strength was needed to manipulate the stiff whalebone and other hard materials used in making stays, which were not, at this point, separate from the bodices of gowns. Because mantua-makers did not enjoy the same training and opportunities for apprenticeships as male tailors, it may be that this lack of formal education in their craft led mantua-makers to make dresses that required less skill. The reality of women’s dress in this era is not only that it reflected women’s lesser status as creators, but that it also suggested ideas of easily changeable forms. Mutability was a hallmark of women’s early eighteenth-century dress, and metonymically attached itself to women’s character as well. This concept of mutability greatly affects clothing’s use as an instrument of identity formation. In the eighteenth century, a change of clothing could signal an entirely new identity for its wearer. Eighteenth-century advertisements for runaway wives and servants often included descriptions of the runaway’s clothing, for example, as this was the surest means of providing particularized information about that individual. Clothing was believed to signal identity, partially because most people owned very few items of dress. Dress made the man – and woman – quite literally, but this meant that dress could also be manipulated to serve the ends of the wearer. When appearance is a strong or primary means of identification, “opportunities are created for fictive portrayals of the self in which individuals can be spuriously assigned or claim for themselves a wealth of virtues” (Finkelstein 8-9). The flexibility of 35 personality that dress afforded at this juncture made dress potentially powerful, allowing its manipulators to dictate the impressions of viewers. This kind of sartorial freedom implies that those who used their clothing to make or reshape their personae possessed the potential to change the way that others thought of them. In many discussions of the novel form at this time, critics characterized the novel as having a similar capability to reshape through duplicitous means. Fiction can seem very much like reality, and the inability to make clear distinctions between the two can undermine attempts at acquiring knowledge. When novels employ clothing to unfold their plots, the similarly deceptive potential of clothing reinforces this epistemological anxiety. The emerging genre of the novel often depicts dress as a tool through which a protagonist (or antagonist) changes or reshapes his or her identity, laying dress open to charges of falsity. The idea that the novel, too, participates in deceit adds to the weight of deception that clothes within narratives convey. As Lennard Davis persuasively argues, “English novels of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were perceived by many of the middle and upper classes as immoral and illicit not only for their criminal content but for their very enterprise of fictionalizing, inventing, forging reality, and lying” (131). The novel’s engagement with fiction troubles many people, even including some of its most famous practitioners. 36 In this chapter, I argue that the narratives of the early eighteenth century use women’s dress as a means for depicting female power. However, due to the fictional status of popular narratives, these efforts simultaneously showcase anxiety about women’s authority. In the early eighteenth century, the novel had not yet solidified into a codified genre, so potential exists at this time for fiction writers to innovate relatively freely. Women’s clothing serves an important part of many of these narratives – including Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and Daniel Defoe’s Roxana and Moll Flanders – and its function develops coextensively with the development of the novel. Women’s dress allowed women the possibility of making and remaking their identities, using textiles to convey information about gender, social station, and occupation. Similarly, novels allowed the possibility that fiction might make and remake knowledge about individual identity, using texts to convey fictional information realistically. Literal dress In Daniel Defoe’s preface to Moll Flanders (1722) 14 , Defoe employs the voice of an editor who is presenting a text written by the novel’s heroine. This editorial voice tells us that “[t]he Pen employ’d in finishing her Story, and making it what you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it in a Dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak Language fit to be read” (37). This statement suggests that the editor 14 The novel’s full title is The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c., but it has come to be known simply as Moll Flanders. 37 struggled to change Moll’s coarse language into that which would be acceptable to a polite audience. But this statement also calls into question how much of the ensuing tale actually comes from the central character, and how much of the story results from editorial intervention. The concept of what is “fit to be seen” is not static, and the editorial persona’s statement suggests the possibility that he has changed something more than superficialities like tone or obscenities. The admission that the editor has placed the story in “a Dress fit to be seen” confuses the distinction between truth and fiction within the novel’s constructed reality. Defoe’s editorial persona does not provide a definition for what constitutes that which is “fit,” allowing the reader to define this term on his or her own. What truly is “fit to be seen,” however, appears to cause some difficulty, and involves the instability of vision as a reliable means of apprehending knowledge. Defoe’s novel demonstrates the early eighteenth century’s unease with a too-ready reliance on sight. Moll Flanders’s anxiety regarding sight is, at least in part, gendered. Moll’s power largely stems from her willingness to objectify herself, and she knows that her intended viewers are most often male. Moll demonstrates her awareness of gendered differences in visual perception when she discusses her choices of shops from which to steal. “I was very shie of Shoplifting, especially among the Mercers, and Drapers who are a set of Fellows that have their Eyes very much about them” she explains. Instead, she continues, “I made a Venture or two among the Lace Folks, and the 38 Milliners” (274). Moll shows here that the mercers and drapers (generally men) were believed to be more likely than milliners and dealers in lace (generally women) to be visually aware. The mechanisms of sight might belong to the body, but understanding what is seen is a process of the mind. Men were therefore believed to be better, more savvy viewers, as Moll’s assumption makes clear. Women, like these milliners, were believed to be less astute viewers than men, however skilled they may be in arraying themselves or their customers for display. Moll upholds the idea that the gaze is gendered male, and she takes advantage of being seen – or, at times, not seen. Though she is subject to the gaze, Moll exerts power by shaping how others perceive her, placing herself in a position of greater power by manipulating what even the most sharp-eyed man can see of her. She does this most often through dress. Defoe’s employment of the metaphor of a “Dress fit to be seen” in the preface suggests a lens through which to view Defoe’s use of literal clothing in the novel. Moll repeatedly uses clothing to reinvent herself and blur the line between being and seeming. Moll’s clothes change the way that others view her, bestowing identities upon her that others take at face value. Dress allows Moll to be taken for a widow, a gentlewoman, and even a man. While Moll is not any of these things, at different moments she seems to be, and that seeming makes an impact on her reality. Moll uses clothing to make herself more fit for her various goals (seduction, theft, evasion of imprisonment), demonstrating how powerfully, if duplicitously, dress can shape 39 perception. In examining the novel’s use of literal dress, I will provide a foundation for the re-examination of the phrase “a Dress fit to be seen” and allow an investigation of the tension that Defoe perpetuates between fiction and reality in this novel. Literal dress performs an important function in Moll Flanders, allowing Moll to blend into crowds as she works as a pickpocket and thief. But dress is even more integral to Moll’s identity, because Moll’s last name associates her with fine cloth. “Since the Middle Ages,” David Blewett writes, “Flemish women had been renowned for their cloth-making abilities, both in weaving fine Flanders linen and for making highly prized Flanders lace” (2-3). The name “Moll Flanders” is admittedly not the heroine’s actual name, for at the beginning of her narrative, the heroine explains that many of her “worst Comrades” who have been executed for their crimes “knew me by the Name of Moll Flanders; so you may give me leave to speak of myself under that Name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am” (43). Her assumed name functions as a veil for her identity that contributes to the conflict in “Moll’s” life between what actually is and what simply appears to be true. At one point, Moll explains that after her “Gentleman-Tradesman” husband bankrupts himself and leaves her, she decides to reinvent herself. She elects to “go by another Name” and so takes new lodgings and “drest me up in the Habit of a Widow, and call’d myself Mrs. Flanders” (108). This name is a metaphorical form of dress, a point underscored by the association of her chosen name “Flanders” with well-made cloth and lace. Moll’s 40 mention of her new suit of mourning clothes so close in proximity to her disclosure of her new name emphasizes that her name, like her clothing, is a way of appearing to be whatever it is that she wants to be. Moll’s use of the name “Flanders” signifies more than just an association with costly fabrics, however. Blewett explains that “[w]omen of Flanders […] had acquired a reputation in England as the best prostitutes” (4). The title page of the novel has already advertised that Moll “was Twelve Year a Whore,” so the reader does not have to stretch his or her thinking to make the leap between Moll’s name and her sexual laxity. But Moll herself never makes this association clear, not even by implying a connection between Flanders and prostitution by the proximity of the two ideas (as she did with her statement yoking widow’s dress with her title “Mrs. Flanders”). In fact, she pleads her innocence as to how she came to be widely known as “Moll Flanders.” She explains that she receives the name from jealous thieves who envy her, and even hate her, because she has so long escaped arrest while they have not. Moll emphasizes that these “Rogues” never knew that she once called herself Mrs. Flanders, and she could never “learn how they came to give me the Name, or what the Occasion of it was” (281). The likely inference is that the envy of these less- successful thieves led them to supply Moll with a name that suggests prostitution. But Moll, either willfully or through ignorance, does not acknowledge this connection between herself and prostitution, and constructs her pseudonym as a mystery. Doing 41 so emphasizes her capacity for reshaping her identity at will. When Moll avoids the overt signified of “prostitute,” the name of Flanders retains only the association with clothing, which helps to underscore the mutability of identity and attendant possibility of anonymity. Ian Watt points out that anonymity is a “condition of life” for Moll and other characters who “inhabit the underworld.” He writes: The business of life can be carried on much more conveniently by aliases, or any casual means of identification. Such conditions of human intercourse necessarily affect the characters of those concerned; deprived of a complete and consistent name the denizens of this world are also prevented from having the consistent social personality which such a name symbolizes. (Watt 323) Moll’s refusal to provide her given name allows her to enjoy the benefits of lacking what Watt calls a “consistent social personality,” as she constructs, uses, and discards identities for monetary and social gain. Her rejection of a unified identity allows her to experience the advantages of each of a number of different personae while avoiding some (though admittedly not all) of the detriments of the identity into which she was born. Moll’s inherited identity places her at the lowest end of the social ladder. Having been passed from one caretaker to another after her mother was transported for felony, Moll finds herself the subject of attention from the wife of the mayor of Colchester and other well-to-do ladies. The women who take her into their care are amused by young Moll’s definition of a gentlewoman: “one that did not go to Service, to do House-Work” (50). Young Moll believes that she will be a gentlewoman when 42 she is able “to get my Bread by my own Work” (50). Moll’s childhood understanding of what it is to be a lady is a result of what appears to be true to her when she is a young girl, and this view never completely deserts her. Her failure to understand (or willingness to reject) the social hierarchy that defines a gentlewoman allows her to construct identity as changable rather than inborn or inherited. Even as an adult, Moll never limits her sense of herself to what would be available to the daughter of a convicted felon. Outward signs like dress can make a person appear to be of a particular station, and for Moll this is in effect the same as being born into that station. Moll’s employment of actual dress extends and reinforces the dress metaphor from the novel’s preface, literalizing the power of the artifice of clothing. The fluidity of identity and the ease with which an individual can alter her identity make themselves manifest throughout the novel. Clothing allows Moll to manipulate the way that others view her, and she employs dress to shape others’ views to her benefit. When Moll describes her modus operandi for her thefts, she explains that “generally I took up new Figures, and contriv’d to appear in new Shapes every time I went abroad.” (336). She achieves these “Figures” and “Shapes” through dress, as with Moll’s previously mentioned donning of widow’s clothing. In the case of the widow’s weeds, Moll describes herself as “a Widow bewitched, I had a Husband, and no Husband” (108). Since her unique situation makes her feel like a widow – her husband is alive, but has told her that since he can not afford to keep their household 43 together, she’s free to marry again – she dresses herself as a widow so that others will apprehend her to be in actuality the way that she seems to be to herself. Moll’s mourning clothes effect a fictional widowhood that viewers take as truth. Thus through dress, Moll makes what she senses into reality – or, at least, into something that passes for reality, and because Moll equates appearances with actuality, to her that is effectively the same. Moll appreciates clothes, largely because they serve her so well in this way. “I lov’d nothing in the World better than fine Clothes” (164), Moll asserts. Among its other uses for her, clothing serves Moll in her adventures as a thief by allowing her to seem too socially elevated to be suspected as a criminal. For instance, when Moll discusses some of her strategems in protecting herself during her outings to steal women’s gold watches, she explains how she arranges herself to be at a little distance from the woman she has just robbed, then cries out that her own watch has been stolen. In this way, Moll makes herself seem very much like the target of crime, casting suspicion outward and away from herself. Moll heightens her similarity to her gentile victims by explaining to her readers “you are to observe, that on these Adventures we always went very well Dress’d, and I had very good Cloaths on, and a Gold Watch by my Side, as like a Lady as other Folks” (277). Moll knows that her good clothes and gold watch create an identity that is seen as incommensurate with that of thief, and she takes full advantage of this benefit. Further, in labeling herself 44 “as like a Lady as other Folks” based on her outward appearance, Moll suggests that proper dress not only allow her to pass for a lady, but is also the factor that creates the status of anyone else’s being a lady as well. Clothes allow Moll other opportunities to display her wit and talents as well. In particular, Moll excels at disguise. When her lover at Bath falls ill, Moll waits to hear word of his health. Impatient, “[o]ne Night I had the Curiosity to disguise myself like a Servant Maid in a Round Cap and Straw Hat” (173). Disguised as a servant, she’s able to obtain information about the extent of her lover’s illness from his servants. Moll explains that she “went to the Door, as sent by a Lady of his Neighbourhood, where he liv’d before” (173). Moll’s use of “as” here highlights how seeming serves her ends. Dressing as a servant allows her to bypass suspicion and pass for something other than her lover’s mistress, obtaining information that she could not acquire were she to approach her lover’s door in her everyday apparel. Soon enough, however, her lover satisfies all of her curiosities about his health – both physical and spiritual. He takes his leave of Moll by writing her a letter. Both her lover’s letter of repentant dismissal and Moll’s response to it employ the language of vision, underscoring the extent to which Moll relies on appearance and sight to navigate her way through the world. Her lover writes to Moll that he “can SEE YOU NO MORE” (177), as his affair with her is a burden to his conscience. His emphatic capitalization of the prohibition of Moll from his sight, a common construction in 45 romantic language, suggests his own awareness of Moll’s principal weapons against his moral defenses: her beauty, and her ability both to capture and to hold his gaze. Moll, too, uses language of vision, noting, “I was not blind to my own Crime” (177). Each of them realizes how sight shapes understanding and awareness, how sight seduces, and how difficult it is to resist the power of sight. Sight so powerfully shapes one’s perception of others that how they appear can convey an identity even when an individual feels completely at odds with his or her appearance. Moll demonstrates this when she dons men’s clothes in her ongoing attempts to find new and different disguises for her criminal activities. Moll’s taking up of men’s clothing troubles the relationship between dress and identity. The woman whom Moll calls her governess “laid a new Contrivance for my going Abroad, and this was to Dress me up in Mens Cloths” (281). Moll discusses how, in this instance, her dress signifies an identity so very different from her own that she cannot completely bridge the gap between being and seeming. She explains that “it was a long time before I could behave in my new Cloths: I mean, as to my Craft; it was impossible to be so Nimble, so Ready, so Dexterous at these things, in a Dress so contrary to Nature; and as I did every thing so Clumsily, so I had neither the success, or the easiness of Escape that I had before, and I resolv’d to leave it off” (281). Moll’s male dress, which she describes as “contrary to Nature,” deceives those around her, 46 and she passes for a real man because of her clothing. But despite how others might view her, Moll cannot feel at ease in these clothes. Perhaps Moll must believe that she is actually what she dresses as to feel comfortable. Moll describes herself being “as like a Lady as other Folks” (277), suggesting that she believes herself to be a lady when she dresses as one. Moll’s discomfort in men’s clothing suggests that the protean possibilities of dress are limited by social convention or plausibility, and limited still more by her perception of her male identity as a fiction. Yet Moll does pass successfully as a man to others. Her partner during this time is a young man who does not know Moll’s identity, and in fact Moll tells us that “he never knew that I was not a Man; nay, tho’ I several times went home with him to his Lodgings, according as our business directed, and four or five times lay with him all Night” (281-2). So while Moll stresses that she experiences unease in men’s clothing, and needs the aid of darkness to hide her smooth face, her clothing still fools the eye of her partner. Trusting to clothes as valid indicators of identity, Moll’s partner believes unwaveringly that she is a man, regardless of Moll’s unease with the “unnatural” and fictive gender role. Even when Moll cannot persuade herself of her disguise’s status as anything but fiction, her deception still passes for real to those around her. Defoe writes about the misleading power of dress in Every-Body’s Business is No-Body’s Business (1725), famously lamenting the difficulties in visually 47 differentiating “the mistress from the maid” (Every-Body’s 362). The pride of servant maids leads them to dress too finely, Defoe argues in this text, and therefore the dress of women-servants should be regulated. Were the dress of a servant “suitable to her condition, it would teach her humility, and put her in mind of her duty” (363). Defoe places great faith in the ability of dress to create a state of mind; the humble state brought about by suitable servant clothing would effect a difference in the servant’s performance and character. Defoe implicitly expresses the power of dress – and, by extention, of seeming – to alter reality and benefit the servant’s actual state of being. Figurative dress If dress in both Moll Flanders and Every-Body’s Business is No-Body’s Business enjoys protean, identity-shaping power, then Defoe’s use of a dress metaphor in the preface of Moll Flanders warrants closer examination. Dror Wahrman writes of the “possible literalness with which dress was taken to make identity, rather than merely to signify its anterior existence” (177-8). Wahrman’s argument emphasizes how dress could force seeming into being, explaining: “For if clothing was in one sense the anchor of identity, in another it was of course precisely the opposite of an anchor, indicating instead […] the mutable and nonessential nature of what can be assumed or shed at will” (178). If, in the early eighteenth-century, dress could actually make identity instead of simply indicate it, then the editorial interventions that place Moll’s language in a “Dress fit to be seen” may change the “identity” or moral 48 of Moll’s tale. 15 Demonstrating an awareness of this possibility of change, the editor emphasizes that “[a]ll possible Care however has been taken to give no lewd Ideas, no immodest Turns in the new dressing up this Story” (38). This could be taken to suggest that Moll’s own diction would provide lewd ideas or immodest turns had not the editor made changes. Moll repeatedly declares that her intent in telling her story is to caution others from falling into the same immoralities into which she had fallen herself. Yet without the editorial “dressing” of the tale, would readers apprehend the same moral? And to what extent is this “dressing” costume rather than clothing? Here, I use the term “costume” to reference clothing that is explicitly used to extend an acknowledged fiction, such as the clothing that an actor wears to play the role of a queen in a play, or the priest’s garb worn at a masquerade. Costume, in other words, is known to be deceptive, but many viewers – indeed, most viewers – expect clothing, or everyday dress, to correlate to reality. The editor’s metaphor of language wearing a “Dress fit to be seen” in Moll Flanders’s preface raises questions that help to align dress with deception, untruth, and fiction. In the 1720s, the popularity of fiction generated great anxiety and mistrust. William Warner argues that “[n]ot a spontaneous event, the rise or elevation of the 15 Defoe uses this same tactic in the preface to Roxana: Or, the Fortunate Mistress ([1724] New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), asserting “[t]he History of this Beautiful Lady, is to speak for itself: If it is not as Beautiful as the Lady herself is reported to be […] the Relator says, it must be from the Defect of his Performance; dressing up the Story in worse Cloaths than the Lady, whose words he speaks, prepar’d it for the World” (1). The admission that the relator has changed the “dress” of Roxana’s story immediately makes false the first statement of the preface that declares the history “is to speak for itself.” 49 novel should be seen as a project directed not at instituting a new type of literature (‘the’ novel), but instead at a reform of reading practices” (xiii). Defoe participated in this reform, at least nominally, because his stated intentions with his fiction is to warn readers of danger by showing negative examples like Moll. 16 Warner further argues that “early eighteenth-century anti-novel discourse promotes the fear that the novel reader will become absorbed in an unconscious mimicry” (143), calling attention to the influence on reality that fiction was widely believed to exercise. Giving credence to this view, Patricia Meyer Spacks explains that “[i]f imitations of real history may affect the mind like direct experience, it follows that the writer possesses incalculable power to subvert morality” (5). Though Defoe’s avowed intentions in Moll Flanders are to inculcate rather than subvert morality, he capitalizes on the ability of Moll’s history to make an impact on readers through its similarity to criminal biographies and through his narrator’s claims of the tale’s truth. 17 The manner in which Defoe 16 In the preface to the novel, the editorial persona insists “[a]ll the Exploits of this Lady of Fame, in her Depredations upon Mankind stand as so many warnings to honest People to beware of them, intimating to them by what Methods innocent People are drawn in, plunder’d and robb’d, and by Consequence how to avoid them” (40). He also insists that the recounting of her thefts “all give us excellent Warnings in such Cases to be more present to ourselves in sudden Surprizes of every Sort” and that her coming into money at the end of her life lets readers know “that Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and five him a new Cast for his Life” (41). 17 In addition to explaining, in the beginning of his preface, that “[t]he Author is here suppos’d to be writing her own History” (37), the editorial persona adds to the sham of the narrative being a true first-hand account when he explains “[w]e cannot say indeed, that this History is 50 constructs the preface, with its emphasis on style shaping substance, conveys the early eighteenth century’s unease with the extent to which fiction can influence reality. As Dorrit Cohn argues, “the pretense of factuality in the prefaces to first-person novels like Robinson Crusoe was clearly an attempt to escape the charge of falsity by escaping the charge of fiction, or vice versa, or both at once” (Cohn 3). The opening of Moll Flanders’s preface directly addresses these issues: “The World is so taken up of late with Novels and Romances that it will be hard for a private History to be taken for Genuine” (37). Defoe’s solution for this difficulty is to construct an editorial persona who assures the authenticity of the story. But because Moll’s tale is in actuality a fiction, 18 the preface itself functions as a metaphorical dress that aims to affect the reader’s perception of the story. The fictional editor’s changing of the wording of Moll’s narrative could signal that the tale in its supposed original incarnation lacked a sufficiently redemptive tone, and this calls into question the story’s morality. Moll’s editor admits [i]t is true, that the original of this Story is put into new Words, and the Stile of the famous Lady we here speak of is a little alter’d, particularly she is made to tell her own Tale in modester Words than she told it at carried on quite to the End of the Life of this famous Moll Flanders, as she calls her self, for no Body can write their own Life to the full End of it” (42). 18 Gerald Howson suggests that Defoe may have named his heroine after the well-known thief Moll King and Sarah Wells (known as “Callico Sarah”), and may have used details of these real women in the assembly of Moll Flanders’ plot, in The Times Literary Supplement (18 January 1968) 63-4. However, even if these women inspired Defoe’s writing of the novel, there is no evidence to suggest that either woman is the “real” Moll Flanders. 51 first; the Copy which came first to hand, having been written in Language more like one still in Newgate, than one grown Penitent and Humble, as she afterwards pretends to be. (37) In the context of a discussion about wording, the use of the term “pretends” raises some doubt as to the speaker’s meaning. Often glossed as “professes” or “aspires” (and David Blewett’s gloss adds “not necessarily with a sense of feigning”), “pretend” in 1722 also carried its current meaning of “to allege or declare falsely or with intent to deceive.” 19 These dual meanings render “pretends” a weighty word, because in one sense its use suggests that Moll works to be penitent, and in another diametrically opposed sense it suggests that Moll fakes her repentance. The word “pretends” thus exemplifies interpretive difficulty, which in turn casts doubt on the benign nature of casting Moll’s words into different ones that are “fit to be seen.” Moll’s story demonstrates the power that literal dress exercises over the perception of identity, and here the editor describes the vast difference between the metaphorical “dress” of language which the story originally wears and the “dress” in which the editor must place the story. The editor tells us that Moll’s narrative in its original form contains “some of the vicious part of her Life, which cou’d not be modestly told” (38), and so the editor has left out these offensive elements. Yet almost immediately after describing how he has removed the worst episodes in Moll’s narrative, the editor assures readers that “the best use is made even of the worst Story” (38). This 19 This appears as the seventh definition of “pretend” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Volume II, P-Z. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971. 2291. 52 conflicting information makes unclear the extent to which Moll’s purportedly unedited story upholds the themes of repentance and spiritual salvation that the preface emphasizes. In changing the dress of Moll’s story, the editor may well have changed its purpose or identity, and thus the preface evinces great unease about the “dress” of fiction. The new dressing of a narrative can change that narrative, and readers must then wonder how much that “dress” has moved the account away from truth or reality. The drama in Moll Flanders “is generated by the tensions between what Moll emphasizes and what she effaces, between Moll’s particular and peculiar perception of the world and the world as it is” (Columbus 416). Moll processes the world “as it is” into a story, and that story bears the appearance of reality. The dress in which her narrative appears serves as a reminder of the ways in which the world “as it is” can be reprocessed, repackaged, and changed to seem like something that it is not. But narratives that are changed in this way develop a new relationship to their surrounding realities, which is in essence the relationship of fiction to reality. As much as Moll Flanders’s preface demonstrates anxiety about fiction’s potential influence on reality, the plot of the novel celebrates this potential. Moll grows wealthy by reshaping her identity through costume changes, and her costumes are believed to be everyday clothes. This distinction is similar to that between reality and fiction. Avowedly fictional clothing is costume, but the clothing worn in one’s quotidian life represents at 53 least a limited sort of reality. Moll exploits the fuzzy distinction between clothing and costume, passing off her fictional, costumed personae as real. Representation and simulation Defoe himself experienced difficulty in making his writings clearly stay on one side of the line between fiction to reality, most notably in his experience with his pamphlet “The Shortest Way With Dissenters” (1702). Though a satire on High Church polemics, many readers read it as supporting these High Churchmen, and Defoe was placed in the pillory as public punishment. In his biography of Defoe, John Richetti explains that “[e]ven when presenting a position whose validity he hopes to destroy by extended articulation, Defoe tends by his very insistence to give it force and a measure of plausibility” (136). In other words, Defoe’s satirical presentations wear very convincing dress, and Defoe knows well that his readers may only look at the surface meaning of his works. The divide between the fictive and the actual may not always be clear to the reader, and this is what makes fiction dangerous. This danger stems in large part from Defoe’s assertions of the factuality of his narrative, moving his novel from the arena of the merely fictive into a much more nebulous domain. 20 Defoe’s prefactory claims of the novel’s truth move Moll 20 As Jean Baudrillard explains, “simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’” (3). While Baudrillard uses these terms specifically to theorize the postmodern, they are useful here in discussing the early modern’s vexed relationship to the real. Arguably, the simulation/representation divide evident in some early novels could be said to be the beginnings of the postmodern understanding of the real and the imaginary. 54 Flanders away from representation and into the realm of simulation, thus implicating fiction as a simulacrum, a copy without an original – or, in other words, an untruth. The shaky truth-status renders Defoe’s fiction a questionable means of instruction. The gap between fiction and what it works to represent creates the potential for misreading. Clothing becomes the ground on which Defoe maps out anxieties about what constitutes fiction. Defoe’s preface assures its audience, “this Book is recommended to the Reader, as a Work from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious Inference is drawn, by which the Reader will have something of Instruction, if he pleases to make use of it” (40). The reader becomes responsible for what he or she takes away from the narrative. Yet because this comment follows Defoe’s mention of the longstanding controversy over the morality of the theatre, and because Defoe supported Jeremy Collier’s attacks on the stage, the possibility exists that Defoe’s editorial persona is not as much a champion of virtue as he might claim. 21 Again, what seems to be true disguises the world “as it is,” and the 21 Collier evidently viewed clothing as dangerously deceptive. In his 1698 A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage Together With the Sense of Antiquity Upon this Argument, Collier expresses a view that implicitly yokes clothing with artifice, writing that debauchery “wears almost all sorts of Dresses to engage the Fancy, and fasten upon the Memory, and keep up the Charm from Languishing. Sometimes you have it in Image and Description; sometimes by way of Allusion; sometimes in Disguise; and sometimes without it” (London: S. Keble, R. Sare, and H. Hindmarsh, 1698. Accessed through Early English Books Online <http://eebo.chadwyck.com>. [4-5]). In Collier’s Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects. In Two Parts (London: 1697), the “Moral Essay Concerning Cloaths” begins “To stoop to the vulgar Notion of Things, and establish ones Reputation by counterfeit Signs of Worth, must be an uneasy Task to a noble Mind.” (91). Collier later explicates his view of the potential dangers of clothing for women: “For when a Woman is once smitten with her 55 “dress” of the preface may perform satirically the dangerous and misleading function of providing an idea to readers that does not accurately represent actuality. In both the theatre and the novel, “it is supposed that pleasure puts moral conscience to sleep […] While the play’s concentration of spectacle increased its danger, it opened it to state control. The very diffuseness of novelistic spectacle made its effects uncertain, and its control nearly impossible” (Warner 129). Yet the physical confines of the theatre – the walls, the stage, and even the visual presence of an audience – clearly signal theatrical fiction. The burgeoning genre of the novel provides no corresponding evidence of its fictiveness, placing readers in arguably even greater danger than that in which the theatre places spectators. Conduct book writers and other moralists had long viewed romances warily because of the perceived influence over their readers, and as the perceived descendents of romances, novels were viewed with equal suspicion. In 1673, Richard Allestree wrote that the “amorous passions” which are the design of romances to “paint to the utmost life, are apt to insinuate themselves into their unwary readers, and by an unhappy inversion, a copy shall produce an original” (12). Here Allestree unwittingly invokes the fear of the Baudrillardian simulacrum possible through fiction: a copy of unreality (or a fiction that employs a too-misleading sense of realism) can produce real consequences. The Drapery, Religion is commonly laid aside; or sued more out of Custom than Devotion. When her governing Passions lye this way, Charity is disabled, and Good-nature fails, and Justice is overlook’d, and she is lost to all the noble Purpose of Life. How often are Relations neglected, Tradesmen unpa’d, and Servants stinted to mortifying Allowances for the Support of this Vanity?” (101). 56 power of influence that fiction was widely believed to wield made it potentially dangerous, as a reader’s inability to separate reality from fiction made her likely to replicate the immoral behavior depicted in early amatory fiction – or so conventional wisdom assumed. In defense of his work, Defoe’s editorial persona explains that his narrative employs the same argument that “Advocates for the Stage” have long used: “Namely, that they are applyed [sic] to virtuous Purposes, and that by the most lively Representations, they fail not to recommend Virtue and generous Principles, and to discourage and expose all sorts of Vice and Corruption of Manners” (Moll Flanders 39-40). Skepticism of the validity of this theatrical defense, however, appears when the editor immediately adds, “were it true […] that they constantly adhered to that Rule, as the Test of their acting on the Theatre, much might be said in their Favour” (40). The editorial persona’s reference to theatre reveals the faulty logic in the employment of his dress metaphor, because appearances can and do mislead others into believing them. Appearances, like fictions, can make an audience believe what is not true. In fact, this is a recurrent theme in Defoe’s writings. For example, he writes, in Chickens Feed Capons (1730): But such is the ignorance and impudence of the present Generation […] With them a Face and a good Shape is Merit; a scornful Toss of the Head, and despising every Body but their own dear Selves, is Wit; an everlasting Giddiness, and an Eternal Grin, is Affability and good Nature; Fancy in Dress is Understanding; a supine Neglect of every 57 Thing commendable, Gentility; and a prodigious Punctilio in the greatest Trifles, the Heighth [sic] of good Breeding. (20) Appearances, or “Trifles,” contain the power to mislead viewers, and thus Moll’s editorial persona’s reference to the stage demonstrates that, though Defoe employed fiction to tell stories, he was well aware that it could be put to the wrong purposes. That is, a tale like Moll’s might claim to be a moral tale, but it provides so much titillation in the relation of Moll’s crimes and the detailing of her “whoredom” that it can easily mislead readers into valorizing what it purports to condemn. The fact that Moll Flanders can be read as either a celebration or a condemnation of Moll’s schemes suggests that Moll Flanders may in fact be a cautionary tale, but its moral is perhaps more concerned with the potentially misleading dress of fiction than with the transformative power of spiritual awakening. “Fantomina’s” visual narratives Eliza Haywood’s novella Fantomina; Or, Love in a Maze (1725) also relies on the link between theatricality and narrative, its plot beginning in a theater. Also in keeping with Moll Flanders, this novella provides readers with a heroine who comes to understand the relationship between dress and the “dress” of fiction as one that provides her the means to satisfy her desire. Dress becomes the protagonist’s chosen site of cultural resistance, because it functions as her tool of choice in reconstructing the reality of her identity. Dress and fiction here serve similar functions: both allow the heroine to create untruths that pass for reality and provide her with a power 58 unavailable to her through other means. Her goal is to keep the amorous attention of the fickle Beauplaisir, whose flagging interest she revives by repeatedly disguising herself. The main character in this story (whose name readers never discover) wants only to continue her sexual trysts with Beauplaisir, and she finds that she can wield tremendous power over him through her clothing. In Fantomina, women’s dress functions as a visual narrative through which she manipulates her capricious lover and through which (like an author) she plots his responses to her. The heroine of Fantomina uses the resource of clothing to circumvent the custom of feminine sexual submissiveness, proving Patricia Meyer Spacks’s assertion that “Haywood vividly conveys her conviction that women can always find the resources to assert their dignity and self-sufficiency, even when custom and convention declare them humiliated and hopeless” (Female Spectator xx). Haywood’s heroine uses dress to bypass the conventional restriction placed on women that denied them the ability to declare their attractions. By allowing her clothing to establish particularized fictional identities, the unnamed heroine presses the visual realm into narrative service. In this discussion, I examine how the use of both visual and verbal narratives in Fantomina constitutes an endorsement of feminine fictions. I use the term “visual narrative” to refer to a narrative in which a spectator relies on dress to construct an identity for its wearer regardless of the presence or absence of verbal narratives. For example, if a character views a woman wearing pattens, a blue apron, and a round- 59 eared cap, and that viewer assumes from these elements (rather than from any verbally supplied information) that she is a maid, then the garments have worked as a visual narrative; in such instances, dress tells a kind of story. Visual narrative can function like spoken or written narratives in that it allows its audience to sense meaning and information, and both verbal and visual narratives employ their media to disseminate stories to an audience. Importantly, visual narrative can convey false information just as easily as it can convey truth. Yet using clothing that suggests a status that the wearer does not actually possess, for example, differs from the presentation of a verbal lie. Dress does not contain one stable set of interpretations, or even the ability to register to all viewers as a type of communication or information. This allows dress to be potentially subversive, because a woman who employs clothing to convey a false visual narrative might defend herself as simply unaware of the potential meanings that would convey falsity. Haywood’s novella establishes visual narrative as a sphere within which women could operate without sacrificing their reputation. In Fantomina, the protagonist’s adventures begin when she assembles a visual narrative within which she can indulge her curiosity. The narrator says that a “little Whim” comes to her “to dress herself as near as she cou’d in the Fashion of those Women who make sale of their Favours” (42), dress here functioning initially as a tool with which to satisfy the heroine’s curiosity. Once dressed as a prostitute, she finds herself surrounded by a crowd of men as soon as she enters the gallery box at the 60 theatre. 22 The narration does not characterize her clothing verbally, which suggests that the visual impact of the heroine’s garb needs no verbal supplement to convey meaning to readers. While the context of a woman alone in the less expensive section of a theatre aids in the heroine’s establishment of herself as a seeming prostitute, her clothing works as the principal force delineating her to the surrounding throng of men (the audience of the theatre, who in turn become the audience for whom she performs) as a fille de joie. The narrator emphasizes the pivotal role of dress in explaining that the protagonist “found her Disguise had answered the ends she wore it for” (42). Several men, including Beauplaisir, recognize a “mighty” resemblance between the prostitute and “Lady Such-a-One,” as the narrator calls the heroine, yet the narrator explains that “the vast Disparity there appear’d between their Characters, prevented [Beauplaisir] from entertaining even the most distant Thought that they could be the same” (42-3). The visual appearance of social disparity between (what Beauplaisir believes to be) two different women dictates Beauplaisir’s behavior, demonstrating the heroine’s ability to manipulate a visual narrative so as to effect results in reality: Beauplaisir speaks with her in a freer manner than he would with a lady of quality, allowing the fiction of the heroine’s dress to create a reality that she could not experience in her “true” identity. 22 As we have seen in the earlier discussion of Defoe’s alignment of the theatre with the dangers of fiction, the theatre represented a site of female sexual transgression. Whereas this creates anxiety for Defoe, Haywood shows how this can be used to the benefit of her heroine. 61 Here, clothing constitutes reality more concretely than does even the faculty of vision. Despite seeing an amazing “resemblance” between the heroine and the fine Lady, Beauplaisir completely trusts her clothing and adjusts his banter to befit a conversation with a prostitute rather than a gentlewoman. The excitement of free conversation greatly contributes to the heroine’s desire to perpetuate her “whim,” for “she found a vast deal of Pleasure in conversing with him in this free and unrestrain’d Manner” (43). Her clothing trumps her face as a conveyor of identity. The historian Dror Wahrman differentiates between “self” and “identity,” and this distinction is helpful in understanding Beauplaisir’s seemingly simple-minded acceptance of the heroine’s prostitute disguise. Warhman writes, “‘the self’ stands for a very particular understanding of personal identity, one that presupposes an essential core of selfhood characterized by psychological depth, or interiority, which is the bedrock of unique, expressive individual identity” (xi). Selfhood is, according to Wahrman, a concept that comes into existence over the course of the eighteenth century. Identity is a looser term, and encompasses superficial markers such as dress. Selfhood roughly equates with the concept of truth, while identity suggests the potential to reshape personal reality. Beauplaisir apprehends the heroine’s identity (rather than her selfhood) through her clothing, and because the dress of a prostitute is utterly incompatible with the status of a lady, Beauplaisir’s acceptance of the heroine’s status as prostitute establishes dress as a powerful repository of identity. But when 62 Beauplaisir resolves not to part without engaging her services, the heroine realizes that she is trapped within the prostitute narrative that she has created. She therefore supplements the visual narrative with a verbal one: she pleads her obligation to a man who maintains her as an excuse to avoid leaving with Beauplaisir. The heroine capitalizes on the identity-shaping implications of dress as she continues to construct narratives. She meets Beauplaisir again the next night, and loses her virginity to him. Afterward, she surprises him with her tears, which accord poorly with what her appearance suggests. She admits to Beauplaisir that she wore the prostitute guise as a whim, but invents a story to avoid revealing her actual identity: she claims to be the daughter of a county gentleman who is in town to buy clothes. Again the heroine capitalizes on the culturally accepted “feminine” realm of clothing to her advantage, and finds that clothing provides her with a powerful tool. Her powers of observation are important, too, because her ability to attract a crowd of men with her first disguise involves “practising as much as she had observ’d” (42). The heroine’s facility with the visual realm (both as an observer and as a presenter of visual information) allows her to form schemes and to be successful. In her shopping explanation, the heroine subtly conveys a sense that she is largely alone: much of the purchasing transacted by fashionable country dwellers took place as long distance orders rather than purchases conducted in person in London. 23 So the heroine’s arrival 23 For a detailed examination of a country gentlewoman’s shopping patterns, see Helen 63 in town to shop suggests that she has no relative in London knowledgeable enough to transact business for her, conveying to Beauplaisir that she is alone and unchaperoned. This excuse draws on a contemporary understanding of dress to make her even more attractive to Beauplaisir. The heroine relies on the power of dress in not only her establishment of visual narratives, but in her verbal narratives as well, which suggests that she places a great deal of confidence in dress’s ability to afford plausibility to her fictions. In effect, she does with her words what she has done with her dress, which is to reframe the way that others view her. But because she comes to rely increasingly upon dress, her subsequent escapades become more complicated. When Beauplaisir’s interest wanes in “Fantomina,” the name that the heroine gives her assumed persona of a country gentleman’s daughter, she revives his interest by dressing herself as a maid at an inn. In this next encounter, the heroine calls herself “Celia,” and needs her verbal acumen to acquire a maid’s position from the mistress of the inn. She also needs to “act the part” of a rustic through her responses to Beauplaisir. When he gives “Celia” a sum of gold after their first sexual encounter, the protagonist replies with “a well counterfeited Shew of Surprise and Joy … O Law, Sir! what must I do for all this?” (53). The role of maidservant relies less on conversation than does the heroine’s previous role as prostitute, which is at least in Berry’s “Prudent Luxury: The Metropolitan Tastes of Judith Baker, Durham Gentlewoman” in Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England: 'On the Town.' Sweet, Rosemary and Penelope Lane, eds. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. 131-155. 64 part because a servant would not be expected to speak to a gentleman unless he first spoke to her. The heroine’s “Shew” of surprise, a visual indicator that is most likely a facial expression or bodily posture, testifies to the decreasing emphasis that the she places on verbal narrative in her “Celia” role and her increasing reliance on visual narrative. For this “Celia” persona, the narrator provides a detailed description of the heroine’s costume: “The Dress she was in, was a round-ear’d Cap, a short Red Petticoat, and a little Jacket of Grey Stuff; all the rest of her Accoutrements were answerable to these” (52). The fact that this is the only detailed description of the heroine’s clothing emphasizes the importance of her dress in this encounter. In describing “Celia’s” clothes, Haywood’s narrator concentrates upon the seductive qualities of the clothing, calculated to enable a narrative of desire. The narrator describes how Beauplaisir catches “Celia” by her “pretty leg, which the Shortness of her Petticoat did not in the least oppose” (53). The heroine has clearly taken great care that her clothes will tell Beauplaisir of her servant status and sexual availability, but because the clothing operates as visual narrative, the heroine can also capitalize on the seductiveness of innocence and avoid overt verbal seduction. Like this “Celia” story and the “Fantomina” story, the next narrative also begins with the heroine’s assembling of clothing: “The Dress she had order’d to be made, was such as Widows wear in their first Mourning” (53-4). The narrator mentions that the heroine wears mourning clothes, but the narrator provides no details 65 of the clothing. This indicates that the visual narrative suggested by the mere category of mourning dress is sufficient for the heroine’s purpose here. The heroine supplements this widow costume with a “sorrowful Tale” (55) of a widow whose inheritance is imperiled. Skillfully, she initially addresses Beauplaisir by emphasizing the narrative possibilities of visual elements. She models appearance as a reliable indicator of identity by interpreting Beauplaisir’s outward appearance, implicitly inviting him to do the same to her. She tells him, “You have the Appearance of a Gentleman, and cannot, when you hear my Story, refuse … Assistance” (54). Here she directs attention to the power of clothing to display its wearer’s identity – Beauplaisir is the gentleman that he appears to be – so when beginning her story, the protagonist reinforces the strength of appearances by articulating what her clothing suggests. She says, “You may judge … by the melancholy Garb I am in that I have lately lost all that ought to be valuable to Womankind” (54). The novella’s protagonist here directly emphasizes Beauplaisir’s tendency to trust what he sees, and by interpreting her clothing for him, she overtly leads his interpretation of her. Beauplaisir’s unquestioning acceptance of the heroine’s appearance leaves him unwittingly trapped in a fiction. The heroine uses clothing to create women who do not exist in reality, but who seem real to Beauplaisir. 24 I will return to the idea of the heroine’s manipulation of reality, but 24 Here, the heroine’s identities exemplify Baudrillard’s idea, from “The Precession of 66 mention it here to emphasize how the heroine employs – and calls attention to – dress to simulate the reality that Beauplaisir does not doubt. The last disguise that the heroine employs heightens desire by selectively withholding her employment of verbal narratives. She calls herself “Incognita,” and writes a letter inviting Beauplaisir to participate in a liaison. But the letter contains no information regarding the heroine’s identity, warning Beauplaisir: “endeavour not to dive into the Meaning of this Mystery, which will be impossible for you to unravel” (63). While the letter obviously showcases verbal skill, it also undermines the importance of verbal elements to indicate identity. The protagonist writes of her refusal “to fill up my letter with any impertinent Praises on your Wit or Person” and says that she “need not go about to raise your Curiosity, by giving you any idea of what my Person is” (63). In this letter, the heroine paradoxically expresses her disinclination to provide much of any information in written form. It is a letter that hides more than it reveals. As “Incognita,” the heroine similarly plays with visual narrative, wearing a mask and refusing to allow Beauplaisir to see her face. Instead, “she dress’d herself in as magnificent a Manner, as if she were to be that Night at a Ball at Court, endeavoring to repair the want of those Beauties which the Vizard should conceal, by setting forth the others with the Greatest Care and Exactness” (65). Her care in dressing splendidly only incites Beauplaisir to wish more passionately to Simulacra,” of a “real without origin or reality” (1). 67 see what is hidden. Much as her letter teases him with verbal withholdings, the heroine’s “Incognita” appearance teases him with visual withholdings. The narrator attests to the pleasure of last narrative by asserting that “if there be any true Felicity in an Amour such as theirs, both here enjoy’d it to the full” (65). This suggests that, for the heroine’s goal of sexual enjoyment without social repercussions, withholding of narrative – whether visual or verbal – works successfully and cements her power over Beauplaisir. 25 The protagonist finds that her simulation 26 of identities allows for her to satisfy her desires while Beauplaisir leaves “Incognita” feeling thwarted and powerless. 27 25 Catherine Craft-Fairchild argues instead that the “Incognita” disguise is the heroine’s least successful: “This nameless guise, however, in which Fantomina endeavors to say almost nothing about herself, is paradoxically the least successful because in it there is some slippage: Fantomina here comes closest to revealing to Beauplaisir that her semblance of womanly weakness is just that, a semblance – her femininity is a masquerade” (Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions By Women. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. 66). As an acknowledged deception, the “Incognita” disguise does indeed work differently from the heroine’s other personae, but as a tool through which the heroine achieves sexual pleasure, Haywood’s narrator indicates that it is the most successful. 26 I use the term “simulation” purposefully. Simulation differs from pretending in that pretending upholds a prevailing reality whereas, to use Baudrillard again, “simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’” (Baudrillard 3). 27 Men’s desires, however, may be better satisfied through a profusion of verbal narrative, as Beauplaisir’s reliance on the cant of romance heroes suggests; Beauplaisir provides instances of his habitual reliance on such verbal seductions when to “Widow Bloomer” he writes that “I will be with you this Evening about Five: – O, ‘tis an Age till then!” (58), and to “Incognita” he “swore he could dwell for ever in her Arms” (66). Beauplaisir’s false statements register as trite to the heroine. His clichés call attention to how men routinely manipulate truth to gain the satisfaction of their desires, and the novella inverts this formula when it allows its heroine 68 Simulation and identity The heroine’s dress blurs the line between the seeming binaries of the real and the imaginary. In her creation of identities, the heroine fiercely maintains the fiction of her spotless reputation, reputation itself being an idea that blurs the distinction between truth and falsity. “True” and “false” have no functional distinction in reputation. In the eighteenth century, if a woman is believed to have been sexually active, no sex actually needs to have occurred for that woman’s reputation to suffer. Fantomina’s heroine inverts this order, enjoying a reputation beyond reproach while in actuality having sex with Beauplaisir. The novella reveals reputation to be as much of a simulation as the heroine’s slew of fabricated identities, and these tools allow the heroine to maintain enjoyment of and power over Beauplaisir for most of the novella. Part of what allows the heroine to continue her adventures is that her careful planning and her well-hidden true self render her in control of her own reputation until the novella’s end. The narrator repeatedly emphasizes for the reader the distinction between the reality of a woman’s virtue and the appearance of a woman’s reputation. The heroine’s worries center more on “the Danger of being expos’d, and the whole Affair made a Theme for publick Ridicule” (46) than on the actual loss of her virginity. The divide between virtue and reputation replicates the divide between the power of narrative to gain her own ends: sexual freedom without damage to her reputation. Beauplaisir “said all that Man could do, to prevail on [Incognita] to unfold the Mystery; but all his Adjurations were fruitless” (67). While his verbal skills do not produce the results that he desires, the heroine’s skills secure for her both sexual enjoyment and mastery over Beauplaisir. 69 reality and fiction, because as long as the protagonist can maintain the fictional semblance of virtue, she ceases to worry about the loss of her virtue in reality. 28 When the heroine worries about the possibility of Beauplaisir abandoning her, she comforts herself: And if he should be false, grow satiated, like other Men, I shall but, at the worst, have the private Vexation of knowing I have lost him; -- and the Intrigue being a Secret, my Disgrace will be so too […] it will not be even in the Power of my Undoer himself to triumph over me; and while he laughs at, and perhaps despises the fond, the yielding Fantomina, he will revere and esteem the virtuous, the reserved Lady. (49) The “Lady” must live in a world that, despite all of her money and her lofty social station, renders her largely powerless. But she takes advantage of the world of fashion to generate narratives that afford her enjoyment of desire, asserting author-like agency by making use of the tools that a woman has at her disposal. The narrator explains that Beauplaisir sees the heroine in “Slippers, and a Night-Gown loosely flowing” during the day, but does not recognize the same woman when he sees her at night “Laced, and adorned with all the Blaze of Jewels” (50). Clothing delineates difference in identity so clearly that it provides Fantomina’s protagonist with the means through which to script affairs with Beauplaisir without fear of losing her reputation. 29 As long as the world perceives the unnamed lady as virtuous, the reality of her sexual 28 Though she initially thinks about arranging her affairs so as not to run “any Risque, either of her virtue or her reputation” (45), she comes to think exclusively in terms of the preservation of her reputation. 29 The façade of her reputation becomes a construction that’s more real than reality itself, or what Baudrillard calls the “hyperreal.” 70 conduct does not matter; because appearances dictate her moral standing, the heroine’s visual narratives give her immense power. Because the protagonist carefully maintains the fiction of her virtue for most of the novella, she fulfills the role of author of the fiction of her own reputation. The heroine’s reputation does not represent her actual behavior, because others see her as virtuous despite the truth that she has engaged in sexual activity; her careful plotting and planning allows for this to happen. The novella’s narrator emphasizes this authorial function by reminding readers of the power that a successful author wields. In the Widow Bloomer story, the narratorial voice interrupts the narration of a sexual encounter to defend the novella’s premise of a repeatedly fooled hero: “It may, perhaps, seem strange that Beauplaisir should in such near Intimacies continue still deceiv’d: I know there are Men who will swear it is an Impossibility” (57). The “near Intimacies” of which the narrator writes imply the heroine’s nudity, or her lack of dress. Anne Hollander argues that the perception of nudity is “dependent on a sense of clothing” (xiii), or in other words, that the perception of dressed bodies affects the perception of the naked body. Dress works so powerfully that, even in its absence, it still exercises a hold on its viewer’s powers of perception. Even though Beauplaisir makes love to the same body, he does not perceive it as the same. In each encounter, the heroine’s clothing dictates Beauplaisir’s sensing of the heroine’s body, and the 71 protagonist safeguards her reputation because Beauplaisir believes that he engages with multiple different bodies. The narrator’s defense of Beauplaisir’s blindness takes the form of a list that begins with highlighting the “Alteration which the Change of Dress made” in the heroine’s appearance. The placement of dress at the head of this list indicates that dress is the heroine’s principal power. It is a power that Beauplaisir never explores for himself, because he believes that his verbal prowess is sufficient to obtain what he desires from women. Not having to safeguard his reputation, he does not need dress as a disguise. Beauplaisir does disguise his emotions, inviting an implicit comparison to the heroine’s employment of disguise. He provides “Fantomina” with “a thousand Vows of an Affection, as inviolable and ardent as she could wish to find in him” (47), but the narrator soon tells us that “he varied not so much from his Sex as to be able to prolong Desire, to any great Length after Possession” (50). He repeats this detachment with “Celia” the maid, as “in spite of the Eagerness with which he first enjoy’d her, he was at last grown more weary of her, than he had been of Fantomina” (53). While Beauplaisir exercises his own brand of duplicity – one that the narrator suggests is a hallmark of his sex – his inconstancy poses no threat to his reputation. The necessity of maintaining a spotless reputation is a feminine one, and dress as a means to protect reputation is thus a particularly efficient tool for women. However, 72 the heroine eventually must negotiate what her body insistently and increasingly reveals: her pregnancy. By writing of the heroine’s pregnancy, Haywood ends the novella with the creation of a reality that the heroine cannot easily reshape. Yet even her pregnancy is a happenstance that her visual skills might have allowed her to keep hidden if she remained steadfastly in control of her identity (or identities). The narrator asserts that the heroine would “easily” have hidden her pregnancy “had she been at liberty to have acted with the same unquestionable Authority over herself as she did before the coming of her Mother,” and provides the heroine’s strategy for dealing with this inconvenience: “By eating little, lacing prodigiously strait, and the Advantage of a great Hoop-Petticoat, however, her Bigness was not taken Notice of” (68). Clothing aids her again, but the untimely return of her mother impedes the heroine from conducting her affairs with the freedom to which she had become accustomed. Despite her forced relinquishing of power, the heroine controls what she can of her situation through strategic use of clothing. Tight-laced bodices give her torso a slender appearance, and her hoop petticoat disguises her growing belly. The heroine is so successful at manipulating others’ perception of the truth of her virginity that no one knows of her pregnancy until she experiences sudden labor pains. Her mother so steadfastly believes the reality of her daughter’s innocence that she thinks her child is “struck with the Hand of Death” (69) until the doctor informs her of her daughter’s 73 condition. The heroine’s dress had successfully shaped her mother’s perception, and because Haywood’s narrator describes the mother as a woman of great penetration (68), the heroine’s power of manipulating truth must be formidable. Haywood here hints at the possibility that the protagonist might have succeeded in controlling her reputation and her sexual activities indefinitely. Clothing allows her a measure of control that, had her child not arrived early, she might have maintained. This narrative possibility relies largely on the cultural capital of the hoop petticoat. The hoop petticoat The narrator’s mere mention of a hoop petticoat invokes ideas of feminine deception. Eighteenth-century critics of the hoop point to its unnatural changing of a woman’s shape, and subsequently characterize it as the means for feminine duplicity. The hoop, with its radical girth, drastically changes a woman’s silhouette, almost rendering its wearer into a different woman. Erin Mackie explains that the hoop petticoat was, in the eighteenth century, “[i]dentified with the feminine, most specifically with female reproduction, with the excessive and the fantastic, with the most uncurbed onslaught of fashion’s flood” (107). Despite its unwieldiness and the difficulty inherent in navigating through everyday obstacles such as doorways and coaches for women wearing hoops, this impractical fashion “lasted for almost a hundred years” (Mackie 107). The popularity of the hoop helps it to function as an implement of female power. Because so many women wore hoops, it became 74 impossible to simply equate the hoop with an attempt to hide pregnancy. Yet because of its widespread popularity, women who were pregnant could hide a pregnancy under the billow of a hoop. The hoop, therefore, “is dangerous because it allows women to control the expression and effects of their own sexual desire” (Mackie 111). 30 the hoop can allow simulated innocence to pass freely for real innocence. The heroine’s use of the hoop succeeds, at least temporarily, in visually conveying a story of her own design: the story of her continued virginity that renders pregnancy a narrative 30 The anonymous Whipping-Tom: Or, a Rod for a Proud Lady, Bundled up in Four Feeling Discourses, Both Serious and Merry. In Order to Touch the Fair Sex to the Quick (London: Printed for Sam Briscoe, 1722. Huntington shelfmark 272426) excoriates the hoop skirt for its ability to hide pregnancy and women’s lechery. The author writes of “the damnable Mode of a Hoop-Petticoat,” writing that “this Invention of making the Devil of a Ring of Four or Five Yards about the Feet, to fight Prizes of Damnation in, surely must be first contriv’d and worn by some Whore, to hide the Scandal of her forfeited Honour” (31-2). For an example that extends beyond the fear of pregnancy, see The Origin of the Whale Bone-petticoat. A Satyr. Boston. 1714: Order your Mantoa-makers [sic] to attend, Tailers et cætera, for I intend Deep within circling Ambuscade to hide Your straddling Gate. […] If you’ll but follow my Advice-----‘my Word Within [a] few Hours, your Joys shall be restor’d, And you’ll to Court, ‘spight of your straddling Gate, My happy Project shall maintain your State. […] By this Device, you’ll walk without much Pain; And shine triumphant in Versailles again. Besides, If you but wear it, all the bubbl’d Nation Will soon admire, and bring it into Fashion. (6) The woman’s awkward walk, or “straddling Gate,” in this poem is a result of her having contracted a venereal disease. In a more closely-fitting gown, this tell-tale sign of promiscuity would be more obvious, but the hoop’s girth renders her gait unnoticeable to onlookers. 75 impossibility. When she wears a hoop, the heroine wears clothing that functions explicitly as a fiction, as an alteration of truth. Because women were thought to use the hoop as a way of changing men’s perceptions of reality, critics perceived the hoop to be a threat to men’s dominance over women. Complaints about the hoop “focused on the disjunction they created between reality and appearances” (Crowston 52). The hoop was “a vigorous assertion of women’s intention to wear whatever pleased them – or the stylemakers of the day – despite the reaction of onlookers. Such female obstinacy dismayed, bemused, and titillated observers, helping to convince them that fashion was an utterly female domain, where rational men could have no say” (Crowston 54). The hoop made many viewers anxious that they could not observe clear visual links between appearance and women’s “true” selves, and women seemed to enjoy the power that this allowed them. 31 Addison’s 5 January 1709-10 edition of The Tatler comically places a hoop- petticoat on trial, citing the hoop’s spur to cloth and trimming production as its defenders’ chief arguments. The supposed author Isaac Bickerstaff decides against the hoop, however, and his explanation exposes some of the public’s general complaints about the garment. He begins with “the great and additional Expence which such 31 Proponents of the hoop countered such ideas by emphasizing its potential for modesty, citing its ability to keep men at a proper physical distance, and highlighting the number of seamstresses kept financially afloat by the extra work necessitated by the great quantities of fabric that each skirt necessitated. For example, “Jack Lovelass” writes: "Great Hoops are so far from being a hurt to the Society, that they are of very singular Service to it; by encouraging and finding Work for a great Number of Hands that would otherwise be unemploy'd." The Hoop-Petticoat Vindicated. London, 1745. 14. 76 Fashions would bring upon Fathers and Husbands” and the drain on ladies’ pocket money (Addison and Steele, Rinehart 43), and advances to arguments that take him beyond the merely economic: “To this I added, the great Temptation it might give to Virgins, of acting in Security like married Women, and by that Means give a Check to Matrimony, an Institution always encouraged by wise Societies” (Addison and Steele, Rinehart 43-4). The hoop was, in short, a wonderful cover to hide the unintended pregnancies of promiscuous women. Bickerstaff adds that he would have women “bestow upon themselves all the additional Beauties that Art can supply them with, provided it does not interfere with Disguise, or pervert those of Nature” (Addison 44). Bickerstaff’s choice of words here belies the fear that the hoop might provide women with too great a power of disguise, and he demonstrates anxiety that women might deceive men. Haywood’s specific mention of a hoop points to the power that the unnamed heroine of Fantomina exercises. Employing one of the most hotly debated pieces of clothing of her day, the protagonist of Fantomina wields immense power over Beauplaisir and everyone else who sees her. Part of her power is sexual, in that she repeatedly seduces Beauplasir for her own enjoyment, but part of her power consists of her control over the plot of the narrative, or as Margaret Case Croskery argues, “the power of female sexual desire to create alternative social fictions is precisely what Fantomina celebrates” (77). Mackie writes that, “[i]n the threat of the hoop we see 77 one instance of how fashionable consumption and display may empower women, here specifically by affording them greater sexual autonomy and larger claims on social space” (112). The empowerment of the hoop, and the similar agency that Haywood’s heroine asserts through her management of clothing, allow her temporary sexual autonomy, but ultimately her narrative, like all narratives, must end. 32 The novella concludes with the protagonist’s mother sending her daughter to a nunnery, which suggests that the protagonist’s relationship to clothing will change, at least temporarily. The nun’s habit “was, in theory, an unchanging uniform that did away with the superficial distinctions fostered by the volatile, showy world of fashion” (Rodini and Weaver 9). Without clothing as a self-fashioning tool, the heroine truly is punished. Not only is her access to costuming (her weapon of choice) limited, but Beauplaisir’s exit from the text of the novella allows Haywood to write that the heroine’s intrigues with Beauplaisir end. This means that no other intrigues are likely in the heroine’s future, because the narrative has already established that the heroine, despite her sexual transgressions, remains constant in her affections. 33 Because the 32 In Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks explains that a narrative requires an ending, for “the interminable would be the meaningless” (93). Fantomina’s plot suggests that this is true for visual as well as verbal narratives. 33 The narrator explains that “with her Sex’s Modesty, she had not also thrown off another Virtue equally valuable, tho’ generally unfortunate, Constancy: She loved Beauplaisir; it was only he whose Solicitations could give her Pleasure; and had she seen the whole Species despairing, dying for her sake, it might, perhaps, have been a Satisfaction to her Pride, but none to her more tender Inclination” (51). It should be noted, however, that while the narrator makes the heroine’s fondness for Beauplaisir explicit, nowhere does the narrator (or the 78 heroine’s power stems from her clothing changes, the nunnery represents the antithesis of the power of dress, as its associations with nuns’ habits align it with stasis rather than innovation, and this effectually denies her the means through which to create narrative – and by extension, direct others’ perception of reality. The heroine as author Though the heroine’s body ultimately undermines her control, both her verbal and sartorial narratives repeatedly succeed in allowing her to establish and maintain control over both Beauplaisir and her own sexual pleasure. In fact, at the novella’s end, Beauplaisir provides evidence of the success of the heroine’s skill because he can scarcely believe “that he should have been blinded so often by her Artifices” (70). In highlighting Beauplaisir’s “blindness,” Haywood’s narrator invokes an irony: because Beauplaisir trusted what he saw of the heroine’s (fictive) visual narratives, he allowed himself to be “blind” to reality. The narrator even praises the heroine by admitting that “it must be confessed, indeed, that she preserved an OEconomy in the management of this intreague, beyond what almost any Woman but herself ever did: In the first Place, by making no Person in the World a Confident in it; and in the next, by concealing from Beauplaisir the Knowledge who she was” (49-50). This tribute emphasizes the protagonist’s cleverness and organization, 34 and the praise that ends protagonist) make evident a desire to marry Beauplaisir; the heroine appears to seek only sexual enjoyment and the gratification of her pride in his attentions. 34 This praise also provides practical advice as to how other women might duplicate the protagonist’s success. The heroine also speaks rather didacticly when, after enunciating some 79 the novella emphasizes the heroine’s use of “variety” or imaginative innovation: “thus ended an Intreague, which, considering the time it lasted, was as full of Variety as any, perhaps, that many Ages has produced” (71). In effect, the skills lauded by Haywood’s narrator are the very skills necessary for the construction of fiction. In her later conduct book Epistles for the Ladies (1749-50), Haywood replicates this endorsement of narrative-creation as a means through which women can seize or maintain power to manipulate reality, specifically in their relationships with men. In providing “a few Maxims which a twelve Years happy Experience has convinced me afford the most sure Means, not only of preserving, but of encreasing the Affection of a Husband,” the persona of Mira writes “[i]f at any Time he should chance to be a little sullen or peevish, be careful not to let him see you take Notice he is so, for that would only serve to heighten the ill Humour in him, but rather surprize him out of it by the Relation of some whimsical Incident, either of your own inventing, or that your Memory supplies you with” (Epistle LXII, 183). Here, narrative is the means through which a woman can placate her husband, and in turn of her strategies, exclaims “O that all neglected Wives, and fond abandon’d Nymphs would take this Method! – Men would be caught in their own Snare, and have no Cause to scorn our easy, weeping, wailing Sex!” (65). As Juliette Merritt argues, “Haywood’s writing demonstrates a sustained exposé of the conditions of female existence; to read her is to witness an analysis of those conditions and a set of strategies through which women can enhance their social power” (Beyond Spectacle: Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectators. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: U of Toronto Press, 2004. 22). Fantomina gains further strength as a set of amatory strategies when placed in the context of some of Haywood’s oeuvre, which includes such overt conduct literature as A Present For a Servant-Maid (1743), The Wife (1755), The Husband (1756), and The Young Lady (1756). 80 enhance her own happiness. Further, a woman’s power relies on her ability to prevent her husband from seeing her awareness of his moods. Control of the visual realm seals a woman’s power. As Marianne Schofield suggests, Fantomina’s heroine occupies the position of authorial identity. Haywood’s refusal to provide the “actual” name of the main character (a refusal that I have replicated in my choice to call her “the heroine” or “the protagonist”) helps in this positioning of the heroine as an anonymous author figure. Haywood’s narrator calls the protagonist only “my fine Lady Such-a-one” (42) or “– ” (44). The remaining names appended to the central character are the names that the heroine creates for the personae she assumes in her narratives, emphasizing the heroine’s role as the creator of those narratives. The refusal to provide the protagonist’s “actual” name (as with Moll Flanders) furthers the power of her dress, because when indicators of identity like names are lacking, it becomes more the case that it is in a woman’s visual self-presentation that her identity rests. Haywood’s choice of names for her heroine’s various incarnations capitalizes on narrative’s ability to reveal what it simultaneously conceals, fueling desire by the revelations and perpetuating Beauplaisir’s desire to discover that which is hidden. All of the heroine’s names share the function of concealing the identity that she received at birth. But each name also reveals what the heroine, as author-figure, chooses to impart to Beauplaisir. Her first choice of name, Fantomina, capitalizes on her status in this identity as 81 “phantom,” or realistically nonexistent. A created identity, or, in other words, a character fabricated for the narrative that the heroine constructs, “Fantomina” also transmits the idea of “fancy,” or the whimsical notion that led to the character’s creation. Haywood’s choice of “Celia” draws on conventional pastoral poetry, conveying a sense of the seductive force of innocence often depicted in such poetry. The widow’s last name, Bloomer, underscores the sexual knowledge implicit in widowhood by communicating the bloom of sexuality that distinguishes a widow from a “budding” virgin. Lastly, “Incognita” heightens Beauplaisir’s desires through her refusal to provide him with a narrative, the name itself only revealing the insistent mystery of the owner’s identity. These names reveal only enough to titillate, but also strategically conceal to increase the desire for the further perpetuation of her plots. Giving oneself a name, rather than using the name one’s parents provide, allows a character to act as the author of her own life. Haywood’s novella provides a glimpse of the ways in which women can utilize dress as visual narrative because dress is a relatively widely accepted “feminine” realm. 35 Since dress was not widely perceived as a component of narrative, it is a 35 Spectator 265 (from 3 January 1715) provides an example of the largely unquestioned association between women and a love of dress: “I cannot conclude this Paper without an Exhortation to the British Ladies, that they would excel the Women of all other Nations as much in Vertue and good sense, as they do in Beauty; which they may certainly do, if they will be industrious to cultivate their Minds, as they are to adorn their Bodies” (The Spectator By Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Others. Vol. 2. London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1924. 56). Despite the admonition that women should spend more time pursuing 82 form of visual narrative the veracity of which is not generally questioned, and Fantomina provides a glimpse into one way in which clothing can provide a woman with a means to establish or alter an identity. However, the novella’s ending problematizes any simple readings of visual narrative as unilaterally empowering for women. Even if Fantomina’s heroine enjoys her time in the nunnery, her relegation to it is at very least a nominal punishment, and at worst the means through which she is deprived of her narrative-making tools, as well as deprived of Beauplaisir’s company. The novella’s ending, in fact, forces the heroine to do the one thing that she endeavored to avoid: reveal her actual name and identity to Beauplaisir. This ending reminds readers that women suffer under different constraints than do men, and any woman who engages in the creation of narrative must remain aware of this – anonymity cannot be guaranteed. Haywood’s narrative hints that fluidity of identity can be enjoyable for women, as she shows how the heroine’s employment of verbal and visual narrative allows her sexual enjoyment and power for most of the novella. But the novella also provides a strong caution in the form of its heroine’s punishment. The threat of power Both Moll Flanders and Fantomina are, at their cores, fantasies of feminine power. Both are stories of women who use clothing to gain something important. However, each identity exhibited by Moll and “Fantomina” can be read as a facet of educational activities, the Spectator makes clear that most women were assumed to spend large amounts of their time in selecting, buying, and arranging their clothing. 83 each heroine’s ostensibly real personality. The heroine of Haywood’s narrative “pantomimes a self, ‘masquing’ her own desires without masking them. Donning masks that reveal aspects of her own identity, she acts upon desires with which she could not otherwise identify” (Croskery 86). Likewise, Moll’s remaking of herself into a lady reveals her sense that she is just as much a lady as one born to that station. In dressing like a gentlewoman, Moll reveals that part of herself that believes in her right to a high social status. Clothing amplifies these aspects of each woman’s personality, allowing the women to make real these fictional, fantasy selves. These stories reflect a complex relationship between their protagonists and the reality of identity even within the context of fantasy. Moll and “Fantomina” employ dress as the key element in experimentation. Through trial and error, these women test others’ responses to their dress. In this way, these characters uphold prevailing notions of reality found also in early eighteenth century scientific thought. Francis Hauksbee begins the preface to his Physico- Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects by writing “The Learned World is now almost generally convinc’d, that instead of amusing themselves with Vain Hypotheses, which seem to differ little from Romances, there’s no other way of Improving NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, but by Demonstrations and Conclusions, founded upon Experiments judiciously and accurately made” (A2). Sir Isaac Newton’s insistence upon observable results serving as the bedrock of scientific inquiry privileges ocular 84 proof as the outcome of responsible experimentation, and Hauksbee’s analogy of hypotheses and romances demonstrates that fiction, in this era, is thought to oppose the clarity of sight. Hypotheses are a sort of fiction, presenting in the guise of truth an idea that might not actually be truthful. But Newtonian science emphasizes observable results, implicitly endorsing the notion of ocular observation as more persuasive than fictional guesses. Ocularity represents what is real and capable of being sensed, which is exactly what Defoe’s novel fears and Haywood’s novella celebrates and subverts. Moll and Haywood’s unnamed heroine both take advantage of the believability of ocular proof. Dress works as a visual narrative for the fictional personae that these characters set forth, and Moll and “Fantomina” both change their realities through others’ views of them. In their interweaving of reality and fantasy, these texts suggest a means through which women, or at least fictional heroines, can gain power. Fiction, like dress, can make things seem to be true which aren’t actually true. Artifice, whether sartorial or verbal, is powerful, and Haywood and Defoe depict the celebratory and cautionary antitheses of this power. Defoe’s novel expresses a fear of the social destabilization that might result from fiction, and Haywood’s narrative hints that fluidity of identity can be sexually enjoyable for women. Both Moll Flanders and Fantomina rely on the “dress” of fiction – as well as the employment of literal clothing in their plots – as a vehicle through which to play out fantasies of feminine 85 power. Dress renders these female characters’ personalities visible and legible, and these characters manage their visibility in ways that provide them with power that they can wield successfully within the confines of their fictional narratives. When Moll expresses her opinion that clothing rendered her “as like a Lady as other Folks” (277), she is effectually leveling the social disparity between herself (a felon’s daughter) and gentlewomen. This threat to rank menaces the social order, and the threat becomes even larger in the context of Moll’s ultimate ending: she and her husband live in wealth in the American colonies. Dress has allowed Moll to change her actual social station. What Moll seemed to be is what Moll has become, and she has achieved this social leap with little more than cleverness and a carefully chosen wardrobe. Careful management of dress as a conveyor of visual narrative enables Moll to better herself in reality. Similarly, in Fantomina, Beauplaisir expresses his awareness of the power of artifice or simulation to shape reality in his response to the heroine’s admission that she had been feigning the part of a prostitute: he “did not doubt by the Beginning of her Conduct, but that in the End she would become in Reality, the Thing she so artfully had counterfeited” (48). Beauplaisir recognizes that simulation threatens reality through posing a threat to womanly reputation. While a fall in one’s social station may be possible (if lamentable), the idea that a lowly individual might rise in station can generate anxiety and fear about the instability of the distinctions in socioeconomic rank. Sumptuary laws had sought to curb this kind 86 of rise, but such laws had largely disappeared by the eighteenth century. The sartorial boundaries of class cannot effectively be policed, and Moll Flanders and Fantomina suggest ways that women can use this to advantage. The ending of Moll Flanders highlights just how permeable class boundaries might be, and just how inconsequential even one’s criminal history might be. Moll finally discloses to her husband that she had been married to her half-brother, and that she had conceived a son with him. Moll’s description of this part of her sordid past as “all these little Difficulties” (427) hints at the idea that Moll is unduly dismissive of her transgressions, especially for a woman claiming to be penitent. Moll explains that she and her husband live together “with the greatest Kindness and Comfort imaginable” (427), and when the two have served more than the time specified in the terms of their transportation to the American colonies, they return to their home country of England. Kindness, comfort, and a fortune amassed from plantations in America are the spoils of Moll’s deceptions, allowing her to claim “sincere Penitence” (427) for her wicked past. Whether Moll is truly penitent or merely seems to be penitent is largely irrelevant, because Moll has already demonstrated that she believes herself to be whatever it is that she seems to be. Seeming passing for being, or deception passing for truth, is one way of defining fiction, and because early eighteenth century Britain saw an increasing consumer demand for narratives, this way of looking at fiction demonstrates a 87 corresponding fear that this demand would blur the distinctions between reality and falsity. As Richard Allestree’s worry that “a copy” might “produce an original” suggests, many moralists worried that fiction was simply an increasingly popular form of the acceptance of lies, pernicious untruths that readers were likely to believe as truth and subsequently to reproduce in their real lives. Fantomina presents a heroine who uses fiction to gain her own ends, much the sort of behavior that someone like Allestree might most fear. But while Haywood’s heroine initially satisfies her sexual desires through her costume changes, she also finds herself enchanted with creating her many narratives for Beauplaisir. The heroine even fools herself with story; when she plans her “Fantomina” narrative, she imagines “a world of Satisfaction to herself in […] observing the Surprise that [Beauplaisir] would be in to find himself refused by a Woman, who he supposed granted her Favours without Exception” (44). The heroine exults in her power over Beauplaisir, later telling herself that she has “outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving kind, and while he thinks to fool [her], is himself the only beguiled Person” (59). As much as she might enjoy the sexual component of her stratagems, she takes equal, or perhaps greater, pride in her ability to perpetuate successful narratives. The importance of dress to the plot of Fantomina is in large part due to its seeming truthfulness as visual narrative. Dress’s perceived alignment with triviality and femininity render it believed to be beneath investigation, and Fantomina’s heroine utilizes dress, a generally acceptable (if 88 sometimes seemingly frivolous) womanly interest, to exert power over her circumstances. In so doing, the heroine suggests that dress can allow women the power to alter their reality. This power of dress will soon change, however, as mid-century novelist Samuel Richardson’s immensely popular characters Pamela and Clarissa attempt to reshape the power of clothing. Rather than depict dress as a kind of fiction that changes reality, Richardson uses dress as a transparent, “true” conveyor of a woman’s personality. Yet, as we shall see, the association of dress with deception that Defoe and Haywood help perpetuate thwarts Richardson’s attempts to align dress with virtue. 89 Chapter Two – Samuel Richardson: Fashion, Commerce, and Virtue The move toward virtue Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe’s uses of clothing as an implement of female power embed dress within a perceived nexus of impropriety and deception. Dress, for both Moll and “Fantomina,” enables deception that answers each heroine’s ends. The bold and perhaps even shocking plots of their narratives further align women’s dress and power with immorality and deception. Narrative style was changing, however, and amatory fiction and crime narratives contained too much celebration of lowly figures and shady pursuits to suit changing tastes. No one was more instrumental in shifting taste away from tales celebrating women’s sexual and financial power than Samuel Richardson. Richardson’s story of imperiled but triumphant virtue generated a huge audience for Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded (1740). His Clarissa, Or the History of A Young Lady (1747-8) also focused on celebrating feminine virtue, but one key way in which these novels differ from early-century narratives is the increasing focus on characters’ unique personalities and their thoughts and feelings. By the mid- eighteenth century, novelists were experimenting with ways to depict the inner lives of their characters, using omniscient narration or epistolary first-person forms for greater expression of emotion. Ian Watt’s idea of formal realism, whereby the novel works by “exhaustive presentation rather than by elegant concentration” (Watt 30), was beginning to come in vogue. One of Richardson’s elements of “exhaustive 90 presentation” is clothing: his young heroine Pamela enumerates the elements of her wardrobe multiple times, and on several occasions characters minutely describe the tragic Clarissa’s clothing. Description of dress allows readers to understand these heroines in a more individualized way than readers had apprehended allegorical characters like Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), or the flat characters of early eighteenth-century amatory fiction. Readers may know a great deal about how Fantomina’s heroine employs clothing, but her motivations and inner life remain largely inaccessible. Tom Wolfe discusses the period’s novelistic employment of the details of fashion: “ever since the times of Richardson and Fielding […], novelists have been drawn to fashion as an essential ingredient of realistic narration […] Early in the game they seemed to sense that fashion is a code, a symbolic vocabulary that offers a sub-rational but instant and very brilliant illumination of the characters of individuals” (19). If fashion functions in novels as a code, it is not only a code that defies static interpretations, but it is also a kind of code that is largely viewed as predicated on detail. The novel’s heightened emphasis on detail, on the everyday and the small characteristics of the individual, grounds the genre in particulars. 36 Defoe’s account of 36 Naomi Schor has also written extensively about the gendered status of the detail. She summarizes her argument: “To focus on the detail and more particularly on the detail as negativity is to become aware, as I discovered, of its participation in a larger semantic network, bounded on the one side by the ornamental, with its traditional connotations of effeminacy and decadence, and on the other, by the everyday, whose ‘prosiness’ is rooted in the domestic sphere of social life presided over by women. In other words, to focus on the 91 the life of Moll Flanders, for example, repeatedly highlights the various types of cloth that she steals. However, Moll Flanders and other early eighteenth-century novels lack the profuse detail that a writer like Richardson provides. His eponymous Pamela mentions the number of pens that she hides in her room, and catalogues the division of her (rather extensive) stock of clothing into three “bundles” to reflect the various sources of her dress. That Pamela’s impulse toward detail leads her to discuss clothing so often is not surprising, for Pamela’s dressing herself in “honest” homespun garb is the means with which she chooses to emblematize what she sees as her moral purity. Elizabeth Wilson’s Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (1985) advances the argument that clothing is central to all cultures, and that garments, as objects, “articulate the soul” (xi); this, Wilson says, is a hallmark of modernity. She writes that in much criticism of fashion, “the alternatives posed are between moralism and hedonism” (Wilson 232). This causes immense difficulty for Richardson when, in the early modern era, he attempts to use his heroines’ dress as part of the means through which their virtue is made manifest to readers. Moralism and hedonism stand as two incommensurate binaries, with no middle ground to join them. What I will argue in this chapter is that the similar gulf between virtue and superficiality makes impossible the use of women’s clothing that Richardson attempts. In trying to express place and function of the detail since the mid-eighteenth century is to become aware that the normative aesthetics elaborated and disseminated by the Academy and its members is not sexually neutral” (Reading in Detail. Aesthetics and the Feminine. London and New York: Methuen, 1987. 4). 92 Pamela’s and Clarissa’s morality through dress, Richardson highlights the culturally irreconcilable rift between virtue and clothing, truth and deception, and by extension, propriety and the novel. One key barrier between clothing and virtue is clothing’s perceived alignment with not only the body, but also with femininity. Dress’s reliance on physical, bodily presence helps to render it a feminine concern and to pit dress against reason. The anonymous author of Man Superior to Woman (1744) explicitly aligns women with dress and denies them intellectual depth: “The more judicious Part of our Sex may perhaps think it dangerous to trust the Women as Judges of any thing where Reason is concerned, on account of the Weakness of their Intellects, which seldom can reach higher than a Head-dress” (xiv). Here, the excesses of the headdress almost seem at fault for weighing down women’s intellects and rendering women incapable of being both fashionable and rational. In part because of dress’s close alliance with the body, dress registers in the early eighteenth century as a lowly, generally frivolous, pursuit. This makes the expression of virtue through dress problematic, because the body is often opposed to and contrasted with the soul, which presumably is the seat of virtue. Pamela’s explicit interest in dress contributes to the controversy to which the novel Pamela gives rise. Richardson works to combat this difficulty in Clarissa by removing dress as a topic of much explicit interest for his heroine. But in so doing, Richardson’s novels help to shape the idea that an interest in dress correlates to a lack 93 of virtue, making problematic Pamela and Clarissa’s use of dress as an agent of virtue. 37 Richardson’s attempts at expressing virtue through dress place him in an outdated tradition. Elizabeth Wilson makes the distinction between two views of dress: the “authentic,” or those who are committed to “cultures of identity,” and the “modernist,” or those who “act on the basis that human interaction depends on dissimulation” and who revel in subversive play with social codes (231). The idea that clothing can label its wearer’s identity easily and without confusion is an idea more fitting with an era in which most people own few suits (or one suit) of clothing. With the increasingly industrialized textile trade, more people owned more clothing. This allowed for the kind of experimentation with social codes to which Wilson refers, and these changes became disjunctive as authentic and modernist views of clothing jostled against each other. Richardson’s presentation of dress in Pamela and Clarissa works in a society that employs dress as “authentic.” But Richardson and his characters live in a world that holds a “modernist” view of clothing, making dress as much of a text as novel, and as difficult to control the interpretation of as novels. 37 The fashions of the 1740s increasingly invoke propriety and virtue, which suggests a growing focus on virtue as a worthwhile pursuit in not only entertainment (like novels) but in everyday elements of life like self-presentation through dress. Christopher Breward explains: “the dress of the English gentry appears to have undergone a self-imposed process of modification from the 1740s onwards, toning down elements of overt display in favour of a propriety and sense of responsibility” (The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1995. 119). I suggest that Richardson’s novels helped to cement the link between propriety and dress that Breward references. 94 Pamela’s questionable virtue In Eliza Haywood’s parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), which she titled Anti-Pamela; Or Feign’d Innocence Detected (1741), Mr. L— tries to seduce the heroine by questioning the definitions of key terms: “The World, cry’d he, is not well agreed about the true Signification of those Words, Virtuous and Honourable” (96). Haywood has very nearly encapsulated the response to Richardson’s novel in this utterance of Mr. L—’s. In a sense, the debate over Pamela became an argument about just such definitions. One important but sometimes overlooked term central to the Pamela controversy is the word “fashion.” “Fashion” in its meaning as a transitory style of dress has been in use since at least 1568. 38 Implicit in this usage of the term is the idea that fashions often change for no readily identifiable reason, and this causes an outlay of capital to replace an item that is still in good condition. In the eighteenth century, the association of fashion with unnecessary expenditure aids in the widespread justification of anti-fashion sentiment. The speed with which fashions change could ruin entire industries, and Bernard Mandeville provides an instance of this in a 1709 edition of The Female Tatler. A group of women are discussing clothes, and a “grave matron” speaks to them in favor of decorative ribbons: “she said, no body now a days minded the Poor; most of the 38 “Fashion.” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971). 965. The definition for fashion in this sense is “the mode of dress, etiquette, furniture, style of speech, etc., adopted in society for the time being.” 95 ribbond Weavers were out of Employ, and Thousands of them ready to Starve” (136). 39 Similarly, Beverly Lemire describes the anger of British weavers toward women who perpetuated a vogue for painted Indian calicoes in 1719, “when calico- garbed women were hounded through the streets and the gowns of Indian fabric torn from their backs by disgruntled weavers” (6). The seemingly whimsical choices that women made in their dress could have enormous impact not only on the economic lives of weavers, mercers, and others in the textile and clothing industries, but by extension on the larger economy of Britain itself. Dress’s seemingly inextricable relationship with fashion results in the largely interchangeable usage of the two terms, a slippage that makes any discussion of dress at this time also a discussion of fashion. Joseph Warton personifies fashion in “Fashion: An Epistolary Satire to a Friend” (1742), writing “Scarce have you chose (like Fortune fond to joke) / Some reigning Dress, but you the Choice revoke” (8). In other words, by the time a sartorial fashion establishes its preeminence, another one rises up to usurp its position, and while Warton’s use of “Fortune” here invokes the concept of fate, it also hints that commercial fortunes are made and lost from these shifts of fashion. This potentially destructive economic power of clothing renders dress threatening, which in turn constrains the ways in which dress is interpreted. Women’s clothing in the mid-eighteenth century experienced a vogue for rusticity. For instance, 39 This story appears in number 74, dating from Friday 23 December to 26 December 1709. 96 women’s straw hats to lend their wardrobes an air of country charm and of innocence that was perceived as a component of a close relationship with nature. At mid- century, silks were lighter than the previous heavy damasks and large flowered brocades (Ribeiro 140). These details suggest a shift away from intense formality, and this fashion for simplicity seems to have been intended to correspond to ideas of virtue. Simple clothing then, was thought to imbue—or more precisely, to invest—its wearer with dignified qualities like humbleness. The verb “invest” means to clothe or dress, and more specifically means to clothe with or in an insignia of office and by extension with the dignity of that office. 40 In The Tatler 230, Jonathan Swift’s persona Isaac Bickerstaff entertains a letter from a correspondent who urges Bickerstaff to be “the Instrument of introducing into our Style that Simplicity which is the best and truest Ornament of most Things in Life, which the politer Ages always aimed at in their Building and Dress, (Simplex Munditiis)” (179). Simplicity resonated as a virtue consonant with classical ideas. But simple, country-girl clothing was also invested with the notion of coy seduction, a point to which I will return. While the term “investment” relates to clothing that reveals its wearer’s office, it also invokes ideas of economic speculation; this subtly but inescapably ties ideas of clothing to those of economics. Using clothing to signal virtue or a personality elevated above mercenary desires, then, seems incompatible with the kind of dire economic danger 40 “Invest.” Oxford English Dictionary. Volume I, A-O. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971. 1477-78. 97 that dress can pose. Yet conveying a state of virtue through dress is exactly what Samuel Richardson’s Pamela attempts in Pamela. The concept of virtue suggests a resistance to crass commodification of the self, but in Pamela’s case, “virtue’s reward” (the novel’s subtitle) is the heroine’s rise in socioeconomic status. The seemingly incompatible elements of dress, virtue, and commerciality render Pamela a study in irreconcilable differences. Warton’s poem “Fashion” references Samuel Richardson’s novel as one of a series of fashionable entertainments when he writes of a foppish beau: “With him the Fair, enraptur’d with a Rattle, / Of Vauxhall, Garrick, or Paméla prattle” (6). For Warton, Pamela exemplifies a number of fashionable commodities; this novel’s emblematic fashionability indicates how immensely popular Richardson’s novel became, and how Pamela the character as well as Pamela the novel became inextricably intertwined with fashionability—and by extension, with commodity. Richardson’s novel’s reliance on dress as a conveyor of Pamela’s virtue invests Pamela with an inherent interpretive conflict. The heightened emphasis on clothing in the developing genre of the novel demonstrates the novel’s growing emphasis on detail. For instance, the kind of sustained, even slightly obsessive, focus on details in which Robinson Crusoe engages earns him the title of homo economicus, or ‘economic man,’ from economic theorists 98 as well as literary critics. 41 We could read Richardson’s eponymous heroine quite similarly. Pamela revels in objects, details of the socially elevated world in which she works as a servant, and she makes this particularly clear with the attention that she pays to her clothing. Pamela even catalogues the division of her extensive stock of clothing into three “bundles” to reflect the various sources of her dress. Pamela’s decision to represent her virtue through “honest” homespun garb demonstrates that she reads dress as not only the product of a commercial, industrial society, but also an object that creates the potential for branding or marketing the self. Pamela compromises the virtue-transmitting capabilities of her dress through her awareness of her clothing’s market value. Her dress reads as a metonym for Pamela herself, and threatens the social order through the heroine’s elevation. If Pamela is scheming, then her rise in social status through her marriage to Mr B. is obtained via false means. The idea of fiction as “false” is an established fear at the time of Pamela’s publication. Clothing begins to function almost the same as does fiction: as something too easily believed as truth for safety’s sake. The anonymous author of 1741’s Pamela Censur’d provides as his first criticism of Pamela the complaint that, while a work may have a “true” foundation, a “few Removes and Transitions, may make it deviate into a downright Falsehood” (7). In other words, this author suggests that the 41 For instance, Ian Watt discusses Crusoe as economic man by explaining how Crusoe symbolizes the economic aspect of individualism. Ian Watt. Chapter three, “‘Robinson Crusoe’, Individualism and the Novel.” The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 99 fictional nature of Richardson’s novel renders it dangerously ambiguous, a lie disguising itself as reality. This same author also laments that Pamela’s preoccupation with clothing perpetuates artificiality, and criticizes the heroine’s calculated manipulation of her master through dress: “The Instruction here then is to the Ladies, that by altering their Appearance they are more likely to catch their Lover’s Affections than by being always the same” (36). The phrase “being always the same” implies a consistent and truthful display of self, while by inference, change indicates fickleness and artifice. But the concept of “being always the same” runs counter to the tensions necessary to create narrative. Peter Brooks explains that deviation, the opposite of this sort of sameness, “is the very condition for life to be ‘narratable’: the state of normality is devoid of interest, energy, and the possibility for narration” (139). Sameness renders a character or story unworthy of a narrative, but ambiguity and distinctiveness are necessary for plot to unfold, and Pamela provides both. Pamela’s ambiguous social status, which she makes manifest through her dress and which Mr B. interprets and reinterprets, shapes the plot of her unique absorption into Mr B.’s social stratum. The outfit that she designs and creates for her return to her parents’ home both contains and perpetuates ambiguity, and Pamela’s singular station as more-than- servant fuels the story. 100 Clothing and commerce Being “always the same” also runs counter to the economic demands of fashion. Fashion demands constant change so that consumers will deem a purchase worthy of their money, and this is as true of novels as it is of clothing. Providing a change from previous tales of exalted personages or lowly criminals, Richardson’s novel sparked what William Warner calls a “media event,” not only establishing for itself a reputation as a must-read text but also creating a brisk market in related paraphernalia. 42 Pamela was, it turns out, eminently sellable. For example, Francis Hayman and Hubert François Gravelot designed illustrations for the 1741-2 Pamela. Hayman also either painted or supervised the painting of “Pamela Revealing to Mrs. Jervis her Wishes to Return Home” and ‘Pamela Fleeing from Lady Davers” for display on the walls of two of Vauxhall Gardens’ pavilions, a novelty seemingly intended to draw patrons to Vauxhall. A wax-work depicting several scenes from Pamela was staged in April of 1745 in Shoe-Lane, and an enterprising fan-maker even offered a Pamela fan “representing the principal Adventures of her Life, in Servitude, 42 I am particularly interested here in a combination of the second and third requirements that Warner outlines in his definition of “media event,” in that media events combine purchases and repetitions, both of which combined carry economic implications: “First, such an event is not precipitated by some historical event (such as a battle, a trial, or a coronation) which then becomes grist for representations in the media. Instead, it begins with a media production—in this case, the publication of Pamela. Second, the atavistic interest in the media event, as demonstrated by purchases and enthusiastic critical response, feeds upon itself, producing a sense that this media event has become an ambient, pervasive phenomenon which properly compels the attention and opinions of those with a modicum of ‘curiosity.’ Finally this media event triggers repetitions and simulations, and becomes the focus of critical commentary and interpretation” (Warner 178). 101 Love, and Marriage.” Perhaps the most famous product of this commercial Pamela frenzy was Joseph Highmore’s series of paintings based on the plot of the novel, engraved by William Philip Benoist and L. Truchy in 1745 (Eaves 349-383). The commodification of Pamela testifies to the novel’s fashionability, but also inextricably ties both the novel and its heroine to the commerciality of the marketplace in which the fans and admission tickets to the waxworks were sold. If consumers could buy representations of Pamela as well as copies of her story, why couldn’t Mr B.’s marriage to her be read as his purchase of Pamela herself? The commercial frenzy surrounding Pamela has tended to polarize readers into pamelists and anti-pamelists. These two groups either laud Pamela’s virtue or denigrate Pamela’s opportunism, and importantly, both sides seize upon Pamela’s use of clothing to bolster their arguments. Mr B. serves as an intradiagetic representative of both camps, because he begins the novel as an anti-pamelist but becomes a staunch pamelist by the novel’s end. His opinions of Pamela can therefore be marshaled as support for either camp. Permitting interpretations of not only the incitement of passion and the supporting of fashionable commodification but also the upholding of virtue, which is the central tension of the novel itself, Pamela’s homespun outfit encapsulates the tension that propels the narrative. When she thinks that she will return to her parents’ home upon leaving the employment of her master Mr B., Pamela decides that she “had better get [herself] at once equipped in the dress that will 102 become [her] condition” (76). Pamela sews this outfit herself and assembles the accessories to suit her own taste. Her seemingly simple country garb, however, is complex in terms of the class information that it contains. The mere fact that Pamela can afford a new outfit demonstrates that she differs from most servants. While working women could make attempts to keep up with their mistresses’ hairstyles and caps, their inability “to obtain a whole new wardrobe in the latest silhouette” rendered them “fairly constant in their basic clothes” (de Marley 52). 43 The individual elements of Pamela’s outfit provide information about how she views herself. The homespun material from which she makes the dress may be fitting for Goodman Andrews’s daughter, but the details of the ensemble suggest that Pamela presents herself as of blended status. Pamela’s accessories include a “round-eared ordinary cap; but with a green knot, however” and “plain leather shoes; but yet they are what they call Spanish leather” (87-8). The purely decorative top-knot, or loop of ribbons, on the round-eared cap identifies Pamela’s headgear as somewhat incongruous with homespun fabric. Pamela presents these elegant details with repeated terms of conscious contrast—“but,” “however,” “but yet”—demonstrating her awareness of the incongruities that these details display. 44 Servants, or at least 43 Many servants would simply modify their mistress’s cast-off clothing to befit a woman of lower social status. 44 Pamela seems less aware of the detail of her necklace, a “black silk necklace, instead of the French necklace [that her] lady gave [her]” (88), because she contrasts the ribbon with the formality of the French necklace that she owns to emphasize the simplicity of the black silk. 103 those of a hardworking ilk, were expected to favor simplicity in dress, and Pamela’s accessories render her outfit incongruous with this idea. In a 1743 conduct book for female servants, Eliza Haywood makes clear that a “decent plainness” should characterize serving girls, advising “Ribbands, Ruffles, Necklaces, Fans, Hoop- Petticoats, and all those Superfluities in Dress, give you but a tawdry Air” (Haywood 226, emphasis mine). 45 Pamela’s choice of a straw hat also conveys mixed messages; during the middle years of the century, straw hats were associated with girls of lower socioeconomic rank who lived in the country, but such hats were popular in the beau monde as well (Buck 124). This suggests that Pamela’s hat simultaneously conveys fashion and rusticity. While male servants in this era tended to wear livery, ladies’ maids and waiting-women did not. Historically, they dressed very much as their mistresses did, “with at first nothing to distinguish them except an avoidance of display” (Cunnington 195). The difficulty in Pamela’s case, however, is that her consciousness of the elegant details of her clothing suggests that she does engage in display. Pamela recognizes that her outfit is rather fine, because, as Caryn Chaden has noted, “[b]y the end of the passage, she admits that her new clothes would not be appropriate for everyday wear” (112). That Richardson himself saw the incongruities 45 It is worthwhile to note that, since the publication of this conduct book follows the publication of Pamela, Haywood could be constructing this advice with Richardson’s heroine in mind. 104 in Pamela’s outfit becomes apparent through one of his admonitions to apprentices in his Apprentice’s Vade Mecum: Or, Young Man’s Pocket Companion (1734). The Vade Mecum is a handbook meant to help a young man regulate his conduct so as to please his master and make the most of his apprenticeship period. Pride in dress, Richardson writes in this conduct book, not only “lifts up the young Man’s Mind far above his Condition as an Apprentice” but is a vice that has “inverted all Order, and destroy’d Distinction” (33). In this section of the text, Richardson primarily concerns himself with the preservation of class distinction. Here, as in Pamela, Richardson shows that he believes clothing can uphold distinctions between master and underling, as well as distinctions between socioeconomic classes. In describing the particulars of dress that he has seen adopted inappropriately by young men “put to learn a Trade for [their] future Subsistence,” Richardson includes not only overly-powdered wigs and ruffled shirts, but “Spanish-Leather Pumps” (Vade Mecum 34). “Spanish-Leather” is a synonym for Morocco leather, a vegetable-tanned, fancy goatskin leather displaying a pebbled grain. It was usually dyed a rich red, and was most often used whenever a fine, soft leather was desired (“Morocco Leather” 243). Since Richardson is aware of the fineness of Spanish leather, Pamela’s inclusion of this expensive material in what she terms her “more suitable dress” (77) seems to reflect that she is not only contrasting leather shoes with laced shoes (which would have been worn by women of the upper class), but she is also demonstrating her awareness that her station is mixed 105 because she indicates a higher quality of leather than what most servants would have worn. Her vocabulary of contrast in her description of the arrangement of her dress displays the class ambiguity attendant to that mixture. Pamela’s dress is both proper in its humble components and potentially subversive in its seductive effects and expensive details. Her carefully constructed garments effectively create an alternative to extant notions of social norms and subversion, because they stake Pamela’s claim for a third status that disrupts the polarity of the categories of servant and lady. Pamela’s outfit functions as a narrative within a narrative in part because it reinforces the novel’s plot of Pamela’s elevation in status with the visual narrative of ambiguous station contained in her clothing. With Pamela’s social status registering as hovering ambiguously between servant and lady, many readers had little difficulty making the leap to conceptualize her virtue as ambiguous, too. In part, this shadow of ambiguity cast over Pamela’s virtue stems from the previously-mentioned connection between commerce and clothing. Because Richardson’s heroine represents her virtue through her dress, her virtue becomes associated with commerciality. Eighteenth-century fashion was a powerful economic force, containing the potential for monetary growth as well as failure for manufacturers: On the one hand the stimulation of demand for some ‘new’ fashion created the possibility of a radically extended market which in turn produced not only quantitative expansion, but qualitative change in the technology and organization of production and distribution. At the 106 same time the same fickleness could lead to the sudden and irreversible collapse as public interest turned to new garments, and different materials. (Hunt 98) Though often culturally constructed as whimsical and superficial, fashion threatened serious economic consequences. A shift of public taste from silk to Indian cotton could lead to large-scale economic ruin among silk weavers, as the previously- mentioned calico-chasing incidents showed. To many eighteenth-century critics, this kind of danger made fashion largely incompatible with virtue. Bernard Mandeville gives voice to just such tension in The Fable of the Bees, Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714), explaining that the point of his treatise is “to shew the Impossibility of enjoying all the most elegant Comforts of Life that are to be met with in an industrious, wealthy and powerful Nation, and at the same time be bless’d with all the Virtue and Innocence that can be wish’d for in a Golden Age” (6-7). Mandeville’s argument is that what are commonly called vices (such as fickleness, greed, and lust) are essential spurs to commercial consumption, and so he expresses the belief that what is usually called virtue is incompatible with a thriving economy. Though Mandeville’s ideas were extremely controversial, they provide testimony to an awareness of the idea that virtue and economics might be fundamentally irreconcilable. Pamela’s vestimentary purchases call her virtue into question for this very reason. A servant with fashionable tendencies registers to antipamelists as improper, 107 because fashion is widely viewed at this time as the province of the moneyed class. Through her description of her dress, Pamela demonstrates a nuanced awareness of what constitutes fashionable clothing. She lists a number of accessories that she purchases from a peddler, conveying a certain economic lowness from having bought these goods from a peddler rather than from a clothing or millinery shop. Yet Pamela’s language conveys her ability to assess these items in terms of their fashionable qualities, elements to which a servant should not pay attention (or so it was widely believed). She describes “two pretty-enough round-eared caps” and “two pair of ordinary blue worsted hose, that make a smartish appearance, with white clocks, I’ll assure you!” (77, emphasis mine). A servant has little practical necessity for “pretty” or “smart” clothing, as Eliza Haywood admonishes serving maids in her conduct book. She explains that “nothing looks so handsome in a Servant as a decent Plainness,” and warns that employers will not approve of paying a servant for time “trifled away in curling her own Hair, pinching her Caps, tying up her Knots, and setting her self forth, as tho’ she had no other thing to do, but to prepare for being look’d at?” (226). Haywood cautions against a servant girl dressing finely for another reason much more to be dreaded, and may be said to be an almost unavoidable Consequence, and that is, your Honesty is likely to be call’d in question: People will be apt to examine, how much you gave for such or such a thing, [...] and if the Calculation of the Expence amounts to a Scruple more than they can account for you receiving, will presently 108 place it to the Score of those you live with, and say, you owe your Finery to your Fraud. (226-7) However, in using descriptors like “smartish appearance” and “pretty enough” that assess her garments’ relation to fashion, Pamela demonstrates that her selection of accessories results from her discerning eye for fashion. As Haywood’s advice suggests, Pamela’s insistence on spending so much time on her dress leads others to believe that her finery is evidence of bad behavior. 46 Yet while Haywood cautions against being mistaken for a thief, or someone who profits from property not her own, Pamela is mistaken for a hussy, or a girl who profits from her body. Anti-pamelists see the negotiation of class ambiguity that Pamela’s blending of fashionable and practical dress employs as precisely the kind of duplicity in Pamela’s character that renders the novel morally dubious. Yet Pamela herself asserts that the clothes simply reinforce her individual specificity. When Mr B. accuses Pamela of disguising herself to attract his attention, she says, “I have been in disguise, indeed, ever since my good lady your mother took me from my poor parents […] as I am now returning to my parents, I cannot wear those good things [expensive clothes which her 46 For example, before she knows of Pamela and Mr B.’s marriage, Mr B.’s sister Lady Davers sees Pamela’s change in dress style as evidence that she has become Mr B.’s kept mistress. “There’s a great difference I her air, as well as in her dress, I assure you, since I saw her last,” she sneers to her nephew (Richardson, Pamela, 403). Admittedly, Pamela and Mr B. deprive Lady Davers of the proper context within which to interpret Pamela’s clothing, having delayed telling her of their marriage. Pamela dresses more finely to please her husband’s pride in his rank, and thus engages in virtuous behavior through this style of dress, but a servant girl suddenly wearing costly fabrics and trimmings is more likely to signify that she has sunk to the role of her master’s whore. 109 mistress had given her] without being laughed at; and so have bought what will be more suitable to my degree” (90). Pamela admits here that she is capable of at least a form of disguise, and to an antipamelist mindset, this calls into question her status as a moral paragon. Yet Pamela’s “degree” is unique. Her parents’ socioeconomic situation is humble, but once, they assert, “it was better with us” (45). Moreover, the training that she has received from Mr B.’s mother elevates her to a higher status than a typical servant, and this clash necessitates (in Pamela’s opinion, at least) the creation of a unique set of clothes with which to reflect that social status. Early in the novel, Pamela discusses her awareness of her unique station, writing of how the improvements which she received from the goodness of her Lady—writing, singing, playing musical instruments—make her a particularly difficult servant for whom to find a place: “all her [Lady’s] learning, and education of me, as matters have turned, will be of little service to me now, for to be sure it had been better for me to have been brought up to hard labour, since that I must turn to at last, if I can’t get a place” (112). Pamela attempts to make her appearance match with her unique state of being because, in her estimation of herself, her appearance does not suggest, but constitutes reality. She presents what she argues is her true, morally upright self through her carefully assembled outfit. 110 Dress and virtue In fact, Pamela’s use of dress to express her virtue follows Biblical suggestions regarding the activities of virtuous women. One of Solomon’s proverbs famously begins “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies” (Proverbs 31:10). This scripture conflates virtue and women with monetary worth, and also lauds a woman’s skill with cloth and dress. A virtuous woman “seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh them willingly with her hands” (Proverbs 31:13), and she also “layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff” (Proverbs 31:19). It is not in opposition to Biblical teaching, therefore, for a woman to work with cloth. Solomon goes still further, suggesting that a virtuous woman adorn herself decoratively, for “she maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple” (Proverbs 31:22). Here, a woman’s dress explicitly relates to her status as virtuous, and expensive fabrics and dyes are what express this; in other words, virtue exists in a woman’s attention to fashionable touches. But the virtuous woman, as delineated in the Proverbs, also links dress with commerce: “She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. / Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in the time to come” (Proverbs 31:24-25). 47 The clothing that she produces and wears displays her strength and honor, but her industry also earns her the 47 Other Biblical verses that establish the virtuous woman’s ties to commerce include: “She is like the merchants ships; she bringeth food from afar” (Proverbs 31:14), “She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard” (Proverbs 31:16), and “She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night” (Proverbs 31:18). 111 strength and wisdom for which she will earn joy in Heaven. Because this view of womanly virtue invokes commerce and clothing, Pamela’s assemblage of an outfit that she intends to be a conveyor of her socioeconomic status aligns her with Solomon’s description virtuous woman. Yet popular conceptions of the Bible also relate women with a less laudable take on dress. In the origin of dress in Genesis, dress signals not only femininity but also deception. According to Christian tradition, clothing originated when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and became able to see—and subsequently be ashamed of—their nakedness. The 24 August 1713 edition of The Guardian shows what a close association some critics perceived between Eve and disguise. A correspondent signing himself “Old Rusticides” writes to complain about masquerades, reminding readers that “the Devil first addressed himself to Eve in a Masque, and that we owe the Loss of our first happy State to a Masquerade.” He laments that, in his female ward, “the Passion of Curiosity is as Predominant in her as even it was in her Predecessor” (469). Underpinning Old Rusticides’ complaints is the notion that Eve, susceptible to the devil because of her ungovernable curiosity, brought about the need for clothing because she could not resist the deception of masquerade. Yet again, an opposing view of dress exists to perpetuate the ambiguity of how clothes relate to—or oppose— virtue. 112 Mr B. initially reads the fashionable elements in Pamela’s dress as more in line with the Genesis story than with Solomon’s advice, because Mr B. sees in her dress signs of her desire for fine things. He equates her sartorial purchases and productions with the likelihood of his success in purchasing her virtue, and so he draws up a contract that would make Pamela his well-paid mistress. The contact demonstrates the extent to which Mr B. initially believes that Pamela can be commodified. To Mr B.’s offer of five hundred guineas, an estate of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum for Pamela’s parents, and promises of favor for Pamela’s other relations, Pamela answers, “money is not my chief good” (228). When Mr B. pledges her four suits of rich clothes and an expensive set of jewels, Pamela asserts, “I have greater pride in my honest poverty and meanness, than I can have in dress and finery purchased with guilt” (229). Pamela refuses to sell her virtue, and her firm allegiance to morals rather than money changes Mr B. from an antipamelist to a pamelist. Ironically, however, in reforming Mr B.’s opinion of her as a commodity to be purchased, Pamela chooses to convey her socioeconomic level through fashionable yet status-appropriate items of clothing; even when Mr B. stops viewing her chastity as a fungible good, she insists upon presenting herself in a manner that highlights economic station. Because Pamela’s “rustic garb” simultaneously displays a humble socioeconomic status and also perpetuates her master’s sexual interest in her, the narrative creates a tension between two competing interpretations of Pamela’s 113 clothing. Religious figures like Dr. Benjamin Slocock praised the novel from the pulpit, while antipamelist texts showed Pamela to be, in essence, an acquisitive whore. These varied interpretations stem from Pamela’s construction of her identity. Pamela uses clothing as the means most readily available to her to assert her identity, and clothing contains ambiguities sufficient to sustain these polarized views of her. While Pamela’s incorporation into Mr B.’s family and station suggests Richardson’s attempt to promote the view of woman as virtuous (her loving marriage is, after all, the “reward” of her virtue in the novel’s subtitle), it also supports the interpretation that Pamela benefits from her canny use of her resources, including her dress (another gloss on her “reward” is the fabulous wealth that she attains from her marriage with Mr B.). Pamela’s virtuous identity lends the book the identity of moral text, but because of the narrative necessity of tension and ambiguity, the possibility of interpreting Pamela as lacking sufficient virtue also exists within the novel. Pamelists employ dress to demonstrate Pamela’s character, but dress in these instances emphasizes Pamela’s transparent honesty and virtue. In Henry Giffard’s play Pamela. A Comedy (1742), Pamela voices worries about her clothing appearing “too fine or flaunting for my humble Station” (19). As a servant, she steadfastly promotes a visual distinction between herself and her master; yet when she becomes Mr B.’s wife, she takes care to appear in a vestimentary manner that befits her new station. Even so, she reminds herself that her duty demands humility despite her 114 exquisite dress. In a short soliloquy, she tells herself “Now, Pamela, guard well thy Mind; let not this sudden, this amazing Turn of thy despairing Fortune—the pompous Height to which thou art rais’d—thro’ gorgeous Dress—let ’em not throw upon thy former State a dark’ning Veil to hide its View—lest Insolence and Pride shou’d banish gentle Gratitude and fair Humility” (63). Pamela refuses to allow a “Veil” to be thrown over her former station, employing a sartorial metaphor to express her unwillingness to forget her origins, a threat perpetuated by the temptation of “gorgeous Dress.” The heroine’s opposition to “veiling” her origins constitutes a refusal to be untrue to who she perceives she is. Veils have a history of encouraging “anonymity regarded as problematic” (Hunt 67), and Pamela’s rejection of a metaphorical veil for her social station reinforces her belief in readily accessible class distinction. But since veils are associated with female piety as well, rejecting a “veil” also paradoxically hints at a kind of rejection of virtuous femininity. Pamela: or, Virtue Triumphant (1741), attributed to James Dance, also calls attention to Pamela’s rejection of fashionable dress. In this stage adaptation, Pamela tells Mr B. that “Finery does not much employ [her] Thoughts” (88). In Dance’s play as well as in Richardson’s novel, Pamela’s construction of clothing that visually announces her liminal social standing tries to allay cultural anxieties concerning dress and station, but as the existence of works like Pamela Censur’d, Henry Fielding’s Shamela (1741), and Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela demonstrate, this is far from what happens. 115 Pamela’s station In the early modern era, much anxiety centered on clothing’s ability to bestow an unmerited social status on its wearer, in part because sumptuary laws were no longer enforced. Daniel Defoe famously laments that clothing renders virtually impossible the visual differentiation of “the mistress from the maid” (362), and Pamela incarnates this blurring of distinctions in one body. Some viewers of an outfit might correctly read the monetary worth of the clothing, but the social station of its wearer might not necessarily correspond to the status suggested by the costliness of dress. Pamela’s use of clothing to render her station visible should clearly establish her as a moral exemplar, suggesting to readers that her great rewards result from her virtue and her adherence to upholding social distinction. Yet since her rewards are so very great, and so confusingly blur the line between mistress and maid by blending both roles into a new third category, anti-pamelists suggest that the agency that Pamela asserts in creating her rustic outfit shows her to be cunning, manipulative, and only seemingly virtuous. In Fielding’s bitingly parodic Shamela, for instance, housekeeper Mrs. Jervis describes Shamela’s wearing of a homespun gown as a “Stratagem,” labeling her change into dress of “the plain Neatness of a Farmer’s Daughter” as a “Cheat” (332). Shamela uses her dress to further ensnare the very gullible Squire Booby (Fielding’s parody of Mr B.’s character), echoing Mr B.’s salacious interpretation of Pamela’s change in dress in Richardson’s novel. In 116 Richardson’s text, Mr B. chides Pamela, “I was resolved never again to honour you with my notice; and so you must disguise yourself, to attract me.” Mr B. cannot imagine what else she could have changed her dress for, and asks Pamela: “What a plague […] do you mean then by this dress?” (90). In this question, he acknowledges that Pamela’s clothing contains meaning, but even though he is capable only of discerning an intent to ensnare, his question reveals that he senses the existence of another meaning. Pamela Censur’d’s author also highlights this scene, which aligns with Mr B.’s interpretation: Pamela is now become a beautiful young Rustic, each latent Grace, and every blooming Charm is called forth to wound, not in affected Finery, but in an artful Simplicity; nor is [Richardson’s] conduct less […] in introducing her to the Squire: Beauties that might grow familiar to the Eye and pall upon the Passion by being often seen in one Habit, thus varied take a surer Aim to strike […] and that a neat cherry cheek’d Country Lass tripping along with a Straw Hat in her Hand may allure, when perhaps a pale faced Court Lady might be despised […] (36) These readings of Pamela’s dress clash with her stated intent in Richardson’s novel: she claims to “have bought what will be more suitable to [her] degree” (90), and hopes to reinforce visually the social distance between herself and Mr B. to render herself less appealing to him. Yet even Mr B.’s loyal, virtuous housekeeper Mrs. Jervis acknowledges the sexual power of Pamela’s rustic outfit. The housekeeper admits, “I believe truly, you owe some of your danger to the lovely appearance you made” (95). Mrs. Jervis’s and Mr B.’s emphasis on Pamela’s simple dress heightening her beauty direct readers’ attention to the seductive potential of clothing. Richardson cannot 117 seem to confine his characters’ interpretations to the maxim regarding dress in Pamela in his A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (1755): “DRESS suited to degree, or station, gives a high instance of prudence” (49). The fact that Richardson felt the need to publish a collection of morals and maxims for his works testifies to the difficulties in controlling readers’ interpretations of the lessons embedded in his novels. Even Richardson’s maxim itself cannot clearly convey one stable meaning. What is an “instance” of prudence, and what makes this a “high” one? How, exactly should dress be “suited” to one’s degree: through fabrics, cut, color, trimmings or the lack thereof? Is there a difference to Richardson between “degree” and “station?” Anti-Pamela Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela demonstrates on its title page how readers could interpret Pamela as morally questionable, asserting that Anti-Pamela is “A Narrative which has really its Foundation in Truth and Nature” (51). This claim directly references and satirizes the title page of Richardson’s Pamela, which promises “A Narrative which has its Foundation in TRUTH and NATURE,” a claim that he repeats in Pamela’s preface. 48 Simply asserting the truth of a story, Haywood’s satirical 48 The title page is reproduced in: Pamela; Or Virtue Rewarded (London: C. Rivington, 1741- 42). Accessed through the Eighteenth-Century Fiction Full-Text Database <http://collections.chadwyck.com.libproxy.usc.edu/searchFulltext.do?id=Z000045354&divLe vel=0&queryId=../session/1218653306_26256&area=ecf&forward=textsFT&pageSize=&war 118 insertion of “really” suggests, cannot make it true. From the beginning, Haywood’s take on Pamela’s story stresses its relationship to truth and implies by comparison the falseness of Richardson’s Pamela. Haywood’s central figure is Syrena Tricksy, a young woman raised by a mother skilled in artifice and deception. Syrena’s mother emphatically tells her daughter “Love in Rags, Syrena, is a most despicable Thing” (70), inverting the Andrews’s warning to Pamela in Richardson’s novel that “we had rather see you all covered with rags, and even follow you to the church-yard, than have it said, a child of our’s preferred any worldly conveniences to virtue” (46). 49 While Pamela’s parents prefer rags to glitter, Pamela’s tendency to dwell upon her finery takes the force away from such admonitions. Even when Pamela ostensibly emphasizes her preference for honesty over her desire for rich clothes, her delight in her possessions undercuts her assertions of virtue. She separates her clothing into bundles, and her third bundle contains the clothing that she calls “poor Pamela’s bundle,” or the clothing that she owns that has not come from Mr B. or his mother. Pamela describes all of these goods in an extended and excited itemization: First, here is a callico night-gown, that I used to wear o’ mornings. It will be rather too good for me when I get home; but I must have something. Then there is a quilted calimanco coat, and my straw hat with the green strings; and a piece of Scots cloth, which will make two n=No&size=3265Kb>. The preface, which I reference in the Penguin edition, includes a mention of “the following Letters, which have their foundation both in Truth and Nature” (31). See this project’s conclusion for a further discussion of Richardson’s Pamela preface. 49 Syrena Tricksy feigns modesty with similar words: “I told [Sir Thomas], I preferr’d my Honesty in Rags to all the Splendor in the World” (Haywood, Anti-Pamela, 92). 119 shirts and two shifts, the same I have on, for my poor father and mother. And here are four other shifts; and here are two pair of shoes; I have taken the lace off, which I will burn, and this, with an old silver buckle or two, will fetch me some little matter at a pinch […] ‘Here are two cotton handkerchiefs and two pair of stockings, which I bought of the pedlar’; (I write the very words I said) ‘and here too are my new-bought knit mittens: and this is my new flannel coat, the fellow to that I have on. And in this parcel pinned together are several pieces of printed callico, remnants of silks, and such-like, that, if good luck should happen, and I should get work, would serve for robings and facings, and such-like uses. And here too are a pair of pockets, and two pair of gloves. Bless me!’ said I, ‘I did not think I had so many good things!’ (110-111) 50 Pamela might express surprise at the abundance of “good things” that she owns, but antipamelists interpret her dwelling on the minutiae of her belongings as a love of surface and outward show as well as a shrewd acquisitiveness. Like Robinson Crusoe, she delights in minute observation of objects and engages in something more akin to a shopkeeper’s itemization of his saleable goods than a young woman’s expression of thankfulness that she has the means to support herself. Her cataloguing of these items of clothing reveals her adeptness in visual assessment, and proves that Pamela views her wardrobe in its relation to commerce. Her mental valuation of her lace and buckles as moveable goods that will “fetch [her] some little matter” only strengthens 50 Pamela’s three bundles represent her three possible social stations. The first parcel consists of gifts from Mr B.’s mother, the effects of Pamela the servant girl. The second bundle is the accumulation of presents from Mr B., fine pieces of clothing that correspond to elevated social status (and threaten Pamela with the appearance of ladyhood without the substance, because Mr B. tries to bribe Pamela into being his mistress with these goods). Pamela’s third bundle contains items that show her blended status, representing the status that Pamela makes for herself. 120 the establishment of Pamela as acutely aware of dress’s base economic worth in the opinion of the antipamelists. Despite Pamela’s cataloging of these belongings as honest, and despite her description of them in terms of frugality and industry (the cloth with which she will make undergarments for her parents, the silver items that she can polish and sell to contribute to her family’s income, the remnants that will aid her when she can obtain needlework as a virtuously industrious worker), the mere fact that Pamela dwells so much and so often on clothing allows her to be read as superficial, and thus morally suspect. Clothing is too closely related to surface, seduction, and commerce for it to relate simply or easily to virtue. Highlighting this relationship, Anti-Pamela shows Syrena to be vain and scheming in part because she is enamored of clothing. After obtaining money from a series of lovers, Syrena had made “a pretty handsome Purse, which if [she and her mother] had resolved to be honest, might have put them in some way of getting Bread; but […] Syrena sent for a Mercer, Milliner, and other Trades People to equip her in a gay manner, that when she went abroad, her charms might appear to advantage” (145). Syrena’s devotion to finery here directly contrasts with honesty because it helps to tempt her into and perpetuate a life of schemes and lies. Fielding executes a similar maneuver, highlighting the link between Shamela and the deception of clothing when Shamela lists her possessions. One of her belongings is a “Sham” (344), or set of false sleeves used to cover a dirty shirt. The fact that 121 Fielding’s text and heroine both share their name with this deceptive item of dress explicitly reminds readers of the artifice that both narrative and clothes employ. Just as Fielding’s Shamela shares her name with an item for purchase, so does Richardson’s heroine. The reader of the novel Pamela has, after all, purchased the novel, and by extension Pamela herself, leading to the possibility that Pamela might simply have been purchased by Mr B. (albeit with the currency of marriage). Clothing is simply not a stable medium for meaning, no matter how hard Pamela might work to make it so. William Warner highlights the inherent interpretative instability of dress: “Pamela’s defensive insistence that her new dress is her truest clothing, while her recent dress was a kind of disguise, does not ensure that her clothes can be read as reliable signs. Instead, her clothes and manner, just like her letter writing, appear as instruments for stretching across and between classes, and therefore carry an uncontrollable plurality of meanings” (196). The ambiguities invoked by Pamela’s new clothing are inevitable, and within her outfit’s plurality of meanings is the idea that Pamela’s devotion to dress commercializes her. In trying to invest herself with virtue, Pamela finds that her dress has helped her reap the economic benefits of marrying a wealthy man. Pamela wants her virtue to be legible and readily seen, and dress’s insistent visibility makes it appeal to her (and, evidently, Richardson) as a vehicle through which to telegraph virtue. Relying on vestments invokes the idea of investment in its economic sense, perpetuating the 122 pamelist/antipamelist divide and perpetuating competing interpretations of the character of Pamela—and of Pamela the novel. Clarissa’s disinterest in fashion The anonymous author of Man Superior to Woman (1744) explicitly aligns women with dress in a manner that denies them intellectual depth: “The more judicious Part of our Sex may perhaps think it dangerous to trust the Women as Judges of any thing where Reason is concerned, on account of the Weakness of their Intellects, which seldom can reach higher than a Head-dress” (xiv). Here, the excesses of the headdress seem almost at fault for weighing down women’s intellects and rendering women incapable of being simultaneously fashionable and rational. Dress registers in the early eighteenth century as a lowly, generally frivolous, pursuit, largely because of its close association with the body. This makes the expression of virtue through dress problematic, because in the eighteenth century, the body is often opposed to and contrasted with the mind, 51 which presumably is the seat of virtue. Pamela’s extreme interest in dress contributes to the controversy to which Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela gives rise. Richardson works to combat this difficulty in Clarissa by removing dress as a topic of explicit interest for his heroine. Yet while the character of Clarissa seldom references dress, the novel Clarissa employs dress as a 51 In René Descartes’ Sixth Meditation, he concludes “that there is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible.” John Cottingham, trans. Meditations on First Philosophy, With Selections from the Objections and Replies (1641). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 59. 123 signifier of its heroine’s virtue. The novel’s emphasis on clothing allows the character of Lovelace to doubt the truth of Clarissa’s virtue because virtue’s status as an inner quality renders it incompatible with external, visual elements. Clothing relates to ideas of luxury, which opposes most period conceptions of virtue. As Erin Mackie demonstrates, women and luxury were seen as related ideas: “In the case of Lady Credit we see one significant instance of the key role played by the symbolic feminine in the critical representation of capitalism and its institutions” (40). Femininity and luxury, particularly clothing, find themselves unflatteringly linked in the eighteenth-century imagination, and the link is often portrayed as natural. When Mary Astell writes in 1694, “Let us learn to pride ourselves in something more excellent than the invention of a Fashion: And not entertain such a degrading thought of our own worth, as to imagine that our Souls were given us only for the service of our Bodies” (8), she writes to oppose the widely-believed notion that women and dress were linked by women’s inherent nature. These ideas continued into the eighteenth century, becoming further entrenched with the passage of time. They become so popular that Jean-Jacques Rousseau could write, in 1762, that “little girls love adornment almost from birth,” and that they are “hungrier for adornment than for food” (365, 367). Placing women’s need for dress as a greater need than food, Rousseau perpetuates the idea that women’s relationship with dress stems from nature, and he suggests ways in which this impulse can be regulated to help form a more 124 appealing woman. The supposedly natural impulse toward dress requires this regulation, because if left unchecked, women’s desire for sartorial luxury will lead them into morally questionable behavior. Not only will women spend unwise sums of money on clothing, conventional wisdom ran, but they will also pride themselves on their physical appearance and thus be susceptible to moral failings because they give in easily to male flattery. It is this tension between dress and virtue that haunts women’s relationship to dress, even in a work like Clarissa that tries to depict dress as an outlet for virtue. While Pamela actively uses dress to signify her morality and inner worth, Clarissa avoids allowing its heroine to expatiate upon clothing. Clothing figures prominently in Clarissa’s story, but one of the most salient differences between dress in Pamela and in Clarissa is that while Pamela rhapsodizes about clothes and catalogues in detail every rich item of apparel given her by her mistress or master, Clarissa herself never provides description of her own dress. Clarissa Harlowe, paragon of virtue and ideal woman, mentions her dress only in terms of its practical functions. Her avoidance of much discussion of dress sets her apart from other women, since eighteenth-century letters written by women customarily trade in extensive fashion news and discussion. This difference helps to make Clarissa distinct, and it possesses a moral component in that Clarissa seems virtuously above such trivia. Clarissa writes most extensively of clothing when, anxious to sell her 125 luxurious garments to pay for her lodgings and to pay her undertaker’s bill, she waits to die; her employment of clothing in this instance demonstrates her virtuous insistence upon paying her creditors. Her approach to clothing works to elevate Clarissa as a steadfastly moral entity. Other characters, most notably Lovelace and Belford, describe Clarissa’s clothing, but Clarissa’s seeming disinterest in the minutiae of fashion allows her to maintain an attitude that remains above the showy and superficial. In constructing a heroine who does not regard dress enough to discuss it in detail, Richardson creates an ideal of womanly virtue that moves away from active employment of clothing in her identity construction, as was the case with Pamela. Though Clarissa shows little to no active engagement with the decorative aspects of clothing, she embraces dress as a tool through which to maintain her virtue. Clarissa often expresses disregard for dress and surface, which she demonstrates in her consistent refusal of the wealthy but unappealing suitor Mr. Solmes. Clarissa’s family, wanting to secure her from the advances of the rake Lovelace and to enhance their family’s status through her alliance with the moneyed Solmes, tries to influence Clarissa’s actions by tempting her with a rich trousseau. Clarissa writes to Anna Howe, her best friend, that her father has “ordered patterns of the richest silks to be sent from London” (110). Not only are the silks luxurious, but they also come from London, England’s fashion capital, and thus ensure fashionability (or cultural capital) 126 as well as lavishness (or monetary capital). 52 The of-the-moment quality of the silks thus adds to their worth, and Clarissa’s family expects the trousseau to be as tempting as possible. Clarissa knows that this plan is not the product of her father’s mind alone: “Female minds, I once heard my brother say, that could but be brought to balance on the change of their state, might easily be determined by the glare and splendour of the nuptial preparations and the pride of becoming mistress of a family—” (110). Her brother exhibits a common view of women’s relationship to dress; James Harlowe believes that women can be placated with personal adornments, associating women with decoration, ornament, and surface, and in this way James calls attention to the commercial aspects of marriage transactions. The Harlowes believe that the expense of Clarissa’s wedding clothes will flatter Clarissa’s vanity and impress her with her own importance, and in consequence, allow herself effectively to be bribed into marrying Solmes. Clarissa’s mother acts upon James’s idea that Clarissa will be swayed by the glitter of rich apparel when she writes to Clarissa: I hinted to you, you must remember, that patterns of the richest silks were sent for. They are come […] These are the newest, as well as richest, that we could procure; answerable to our station in the world; answerable to the fortune, additional to your grandfather’s estate, designed you; and to the noble settlements agreed upon. Your papa intends you six suits (three of them dressed) at his own expense. You have an entire new suit; and one besides, which I 52 While the silks for Clarissa’s trousseau might have come from Spitalfields, silks connote Asian or Indian luxury. In wanting Clarissa to wear the finest silks, her family may demonstrate a desire to show that they are financially capable of acquiring the riches of the world; if so, this contributes to Clarissa’s own engagement with conspicuous display that I discuss later in this chapter. 127 think you never wore but twice. As the new suit is rich, if you choose to make that one of the six, your papa will present you with a hundred guineas in lieu. (188) Mrs. Harlowe’s comments about Clarissa’s intended trousseau highlight one of the novel’s tensions regarding the virtue of dress. Mrs. Harlowe emphasizes how fashionable Clarissa could be by mentioning the newness and implied fashionability of the silks, and she stresses the grandeur of the clothes by calling attention to their richness through her discussion of their monetary worth. Mrs. Harlowe’s mention of Clarissa’s inheritance from her grandfather in part explains the family’s misbegotten beliefs: Clarissa’s brother James and sister Arabella resent that their grandfather designated Clarissa as the recipient of his fortune, and because James and Arabella covet this wealth, they cannot understand that money does not influence their sister in the same way. Here, commercial interests oppose virtue, for Clarissa is too morally upstanding to care either about sartorial splendor or wealth. Even the novel’s epistolary format emphasizes Clarissa’s disregard for dress and allows for Clarissa’s skill with dress to be evident without her ever having to present the subject herself; this allows for Clarissa to maintain her disdain for dwelling upon the details of dress even while others praise her sartorial elegance. When she suspects that her family will soon deprive her of writing paper, she displays this disregard when she writes to her closest friend Anna: “my patterns shall serve for paper if I have no other” (320). Far more important than the new clothes promised by 128 the patterns is Clarissa’s need to communicate her emotions and thoughts; Clarissa shows herself to be more a creature of mind and morals than of body, rejecting the splendor of dress in favor of continuing her correspondence with her friend. Richardson emphasizes Clarissa’s virtue by ensuring that she does not provide praise of her fashionable wardrobe or her selection of clothing, as Pamela did. Because Pamela was the primary correspondent in the novel Pamela, she reports a great deal of conversation, and this becomes problematic when Pamela’s own perfections serve as the subject of that conversation. 53 In Clarissa, the increased number of correspondents allows the heroine to avoid recording her own compliments. Readers can know of a clergyman’s belief “that she gave the fashion to the fashionable, without seeming herself to intend it, or to know that she did” (1190), but these words come from Belford’s, not Clarissa’s, pen. Through the multiple correspondent epistolary format, Clarissa can register as fashionable without any seeming intent to be stylish, further separating her from early-century heroines who intentionally use clothing to manipulate those around them. 53 Pamela reports such praise of herself as the housekeeper Mrs. Jervis’s assertion: “my dear Pamela, I fear more for your prettiness than for any thing else; because the best man in the land might love you” (Richardson, Pamela 58). Though Pamela often excuses herself for such reports, including such apologies as “Will you forgive your vain daughter, if she tells you all [Mr B.] was pleased to tell me?” (Richardson, Pamela 320), Pamela still presents a great deal of her own praise. 129 Clarissa’s interest in fashion Yet while Clarissa’s lack of intention in creating fashions aids in establishing her as a moral exemplar, also important is Clarissa’s status as disseminator of fashions. Because Richardson’s text emphasizes his heroine’s relationship to dress in establishing her virtue, clothing compromises Clarissa’s status as a paragon. These competing ideas characterize the period’s paradoxical view of women’s attention to dress, which John Breval characterizes in his poem “The Art of Dress” (1717): “Tho’ most condemn the Fair that’s over-nice, / Too great Neglect is oft an equal Vice” (22). Lovelace informs his friend Belford that Clarissa “makes and gives fashions as she pleases” (400), and her skill with dress works to enhance her virtue. As other women imitate the beautiful Clarissa Harlowe’s fashion innovations, Clarissa serves as a role model. Her ability to be fashionable establishes her as beautiful and feminine; of special importance, however, is her ability to be fashionable without devoting obvious attention to her dress, or, to use Breval’s phrase, being “over-nice.” Clarissa’s seemingly unconscious skill with dress suggests that she is above focusing on her person, or on superficiality. The damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t trap of dress described by Breval creates a tension that cannot be reconciled: Clarissa uses dress in an attempt to display her virtue, but dress’s associations with luxury and superficiality make it culturally incompatible with virtue. 130 The paradox of unselfconscious fashionability suggests the difficulty of employing dress to signal virtue. Clothing enjoys a close relationship with the body, and the virginal state of a woman’s body constitutes the highest womanly virtue; it is perhaps unsurprising that wearers might use clothing to try to convey the bodily state of virtue. This fact of dress Clarissa’s mother to praise “her elegance in dress; for which she was so much admired, that the neighboring ladies used to say that they need not fetch fashions from London; since whatever Miss Clarissa Harlowe wore was the best fashion, because her choice of natural beauties set those of art far behind them” (584). The binary opposition of nature to art suggests yet another paradox concerning women and dress: while women’s love of clothing was widely believed to be part of their nature, this “natural” impulse leads women toward the artifice of dress. The pull between competing ideas renders the concept of dress a field of contestation. Nature/art, superficiality/virtue, and duty/luxury are just a handful of the oppositions that eighteenth-century attitudes hold concerning dress, and Clarissa cannot work her way out of these binaries fully. Needing to walk a line between these seemingly opposing terms, Clarissa cannot entirely reject one opposite in favor of another and still keep her status as exemplary young woman. Clarissa’s familial duties, for instance, prevent her from rejecting dress as she might want to do. One of the duties of a woman of quality in this period was to demonstrate familial wealth and importance through the sumptuousness of her dress. 131 As previously mentioned, Mrs. Harlowe tries to capitalize on Clarissa’s sense of duty when she speaks of Clarissa’s trousseau as “answerable to our station the world” (188), the plural pronoun “our” working to remind Clarissa of her role and obligations as a member of the Harlowe family. Clarissa’s care in her dress thus demonstrates her virtuous fidelity to her family. Pamela also tries to show her fidelity to her family through dress, wearing homespun cloth to demonstrate her allegiance with her family’s honest poverty. But because Clarissa possesses an elevated social status, she is expected to wear clothing that clearly advertises her family’s wealth. “At the stage of economic development at which the women were still in the full sense the property of the men,” Thorstein Veblen explains, “the performance of conspicuous leisure and consumption came to be part of the services required of them. The women not being their own masters, obvious expenditure and leisure on their part would redound to the credit of their master rather than to their own credit” (180). Clarissa intends her dress to broadcast her propriety, balancing the duty owed to her family’s status and the potential vanity of superficiality. But this balance is a difficult one, as the anonymous 1738 poem Advice to the Fair demonstrates. The poet exhorts, “Yet let thy Air pronounce a just Disdain / On all the Splendor of they sweeping Train; / Which ever shines the Master-Charm of Dress, / Yet those alone who slight it can possess” (8). Once again, a seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition of opposing attitudes governs dress, and Clarissa must work to balance “Spendor” with sufficient “Disdain.” The 132 allegiance to display as a means through which to demonstrate familial loyalty adds itself to the pressure that Clarissa experiences when her mother encourages her to accept Solmes’s marriage offer. Mrs. Harlowe, like James and Arabella, is blind to Clarissa’s disregard for dress, but Mrs. Harlowe’s description of the silks in Clarissa’s trousseau as “answerable to our station in the world” presents a function of dress that differs from individual pride in the clothes’ richness and worth. Clothing works to locate its wearer within a hierarchy of social station, and Clarissa consistently works to make her self-display honor her family. She eschews dress as a disseminator of her individual worth while embracing it as a signifier of her family’s importance, but, beyond her (invisible) intentions, Clarissa possesses no means through which to clarify this difference. Clarissa’s work to balance these competing interests reflects the cultural expectation that women must work with the contradiction of caring about their dress, but not caring about it too much. This paradox endorses a slightly deceptive attitude toward clothing for women, for it encourages women to devote thought to their garb without seeming to do so. Deception directly opposes virtue, and therefore dress is at best an uneasy signifier of moral worth because its nature as a covering invokes ideas of deception and disguise. The concept of “disguise” further confuses the possibility of dress signifying virtue, because the term “disguise” has both figurative and literal uses. The Oxford English Dictionary defines disguise not only as “‘a dress contrived to conceal 133 the person that wears it’ [...] a garb assumed in order to deceive” but also as “any artificial manner assumed for deception’ a false appearance, a counterfeit semblance or show; deception” (OED). The very definition of “disguise” therefore yokes it to both dress and deception. Late in the novel, Anna eulogizes Clarissa by describing her being “as much beyond reserve as disguise” (1468), invoking the figurative use of “disguise.” Yet Clarissa complicates Anna’s assertion when she puts into action her understanding of the power of literal dress to mislead when she escapes from the brothel in which Lovelace has effectively imprisoned her. Again Clarissa finds her conception of virtue in opposition to a commercialization of women, because both in the brothel and at Harlowe Place, she is expected to trade her sexual self for some kind of economic gain. 54 Yet Clarissa’s means of escape from the brothel is clothing, which carried a strong tie to money in the eighteenth century. Wardrobes worked as potential sources of cash – as they do for Clarissa later in the novel, when she sells her clothing to pay her debts – and the extensiveness of the second-hand clothes trade testifies to the frequency with which dress was pawned. Dress, even when used for virtuous purposes, carries the morally questionable weight of commerce. 55 In a letter 54 For an extended discussion of this, see Laura J. Rosenthal’s fifth chapter, “Clarissa Among the Whores,” in Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2004). 55 This connection is so strong that ideas of dress often linked to prostitution in the eighteenth century. Milliners were commonly seen as either analogous to prostitutes because they sold items to decorate the female body, or seen as being prostitutes. Sophie Carter explains: “It seems likely that this trade [millinery] was singled out for particular opprobrium as it was 134 to Lovelace, Belford reports how Clarissa arranges for Mabel, a housemaid, to receive some of her clothing: a lustring gown and a quilted coat. She tells Mabel that, since the weather is rainy, Mabel should don her hood and short cloak to go fetch a workwoman who will perform the necessary alterations to make the garments suitable for Mabel’s station. These admonitions are a feint of Clarissa’s; while Mabel later looks at herself wearing Clarissa’s cast-offs in the pier-glass in Lovelace’s apartment (at Clarissa’s suggestion), Clarissa “slipped on Mabel’s gown and petticoat over her own, which was white damask, and put on the wench’s hood, short cloak, and ordinary apron, and down she went” (967). Clarissa descends the stairs and leaves the house, thought by all who see her to be Mabel. Clarissa’s belief that deception can function in the service of morality surfaces again later in the novel, when she intentionally misleads Lovelace with the phrase “my father’s house.” She defends this term, by which she means heaven (though she knows that Lovelace will read this as a synonym for Harlowe Place), as an allegory rather than a lie. In this instance, Clarissa uses generic convention (allegory rather than direct reporting) as a verbal disguise to broadly associated with luxury, frivolity, and frippery, all of which were assumed to have a detrimental effect on female character” Purchasing Power: Representing Women in Eighteenth-Century English Popular Print Culture (Hants, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 15. See also Erin Mackie. Market à la Mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in The Tatler and The Spectator (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1997) and E.J. Clery’s The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England: Literature, Commerce, and Luxury (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 135 protect herself from further interaction with Lovelace. 56 Clearly, these instances demonstrate that Clarissa is not beyond disguise. Clarissa’s motivation in disguising herself is beyond reproach, since she employs this sartorial deception to escape her imprisonment at the hands of her rapist, but this function of dress is the antithesis to the supposedly natural, transparently virtuous, function of dress that Clarissa usually attempts to employ. Even pressed into the service of virtue, as in the case of Clarissa’s disguising herself as a maid to escape Mrs. Sinclair’s brothel, disguise registers as falsity and dishonesty. Although Clarissa tries to redefine disguise as virtuous by using it in the service of protecting herself from the threat of rape, for other characters, Clarissa’s literal use of dress as deception calls attention to and reinforces her metaphorical disguise. In a letter counseling Clarissa on how to act with Lovelace, Anna admits the difficulty of Clarissa’s situation. Recognizing that Clarissa has romantic feelings for Lovelace, Anna tells her that she “must throw off a little more of the veil.” Clarissa retorts “[a]nd what mean you, my dear friend, when you say that I must throw off a little more of the veil?— Indeed I never knew that I wore one” (432, 433). Anna believes that Clarissa “veils” her emotions, disguising her feelings so that no one (not even Clarissa herself) can easily perceive her love for Lovelace. Clarissa does not recognize, or at least affects not to recognize, her feelings for Lovelace, and Anna’s employment of a clothing 56 I am indebted to Emily Hodgson Anderson for this observation. 136 metaphor here functions as more than a poetic turn of phrase. Veils for women tend to evoke ideas of religious piety, but they act as agents of secrecy as well. Many religions employ the veil as “an expression of female modesty, [but] the veil could also encourage an anonymity regarded as problematic by the city fathers” (Hunt 67). The perceived need for the regulation of veils belies the fear that female disguise engenders. Veils share the quality of anonymity with masks, viewed in the eighteenth century by moralists as suspect because they hide their wearers’ identities and thus provide the potential for women to engage in inappropriate behavior. 57 Anna’s use of the veil metaphor thus suggests that Clarissa hides a secret, possibly even an illicit one, and Clarissa’s response indicates that she hides this secret even from herself: she loves Lovelace. Anna and Clarissa’s use of the veil metaphor points to the complexities of dress, and because articles of dress function as metaphors for deceit and hiding, characters can and do interpret actual dress as signaling deception. Lovelace employs the deceptive qualities of dress by using it as disguise, and Lovelace’s disguises tend to deflect attention away from Clarissa’s own literal employment of disguise. Tassie Gwilliam writes, “Lovelace’s characteristic deployment of disguise uses and recasts the association between women and disguise current in the period,” but this 57 This pejorative interpretation of masks and masquerades will create confusion for Richardson’s character Harriet Byron in The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4), who meets the titular hero when she is in masquerade dress. 137 assessment fails to take Clarissa’s disguises, both figurative and literal, into account (67). 58 Clarissa’s “veiling” of her emotions and her use of Mabel’s clothing to escape Lovelace invoke ideas of virtue and morality, because Clarissa intends these actions to safeguard her honor and chastity. This allows critics and readers to ignore that Clarissa does, in fact, engage in disguise, yet Clarissa’s disguises suggest to Lovelace that she is less than strictly virtuous. Lovelace employs dress metaphors in an attempt to test the idea that Clarissa is less virtuous than she at first seems to be, and in so doing Lovelace correlates deception with clothing. Lovelace writes that the only temptation he could anticipate as successful with Clarissa is one that “could come clothed in the guise of truth and trust” (463). Here Lovelace demonstrates his view that clothing is a misleading surface that hides truth. He writes to Belford of anticipating sexual success “if I can oblige my sweet traveler to throw aside, but for one moment, the cloak of her rigid virtue” (647). If Clarissa’s virtue is simply a cloak – a piece of clothing, worn for its convenience or conformity to fashion – Lovelace need only convince Clarissa to remove the metaphorical garment to achieve his desires. To Clarissa, virtue is not a dress to be worn and cast aside at will and it is instead a bedrock attribute of her personality. Yet Clarissa muddies this idea by describing her integrity as a piece of 58 Gwilliam is not the only critic who forwards the binary of Clarissa as visually transparent and Lovelace as visually deceptive. For instance, Christine Roulston writes, “unlike Lovelace, who is all subterfuge and masks, Clarissa shines because she has no secret, hidden self.” Christine Roulston, Virtue, Gender, and the Authentic Self in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Richardson, Rousseau, and Laclos (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1998), xvii. 138 clothing. “Let me wrap myself about in the mantle of my own integrity,” she writes, “and take comfort in my unfaulty intention” (508). Clarissa’s mention of her intention here refers to her reasons for her flight from Harlowe Place (escaping from a marriage with Solmes), and she feels that she has been in physical and spiritual danger from that moment onward. She therefore constructs her integrity as something in which she can hide: a mantle, a protective garment. Clarissa believes that she maintains her mantle of integrity in leaving her family home. Her family had imprisoned her in her room, berated her, and expressed no intention of relenting in their quest to marry her to a man whom she regarded as completely odious. Her escape from Harlowe Place is arguably as virtuous as her escape from Lovelace, as both her family and Lovelace want her to engage in morally dubious behavior (uniting her soul to a man she hates, and engaging in sex outside of marriage, respectively). Clarissa seen commercially In the situations that create both the possibility of marriage to Solmes and the threat of rape from Lovelace, Clarissa is subjected to a commercial gaze. Solmes desires Clarissa’s wealth more than her person, or as Clarissa writes: “Solmes […] doubts not to join to his own the estate I am envied for [her grandfather’s bequest to her], for the conveniency of its situation between two of his, will it seems be of twice the value to him that it would be of to any other person, and is therefore, I doubt not, a stronger motive with him than the wife” (81). In the same letter, Clarissa labels 139 Solmes an “upstart man,” and despises him for his coarse financial acquisitiveness as well as his repugnant physical form. Clarissa’s clothing plays a role in her expression of this distaste for Solmes and the base commercialism that he represents. When he leans close to Clarissa, she recoils. She later writes to Anna of this incident, explaining “[h]e took the removed chair and drew it so near mine, squatting in it with his ugly weight, that he pressed upon my hoop—I was so offended […] that I removed to another chair. I own I had too little command of myself […] but I did it involuntarily, I think; I could not help it—I knew not what I did” (87). Clarissa instinctively protects her hoop skirt just as she tries to protect her virtue, involuntarily equating the two. Because dress works for Clarissa as protection for her body and transmitter of her propriety, she cannot bear even the slightest touch on it of the commercial crassness that Solmes embodies. Here, she demonstrates her belief that clothing expresses virtue. But the value of dress stems in part from its superficial possibilities; the expense of costly stuffs helps to perpetuate the link between dress and deception. Solmes sees Clarissa’s gorgeous dress as a sign that she recognizes herself as a property to be acquired, and he reads her withdrawals from him as coy manipulations of him to enhance her value. Despite Clarissa’s virtuous intentions, Clarissa’s clothing helps to ensure that she cannot free herself from being the object of Solmes’s commercial gaze. 140 Lovelace, too, views Clarissa acquisitively and commercially. Lovelace repeatedly views Clarissa as a gorgeous surface, taking minute note of her clothing and constructing her morality as a decorative veneer. While Clarissa avoids describing her clothing, Lovelace’s writings on her dress are exceptionally descriptive. He writes to Belford an enumeration of Clarissa’s clothing, one that I quote at length to show its incredible detail: Thou shalt judge of her dress as at the moment she appeared to me, and as, upon a nearer observation, she really was. I am a critic, thou knowest, in women’s dresses—Many a one have I taught to dress, and helped to undress. But there is such a native elegance in this lady that she surpasses all that I could imagine surpassing. But then her person adorns what she wears, more than dress can adorn her; and that’s her excellence. Expect therefore a faint sketch of her admirable person with her dress. […] Her head-dress was a Brussels lace mob, peculiarly adapted to the charming air and turn of her features. A sky-blue riband illustrated that—But although the weather was somewhat sharp, she had not on either had or hood; for, besides that she loves to use herself hardily (by which means, and by a temperance truly exemplary, she is allowed to have given high health and vigour to an originally tender constitution), she seems to have intended to show me that she was determined not to stand to her appointment. Oh Jack! that such a sweet girl should be a rogue! Her morning gown was a pale primrose-coloured paduasoy: the cuffs and robings curiously embroidered by the fingers of this ever- charming Arachne in a running pattern of violets and their leaves; the light in the flowers silver; gold in the leaves. A pair of diamond snaps in her ears. A white handkerchief, wrought by the same inimitable fingers, concealed—Oh Belford! what still more inimitable beauties did it not conceal!—And I saw, all the way we rode, the bounding heart; by its throbbing motions I saw it! dancing beneath the charming umbrage. 141 Her ruffles were the same as her mob. Her apron a flowered lawn. Her coat white satin, quilted: blue satin her shoes, braided with the same colour, without lace; for what need has the prettiest foot in the world of ornament? Neat buckles in them: and on her charming arms a pair of black velvet glove-like muffs, of her own invention; for she makes and gives fashions as she pleases. (399-400) Lovelace sees the details of her dress and accessories, minutely inventorying every article she wears as if he were a merchant and she his wares, but he refuses to see anything of Clarissa that is not superficial or readily purchased. Instead, he prefers to think of her as a “rogue” who employs artifice and deception to seduce him. Lovelace calls attention to the difference between Clarissa “as she appeared” to him, and as “she really was,” but he collapses this difference, tying together her inner self and her superficial surface by interspersing his description of her clothing with commentary on her personality. To Lovelace, Clarissa’s handkerchief calls attention to the breast that it covers rather than serving as a guardian of modesty, and the absence of lace on her shoes highlights the beauty of her feet rather than displaying her preference for simplicity. Like Solmes, Lovelace fixes Clarissa with a commercial gaze; he reads her expensive clothing as planned and purchased tools of seduction. Clarissa’s dress, in Lovelace’s view, confirms her position in a commercial nexus, and this in turn suggests to him that she can be brought to barter away her virginity and her virtue. In his detailed description of Clarissa’s surfaces, Lovelace even takes note of the embroidery on the dress that Clarissa herself has executed. He notes that the pattern of violets and leaves receives highlighting through the use of silver thread in 142 the violets and gold in the leaves, testifying to the scrutiny with which he has submitted Clarissa’s clothing. She is very clearly the object of his sustained gaze, but his gaze does not penetrate past her surface. Leo Braudy argues that Clarissa defines the true self as “a purging of the external world—the theatrical, role-playing definition of identity Lovelace embodies” (192), which at first seems to render her exquisitely embroidered clothing incongruous with her emphasis on the moral superiority of her inner self. But Clarissa’s attention to dress reflects her allegiance with propriety, because the clothing that Lovelace describes above displays Clarissa’s own handiwork. She has embroidered the violets and leaves that adorn her dress; Clarissa’s embroidery may make her dress even more pleasurable for Lovelace to view, but embroidering is a virtuous and industrious way for an elegant young woman to pass her time. 59 Clarissa’s approach to needlework reveals her upstanding character. While the same is also true of Pamela, Clarissa’s higher social status validates the highly decorativ embroidery work in which she engages. Young women of quality did not do “plain work,” or the basic construction of garments like shifts or shirts. Instead, they embroidered. Yet embroidery is seen as superfluous decoration rather than purely 59 This differs from Richardson’s previous use of embroidery in Pamela. Pamela diligently flowers a waistcoat for Mr B., and though her dedication to the task may reveal her as-yet undisclosed love for her employer, her work also establishes her as morally upright because work of this sort is a proper use of her time. However, Pamela’s status means that she would inappropriately waste time if her embroidery was meant to decorate her own person rather than that of her master. Clarissa’s higher status renders her embellishment of her own dress morally acceptable. 143 industrious work, and that is what makes it fitting as a pastime for elegant young women: their needlework can reinforce their family’s lofty station by demonstrating that the women’s time can be essentially thrown away in focusing on superficial beauty. Jane Brereton’s 1744 poem “On seeing Mrs Eliz. Owen, now Lady Longueville, in an embroider'd Suit, all her own work” describes embroidery much like that of Clarissa’s which Lovelace describes: “Behold, with what Skill she has damask'd the Rose! / The charming Carnation how crimson'd it glows! / There, the Lilly discloses its snowy white Head, / And here, their rich Purple the Violets spread.” Brereton sums up the importance of Lady Longueville’s needlework: “So fair a Creation, the Work of her Hands, / First attracts my Regard, then my Wonder commands […] / When thus we behold her, we needs must confess, / Her Fancy and Judgment are seen in her Dress” (38). For a woman of high status, embroidery is an important skill that shows her to be accomplished. Since Clarissa makes her needlework ornament her clothing, she incorporates her accomplishments into what Veblen would call her “conspicuous display,” virtuously employing her embroidery talents to further demonstrate her family’s status. Clarissa’s “Fancy and Judgment” are seen in her clothing, and the credit redounds to the Harlowes. Clarissa more explicitly reveals her faith in the propriety of needlework as a pastime when she excuses herself for the ornamental plates she has designed for her coffin. They consist of three Bible verses, a winged hour glass, an urn, a white lily 144 with its bloom snapped from its stalk, and (as the “principal device”) a crowned serpent with its tail in its mouth. The profusion of ornament seems to Clarissa to necessitate an apology to those from whom she has rented her lodgings, perhaps because it appears to violate the “just Disdain” of embellishment expressed by Advice to the Fair. Belford relates Clarissa’s uneasiness in a letter to Lovelace: She excused herself to the women, on the score of her youth, and being used to draw for her needleworks, for having shown more fancy than would perhaps be thought suitable on so solemn an occasion. […] She discharged the undertaker’s bill after I was gone, with as much cheerfulness as she could ever have paid for the clothes she sold to purchase this her palace: for such she called it; reflecting upon herself for the expensiveness of it, saying that they might observe in her, that pride left not poor mortals to the last: but indeed she did not know by her father would permit it, when furnished, to be carried down to be deposited with her ancestors; and in that case, she ought not to discredit them in her last appearance. (1306) Clarissa’s hopes that her father will allow her to repose in death with the rest of her departed family indicate what she believes to be the proper use of decoration: a young woman should always appear in a manner sufficient to her family’s rank. She has sold her rich apparel to provide a suitable final “dress” in the form of a coffin, because clothing and ornament have been important to her primarily in that she wishes to appear in a manner that does credit to her family. Clarissa’s lavishness in her coffin’s decoration, and her overt connecting of the plaque to needlework, render her coffin an extension of her dress; Veblen writes that “the greater part of the expenditure incurred by all classes for apparel is incurred for the sake of a respectable appearance rather 145 than for the protection of the person” (167-8), and this holds true for Clarissa’s coffin. Clarissa maintains a sense of propriety in her funeral preparations, decorating only what will remain visible. In life, this was her person, but in death it becomes her coffin. Clarissa explains this belief in a letter to her nurse Mrs Norton in which she wishes Anna good luck with her wedding preparations: Let my dearest Miss Howe purchase her wedding garments—and may all temporal blessings attend the charming preparation! […] As for me, never bride was so ready as I am. My wedding garments are bought— and though not fine or gaudy to the sight, though not adorned with jewels and set off with gold and silver (for I have no beholders’ eyes to wish to glitter in), yet will they be the easiest, the happiest suit, that ever bridal maiden wore—for they are such as carry with them a security against all those anxieties, pains, and perturbations, which sometimes succeed to the most promising outsettings. And now, my dear Mrs Norton, do I wish for no other. Oh hasten, good God, if it be thy blessed will, the happy moment that I am to be decked out in this all-quieting garb! (1339) Clarissa discharges her duties faithfully, appearing only as fine as is consistent with her family’s honor; her acknowledgement of beholders’ eyes in which she desires to shine (even when proclaiming the lack of them) testifies to her awareness of the visual duties of a woman of quality. Clarissa’s construction of her coffin as garb reinforces her belief in clothing as an indicator of virtue. Misinterpreting Clarissa The culturally-sanctioned vestimentary ambiguity of paying attention to the superficial as the means through which to convey a deeper virtue is what allows Lovelace to misinterpret Clarissa; he can only see an emphasis on surface as 146 temptation. After Clarissa’s death, he realizes that in focusing on her exterior beauty, he never really exercised a hold on her. Lovelace recounts a disturbing dream to Belford, one in which he loses Clarissa to heaven. He describes seeing his family members in “deep mourning” in the dream, and then immediately the most angelic form I had ever beheld, vested all in transparent white, descended from a ceiling, which, opening, discovered a ceiling above that, stuck round with golden cherubs and glittering seraphs, all exulting: Welcome, welcome, welcome! and, encircling my charmer, ascended with her to the region of the seraphims; and instantly, the opening ceiling closing, I lost sight of her, and of the bright form together, and found wrapped in my arms her azure robe (all stuck thick with stars of embossed silver) which I had caught hold of in hopes of detaining her; but was all that was left me of my beloved Miss Harlowe. (1218) Lovelace’s dream does more than simply express his grief and frustration at Clarissa’s impending death, it also demonstrates his muddled and belated awareness that he never truly possessed Clarissa. At his dream’s end, he is holding her ornamented robe, but she has escaped him. When Clarissa is still alive, Lovelace can only apprehend her as a combination of exquisite surfaces, her flawless skin and her embroidered apparel largely undifferentiated in his view. His dream acknowledges Clarissa as much more than this. Even in Lovelace’s dream, Clarissa’s clothing associates her with superior morality: her starry azure robe recalls traditional iconographic depictions of the Virgin Mary. Lovelace’s dream reenacts the assumption of the virgin, the ascension into heaven of not just Mary’s soul, but her body as well; here, body and soul resist bifurcation and remain united. Mary’s body was fit to enter heaven along 147 with her soul because her body remained incorrupt. Lovelace’s vision of Clarissa bodily entering heaven demonstrates that he believes that she remained pure after the rape, and the cast-off robe reinforces the idea that clothing cannot achieve a similar state of purity; clothing is of the material world, subject to decay, sin, and deception. 60 Margaret Anne Doody writes that “the robe which she discards […] symbolizes the outward and the visible” (236), and Lovelace’s dream-acknowledgement of this being all that is left him of his beloved is Lovelace’s acknowledgment of his confused emphasis on Clarissa’s clothing. Lovelace finally begins to realize that he had only ever known Clarissa superficially; his dream of clinging to her dress, the most commercial and, to Lovelace, the most accessible, aspect of her, functions as Lovelace’s too-little-too-late realization that he misread Clarissa’s attention to clothing. The plot of Clarissa concerns itself with whether a woman’s virtue is unshakable or, like a garment, put on and removed at will. The association of virtue and dress gives women a sense of power, because dress then becomes a means through which women can broadcast their flawless virtue, as does Clarissa. But because the novel contains scenes of dress as deceptive, it demonstrates that clothing possesses 60 In Catholic doctrine, material objects can be sacred, but differs from Protestant teachings. In Catholicism, “the material world can be the bearer of divine presence or grace. The real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, or the power which is invested in saints’ relics, are instances of this. [...] In opposition to this, Calvinist teaching tends to regard any veneration of the material world as being too close to idolatry, that is, the worship of a creature rather than its Creator.” Sarah Jane Boss, Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary. London and New York: Cassell, 2000. 13-14. 148 attributes that do not align with virtue. Disguise and seduction are at odds with virtue, and because of the instability and ungovernability of dress, wearers are at the mercy of interpretation. Despite characters like Lovelace and Solmes reading Clarissa’s surfaces as placing her within a realm of commercial exchange, her clothing also makes manifest, and literal, her purity. When Belford writes to Lovelace of Clarissa imprisoned for debt, he describes her dress; in so doing, he simultaneously describes the state of her virtue: Her dress was white damask, exceeding neat; but her stays seemed not tight-laced. I was told afterwards, that her laces been cut when she fainted away at her entrance into this cursed place; and she had not been solicitous enough about her dress to send for others. Her headdress was a little discomposed […] When I surveyed the room around, and the kneeling lady, sunk with majesty too in her white, flowing robes (for she had not on a hoop), spreading the dark, though not dirty, floor, and illuminating that corner; her linen beyond imagination white, considering that she had not been undressed ever since she had been here; I thought my concern would have choked me. (1065) Clarissa’s cut stay-laces emblematize her sexual fall, her lack of solicitousness and her discomposed headdress testify to her disregard for her exterior beauty, and her lack of a hoop demonstrates that she no longer feels any need for fashion. Since she has previously discussed her hoop as an implement that ensured physical distance from Solmes, her lack of a hoop here also demonstrates that she no longer makes claims for distance or space, viewing her body as now irremediably impure. But her unfailing purity finds its expression in her linen, “beyond imagination white.” In Belford’s 149 description, her white robes light up the room, bestowing upon Clarissa a spiritual power not unlike that of Lovelace’s assumption-of-Clarissa dream. 61 Yet while at this late point in the novel Belford reads Clarissa’s clothing as indicating her virtue, he, like Lovelace, originally misreads Clarissa’s dress. Belford’s moral reform is evident from the change in the way in which he interprets Clarissa’s approach to dress. Upon first meeting Clarissa, Belford writes of her “easiness of dress, which I imagined must have taken up half her time and study to cultivate” (710). By the time he sees Clarissa in her cell, however, Belford sees her dress as illuminating and recognizes that she has devoted little to no study to her appearance. This helps to forward the view of Clarissa as naturally elegant, able by her very nature to appear elegant. The “naturalness” of Clarissa’s ability with dress is both troubling and suspect. Writers of conduct literature reinforced the idea that women inherently gravitate to dress and embellishment, and this was a convenient vehicle for misogyny. One writer, in answering the polemic Women’s Superior Excellence Over Man from the early 1740s, wrote dismissively of women as, in essence, all surface: “If the Business of the Mind were nothing more than to contrive a Dress; to invent a new Fashion; to set off a bad Face; to heighten the Charms of a good one; to understand the Œconomy of a Tea- 61 This further suggests Clarissa’s fierce alliance to her family, and deep commitment to representing her family well through her self-presentation. Veblen writes that the “pleasing effect of neat and spotless garments is chiefly, if not altogether, due to their carrying the suggestion of leisure – exemption from personal contact with industrial processes of any kind” (170), and only women of absolute leisure could possibly have kept white linen spotlessly white. 150 table; to manage an Intrigue; to conduct a Game at Quadrille; and to lay out new Plans of Pleasure, Pride, and Luxury: the Women must be owned to have a Capacity not only equal, but even superior to us” (Man Superior to Woman 19). He opined that foppish men are sure to please women, yet he could not blame these “lovely female Triflers who are pleased with them: It is but natural for Birds of a Feather to associated” (Man Superior to Woman 24). Works like Clarissa, however much they might employ clothing as a vehicle for expressing womanly virtue, help to perpetuate such essentialist notions of the “natural” connection between clothing and women. Lovelace’s dream of Clarissa as a Virgin Mary figure cannot erase his detailed, sensuous descriptions of Clarissa’s dress. In looking so long at Clarissa with a commercial, fashion-savvy gaze, Lovelace leads readers to do the same. Richardson’s endorsement of sartorial paradox In his compilation of his book’s instructive maxims, Samuel Richardson includes, for Pamela: “DRESS suited to degree, or station, gives a high instance of prudence” (49). In regards to Clarissa, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison asserts: “The mind is often indicated by outward Dress” (332). These two statements, however little or much Richardson’s novels might support them, are at cross purposes. While outward dress can convey something of its wearer’s mind, it becomes harder to find such meaning when a wearer 151 simply observes form or obeys conventional sartorial rules. Paradoxically, the Pamela maxim counsels readers to follow established norms in selecting clothing, but the Clarissa maxim suggests that individual identity can be read through dress. The ambiguity of these maxims reflects the ambiguity of dress that the novels themselves contain. Both Pamela and Clarissa experience dress’s paradoxical nature. The plots of both Pamela and Clarissa concern themselves with whether a woman’s virtue is unshakable or, like a garment, put on and removed at will. The association of virtue and dress gives women a kind of power, because dress then becomes a means through which women can broadcast their flawless virtue. But because both novels contain scenes of dress as deceptive, the novels demonstrate that clothing possesses attributes that do not align with virtue. Ostentation, disguise, and seduction are at odds with virtue, and a wearer is at the mercy of ungovernable interpretation. Women’s dress has not surrendered all power, of course. While clothing might not lead to the freedoms that Moll Flanders or “Fantomina” enjoy from dress, it still can afford its wearer the power of virtue. Pamela parlays her homespun gown (ostensibly an external manifestation of her inner worth) into a marriage to a man of the quality, becoming able to wear fine dress with impunity. After her marriage to Mr B., Pamela puts on some of the finery that she had received from Mr B. and his mother when she was in their service, 152 writing “I, like a proud hussey, looked in the glass, and was ready to think myself a gentlewoman; but I forgot not to return due thanks, for being able to put on this dress with so light a heart” (336-7). In part due to her belief in clothing’s ability to show her worth, Pamela earns the right to appear as a gentlewoman. Clarissa, too, consistently displays her virtue through her clothing. Her clothing makes manifest, and literal, her purity. When Belford writes to Lovelace of Clarissa imprisoned for debt, Clarissa’s cut stay-laces are emblems of her sexual fall, the discomposed headdress is a testimony to her disregard for her exterior beauty, and her lack of a hoop demonstrates that she no longer feels any need for fashion. But her unfailing purity finds its expression in her linen, “beyond imagination white.” In Belford’s description, her white robes light up the room, bestowing upon Clarissa a spiritual power not unlike that of Lovelace’s assumption-of-Clarissa dream. Yet both characters suffer from the ways in which other characters misinterpret their clothing. Dress in these novels is not a simple indicator of virtue, no matter how much Pamela and Clarissa might try to make it so. For example, Late in Pamela, Lady Davers sees Pamela’s change in dress style as evidence that she has become Mr B.’s kept mistress, not his wife. “There’s a great difference I her air, as well as in her dress, I assure you, since I saw her last” (403), she sneers to her nephew. Admittedly, Pamela and Mr B. deprive Lady Davers of the proper context of Pamela’s clothing, having delayed telling her of their marriage. But Pamela’s rise in sartorial elegance 153 does not have one stable meaning; she dresses more finely to please her husband’s pride in his rank, but a servant girl suddenly wearing costly fabrics and trimmings is more likely to signify that she has sunk to the role of her master’s whore. Dress’s unstable communicative properties render it a difficult, if not impossible, medium for the signification of virtue. The ways in which this misinterpretation of dress thwarts the interpretation of Pamela and Clarissa as virtuous corresponds to the ways in which these novels were variously interpreted. Richardson combated the popular notion that the rake Lovelace was a more interesting character than Clarissa, for example, and the Pamelist/anti-Pamelist divide testifies to Pamela’s opposing interpretations. Mr B. even constructs his longings for Pamela as related to narrative when he voices his wish to read her writings: “I must see them, Pamela […] I long to see the particulars of your plot […] Besides, there is such a pretty air of romance, as you tell your story, in your plots, and my plots, that I shall be better directed how to wind up the catastrophe of the pretty novel” (267-8). Mr B. further conflates his desires for Pamela with his desires for her story when he threatens to strip her to access the papers that he is certain she has hidden on her person, and of course, Pamela’s having hidden her papers in her clothing further demonstrates the narrative-containing force of her dress – literally, in this case. Temma F. Berg asks, “Could it not be suggested that the Pamela plot implies what could happen when a female exerts her authority over a male reader and turns him into a compliant addict who is hooked onto what 154 happens next?” (117). Part of Pamela’s “authority” over B. is vestimentary; her employment of clothing charms and attracts B. In conflating dress and story, the novel ascribes similar functions to both. In this way, Pamela is a direct literary descendant of Haywood’s Fantomina, which presents dress functioning as a form of narrative. Both main characters display a high level of skill with dress that allows each also to display author-like skill with narrative plotting. Richardson’s misbegotten belief that dress is a transparent window in which to view the personality of the wearer is a belief already outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. The “modernist” belief, to return to Elizabeth Wilson’s terms, had taken firm enough hold to jeopardize Richardson’s attempts to telegraph his characters’ virtue through their clothing, indicating his allegiance to an “authentic” approach to dress. Even twenty years earlier, characters like Moll Flanders and the unnamed heroine of Fantomina evince a modernist approach to dress, subverting viewers’ absolute faith in clothing’s ability to convey clear, consistent, and readily perceived and understood information about its wearer. Though Richardson clearly subscribes to the belief that appearances are misleading, as demonstrated through Clarissa’s initial faith in Lovelace to remove her from her family’s home without putting her in moral peril, he consistently tries to use dress to show that appearances are legible indices to virtue. The arguments to which Pamela gave rise indicate that interpretation is largely ungovernable. Even if Richardson constructed his heroine so as to maintain a tension 155 between virtuous maid and tempting plotter, 62 his alignment of clothing with virtue belies a faith in at least the possibility for dress to act as a “truthful” medium. This, however, is inconsistent with popular and long-standing conceptions with dress as disguise, deception, and covering for something that is kept hidden. Dress is subject to wildly varying interpretation, just as the novel itself it. Richardson went to great lengths to control the interpretation of his novels, as is evidenced by the abundance of the prefaces, postscripts, notes, and revisions to Clarissa. Liz Bellamy calls Richardson’s various rewritings of Clarissa “a consequence of his lifelong struggle to resist interpretative diversity” (81), and this lies at the heart of Richardson’s employment of dress within both Clarissa and Pamela. Richardson’s novels might be intended to inculcate morals, but despite enormous effort, he cannot control the ways in which readers interpret the novels. Similarly, the “authentic” view of clothing presupposes that all viewers will construe clothing identically, but this is far from the case. The deceptive power exercised by characters in narratives from the 1720s demonstrates that the “modernist” view of clothing was already well established, rendering the “authentic” view outmoded. Richardson’s novels might be said to react to works that evince a 62 Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor suggest that Richardson was quite canny in realizing that differing purposes for a novel meant differing audiences, and thus more sales. They write: “having sold Pamela once as piety, and arguably once again as pornography, [Richardson] then gave a third identity to the novel by repackaging it as pedagogy [...] In May 1742, Richardson was at last ready to publish his lavish sixth edition of the novel, [...] a fourth identity for Pamela, then, as an ornament for a genteel library” (37-38). 156 modernist view of dress. Richardson’s work as a printer had placed him into contact with Eliza Haywood, for example: “research has shown that he printed, in 1728, the first edition of Haywood’s The Agreeable Caledonian; [and] in 1732, the first and final volumes of the third edition of Haywood’s Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems (1724) [...] Richardson’s debt, in all of his novels, to amatory fiction of the kind he had printed in Secret Histories is obvious, yet it was a source he always refused to acknowledge” (Keymer and Sabor 84). Haywood’s Fantomina appeared in the third volume of Secret Histories, and other works that display wily characters manipulating dress and appearances for their own gains appear as well (The Masqueraders appears in volume four, for instance). In rejecting the immorality of such amatory fare, Richardson also rejected the modernist view of clothing contains within these narratives. Yet the reception of Pamela and Clarissa make clear that Richardson’s view of dress as authentic was not universal. With the increasing acceptance of the modernist view of clothing comes an increasing acceptance of interpretation as necessary, with dress as well as with narrative. The development of the novel away from allegory and flat characters places more activity on the reader to interpret and understand meaning, and this means that authors had to accept that they exercised less control over those interpretations and meanings as the novel form developed. 157 Chapter Three – “Henry Fielding and Charlotte Charke: Crossing Gender and Genre Boundaries” The riding habit Of the mid-eighteenth century’s fashions in clothing, one item of dress stands out as blurring boundaries of gender in especially feared ways: the women’s riding habit. Made for horseback riding, the riding habit drew its cultural resonance not only from its associations with the vigor and manliness of the sport of riding, but also from its being modeled after men’s coats. Some women’s riding habits were almost identical to men’s coats, differing only in that women’s habits ended in skirts, and some women even accessorized their riding habits with manly powdered wigs. Mary Goddard’s epigram, “To Miss— in a Riding-Habit” (1748) indicates the type of criticism that the riding habit received: “Vainly you strive to charm Mankind, / With that fantastic Dress; / It only serves to make them try / If they can like you less” (46). Goddard assumes that women’s intentions with their clothing are to attract men, and that the “fantastic” nature of the riding coat renders this an impossibility. The implication is that the masculinity of the habit thwarts any possibility of it being attractive on a woman. Yet an anonymous poet’s work raises questions about the seemingly straightforward truth about riding habits that Goddard’s poem expresses. “Upon seeing Miss B----- in the same Habit” [“the same Habit” references the previous poem, “To Florelia, upon seeing her in a Riding Habit, at Scarborough”] 158 (1734) shows greater ambiguity about the habit’s potential for seduction than does Goddard’s poem: Forsake, Dear Nymph, this awkward Dress; For who in Prudence can Divest the loveliest Goddess, T’ assume the mimic Man. The Rival Ladies out of Spight, Or Envy, soon will say The Person is Hermaphrodite, That’s seen in such array. Would you the Human Image bear? Let me, my Fair, advise, Hence forward be no more severe To your fond Votaries. (65-66) The first stanza establishes the riding habit as awkward, masculine, and unappealing, because it is a garment that a female wearer must divest herself of any claim to being the “loveliest Goddess” to wear. In so doing, she casts aside her loveliness as well as divine femininity. Yet the next stanza suggests something very different, because it expresses how the wearer’s rivals will attack her from spite or envy. The question becomes: spite and envy for what? The answer is that the riding habit, despite – or because of – its gender bending, bestows a subversive attractiveness to its wearer. The last stanza of the poem recuperates the tone of the first, suggesting that a woman wearing a riding coat acts severely to her admirers by denying them the sight of her at her most attractive. 63 In 63 “To Florelia, upon seeing her in a Riding Habit, at Scarborough,” the poem that precedes “Upon seeing Miss B----- in the same Habit” in the same collection, also presents the riding habit 159 other words, this poem ostensibly works to express a concept similar to that expressed in Goddard’s poem: women lessen their attractiveness when they wear masculine clothing. But the frisson of the second stanza cannot be erased, and the poem does not deny the appeal of the blurring of gender categories. This chapter takes as its subject a similar sartorial gender blurring: the mid- century phenomenon of women wearing men’s clothing. Eighteenth-century actresses appeared in breeches parts, a popular costuming technique that allowed audience members to enjoy the sight of a well-turned female leg displayed in slim-fitting men’s trousers. Yet the phenomenon under scrutiny in this chapter is not the theatrical presentation of women in men’s clothing; instead, here I look at literary representations of those who cross-dressed in their everyday lives. The tales of female soldiers, as an implement of a woman’s severity to men, constructing the garment as the means through which Florelia keeps her admirers away and discourages their gaze: When Jove of old intriguing came To Nymphs of Mortal Race, He fell in Love with ev’ry Dame, That own’d a pretty face. His Godship in various Shapes, At various Times appear; Not to conceal his frequent Rapes From jealous Juno’s Ear; But left unveil’d Divinity Should the Destruction prove Of all the Beauteous Nymphs, whom he Did passionately Love. Just so Florelia, thus attir’d, Does not propose to be, By gazing Crowds, the more admir’d’ But to hide the Deity. (65) 160 husbands, and pirates proliferate around the mid-century point, and investigating this phenomenon helps to further delineate the arc of this project’s exploration of eighteenth- century women’s dress. The disruption of the clear binary of “male” and “female” effected through cross-dressing is mirrored in the disruption of the binary of “fiction” and “biography/autobiography” that the form of these narratives takes. Opening this discussion with a nod to riding habits is no incidental gesture, because many stories of cross-dressed women appear around the mid-to-late portion of the century. This period is coextensive with the popularity of women’s riding habits. While twenty-first century eyes might not view riding habits as particularly masculine, eighteenth-century commentators did. The similarity of riding habits to men’s coats was so marked that male tailors, rather than female mantua makers, produced these garments. The handbook The Taylor’s Complete Guide; Or, a Comprehensive Analysis of Beauty and Elegance in Dress [1796?] provides detailed information about the cutting out and construction of breeches, waistcoats, men’s coats, women’s coats, and women’s riding habits, demonstrating the close relation of the construction of these items of clothing in the eighteenth century. The militaristic touches commonly found on riding habits – braided frog closures, wide cuffs, frock coat skirting – all lent the riding habit a masculine air. The riding habit demonstrates the mid-century’s simultaneous fascination with and anxiety about gender. The gender play invoked by women’s riding habits titillated some viewers and dismayed others, as Mary Goddard’s previously referenced 161 poems show, in large part because this item of clothing calls into question the “naturalness” of gendered sartorial binaries. The mid-century text A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke (1755) also reflects this push-pull of fascination and anxiety, and has helped to solidify Charke’s reputation as an iconoclastic rebel. Charke was an actress, novelist, and playwright who is perhaps now best known for extending her on-stage breeches parts into off-stage cross- dressing, and her own account of her life provides the basis for most contemporary scholarship on her life and her work. Various critics have argued that Charke flouts gender expectations, reinforces gender norms, establishes herself as a prodigal penitent, and calls attention to her transgressions. Charke’s narrative sustains all of these oppositional readings, providing titillation but never explaining her motives for wearing men’s clothing, and constructing the justification for this withholding as a secret that she swears that she is honor-bound to keep. I argue that all of this is the case because Charke takes full advantage of the blurry division between autobiographical narrative and the genre of novel, and in effect fictionalizes her life in her Narrative. Charke does this largely through her mentions of clothing. Just as Charke’s cross-dressing, like women’s riding habits, problematize the clear distinction between male and female, Charke’s genre-bending casts doubt on the idea that nonfiction is inherently free from the influence of fiction. 162 Charke’s Narrative displays what Marjorie Garber terms a “category crisis.” Garber argues: the apparently spontaneous or unexpected or supplementary presence of a transvestite figure in a text (whether fiction or history, verbal or visual, imagistic or ‘real’) that does not seem, thematically, to be primarily concerned with gender difference or blurred gender indicates a category crisis elsewhere, an irresolvable conflict or epistemological crux that destabilizes comfortable binarity, and displaces the resulting discomfort onto a figure that already inhabits, indeed incarnates, the margin. (17) Garber’s comments call attention to a crucial element in Charke’s depiction of herself: Charke’s account does not express much concern with her own gender difference. The category crisis enacted through Charke’s refusal to make her transvestism central to her account of her life is one of genre. Charke says that she writes her narrative to reconcile herself to her father, poet laureate Colley Cibber, but her desire to flatter and placate Cibber conflicts with her simultaneous pull toward entertaining and even shocking her readers. Yet as Sidonie Smith points out, Charke’s claim to recover her father’s affection through the writing of her Narrative is also “fundamentally duplicitous […] Writing her life is her latest scheme for making money and easing her destitution” (117). Even her motivation for writing is fictionalized. The result of Charke’s efforts is a hybrid of genres that incorporates fiction into autobiography, crossing boundaries of genre as she crosses boundaries of gender. Charke’s conflation of personal history with fiction in this endeavor constitutes a category crisis. 163 The tradition of cross-dressing women Charke’s autobiography is not the first written account of an early modern female cross-dresser. Tales exist of the transvestite female pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Reade, and the fictional Moll Flanders wears men’s clothes, to name a few examples. Critics have pointed out that Moll Flanders is likely based at least in part on Mary Frith, whose life story appears in The Life and Death of Mal Cutpurse (1662), and Frith’s story provides a helpful precedent for understanding Charke’s account of herself. Frith’s narrative defies easy generic categorization, because it is subdivided into an address to the reader, an editorial introduction, and a narrative written in the first person. Janet Todd and Elizabeth Spearing write that is “certainly possible, even likely, that what we have is by and large a ‘told to’ autobiography” (xiii), but the main body of the narrative reads like a highly fragmented picaresque tale. The narrator doubles back with little regard for chronology, inserts long ruminations in between plot events, and “[t]here seem to have been a number of free-floating stories which were incorporated among more authentic details. It is thus very difficult to judge how far the [story] of […] Frith belong[s] to fact or fiction” (Todd and Spearing ix). In Frith’s story can be seen some of the generic instability that will later serve as a hallmark of Charke’s Narrative. This could suggest that Charke was familiar with stories of other cross-dressing women, but it may also (or instead) signal that stories of transvestite women do not fit neatly into any extant early modern genre, a point to which I will return. 164 Mal Cutpurse constructs herself as the product of her own originality. Repeated descriptions of Frith’s clothing make clear that Frith was not cross-dressing in an absolute sense. She wears a doublet, or man’s coat, with a petticoat, or woman’s skirt. The writer of Mal Cutpurse’s introductory material characterizes her clothing as dichotomous, explaining that “she lived in a kind of mean betwixt open, profest dishonesty, and fair and civil deportment, being an Hermaphrodite in Manners as well as in Habit” (7); even the description of “profest dishonesty” resonates with inherent contradiction. Here “hermaphrodite” refers less to a bodily state and more to Frith’s distinctive resistance to stereotypically feminine pursuits; “hermaphrodite” at this point is a term that can be used to describe women who cross dress without any necessary reflection on their biological sex. 64 Her clothing and behavior defy traditional gendered categorization, but the editorial voice assigns a less than original motive to Frith’s distinctive way of dressing. The editor asserts, “no doubt Mals [sic] converse with her self (whose disinviting eyes and look sank inwards to her breast, when they could have no regard abroad,) informed her of her defects; and that she was not made for the pleasure or delight of man; and therefore since she could not be honoured with him she would be honoured by him in that garb and manner of rayment He wore” (13). In the 64 The first entry in the Oxford English Dictionary defines “hermaphrodite” as “a human being, or one of the higher animals, in which parts characteristic of both sexes are to some extent (really or apparently) combined;” this definition neatly avoids precision as it avoids any mention of genitalia. The second entry moves even further away from bodily, sexual markers: “an effeminate man or virile woman.” These vague definitions allow for great play in the usage of the term, amplifying the generic vascillations of Charke’s text. 165 editor’s opinion, Frith’s ugliness occasions her unusual style of dress; this justification may stem from any number of reasons, but seems at least possibly motivated by a wish to move Frith away from the realm of lesbian desire. Constructing Frith’s cross-dressing as thwarted desire for male contact forestalls any possibility of same-sex desire, which is evident when the editor constructs Frith’s goal as becoming as close to men as she can – in her case, he says, this consists only of wearing men’s clothing against her own skin, distancing Frith from possible sexual desire for women. This potential motive invokes a category crisis of an etymological order; the category of “lesbian” did not yet exist. 65 If, however, the editor of Frith’s story found her cross-dressing to be a violation of gender categories, he may have worked to deny the existence of any behaviors that would blur traditional sexual borders. Frith’s male-and-female style of dress defies the period’s rigid gender binarism, and the editor’s explanation of her wearing men’s clothes softens the dichotomy by simply making Frith unsuccessful in heterosexual romance. In this way, he attempts to recuperate Frith into extant gender boundaries. The portion of the narrative written in Frith’s voice does not provide a rationale for her unique clothing. She simply declares that “[m]y Devices were all of my own spinning, nor was I beholding to any Stale-Artifice whatsoever of any woman preceding me, which I have not bettered” (18). By invoking the act of spinning, Frith expresses her distinctiveness with a metaphor relating to cloth production, an activity traditionally 65 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “lesbian” was first used in the sense of a woman who engages in sexual activity with another woman in 1890. 166 associated with women. This metaphor of textile production extends Frith’s subsequent comparison of herself with women who have preceded her; while Frith’s stated intent is to establish her originality and innovation, her invocation of spinning also implicitly (if subtly) aligns her with women and feminine work. This suggests that, although Frith may use men’s clothing, she views herself as anchored in a feminine tradition. However, despite aligning herself within this tradition, Frith also works to depict herself as unique. Felicity Nussbaum describes this rhetorical maneuver when discussing female autobiography: “Writing themselves into a heteroclite individualism that makes them regard themselves as anomalies, each autobiographical narrator isolates herself from collective concerns” (Nussbaum 199). Yet since so many cross-dressing women construct themselves this way, this move constitutes an aligning of the writer with tradition, however unconsciously, and conversely also suggests that all women are unique and distinctive. Even as she follows in the tradition of cross-dressed women’s narratives, Frith resists categorization as a way to claim the power of innovation for herself. The narrator of The Female Soldier; Or, the Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell [1750] stakes a similar claim for its heroine’s originality. An account of an actual woman who endured battles as a soldier and sailor, The Female Soldier isolates Snell as a unique woman: “Such an Adventure as this, is not to be met with in the Records of either antient or modern Observations” (31). The narrator identifies Snell’s sex as the lynchpin of her uniqueness, beginning the narrative by musing on the rarity of 167 exalted characters and asking “But sure if Heroism, Fortitude, and a Soul equal to all the glorious Acts of War and Conquest, are Things so rare, and so much admired among Men; how much rarer, and consequently how much more are they to be admired among Women?” (2). The narrator breaks into the story several times to call attention to Snell’s distinctiveness. For example, after describing the military action that Snell experienced as a sailor, the narrator reifies gender stereotypes when praising Snell: “I say such Reflections and gloomy Prospects, prove the Cause of many such Hardships and Difficulties even in the most robust of the Masculine Gender, how much more in one of the tender Sex, who are afraid of Shaddows, and shudders at the Presage of a Dream?” (15). The narrator also makes a point of mentioning that Snell’s work on board ship centers around laundry and cooking, pulling her into a domestic, more feminine role even when praising her skills as a sailor: “by her modest Deportment soon became a Favourite, drest their Victuals, [and] washed and mended their Linnen” (11). The narratorial insistence on Snell’s extraordinary character allows Snell to be exalted at the expense of all other women. If Snell is worthy of readers’ respect, the narrator works to establish that this is so because she is unusual and distinct from other women. The narrator finds it “difficult to believe that women can be ordinarily competent and ordinarily incompetent: simply seafarers. Better to invent someone who can be placed in the realm of extraordinary wonder than to acknowledge the existence of a realistic and worrying possibility” (Stanley 14). Repeatedly reminding readers that Snell is unique and 168 anomalous, the narrator undercuts any sense that other women could do what Snell has done. The Female Soldier’s narrator also reinforces Snell’s rarity by creating a number of reasons for Snell to assume and continue wearing men’s garb. Primarily, the narrator attributes Snell’s cross-dressing to the dire straits in which her husband leaves her. Deflecting the possibility of “unnatural” conduct from Snell to her husband James Summs, the narrator writes that Summs “turn’d out the worst and most unnatural of Husbands […] who not only kept criminal Company with other Women of the basest Characters, but also made away with her Things, in Order to support his Luxury, and the daily Expences of his Whores” (6). When Snell finds herself pregnant, Summs leaves her, but their child lives only seven months. Destitute, Snell “thought herself privileged to roam in quest of the Man, who, without Reason, had injured her so much;” she seeks revenge, and so “she might execute her Designs with the better Grace, and the more Success, she boldly commenced a Man, at least in her Dress, and no doubt she had a Right to do so, since she had the real Soul of a Man in her Breast” (7). The narrator’s contrast of Snell’s “real” manliness with her husband’s unnatural perfidy elevates Snell above common womanhood, providing justification for Snell taking up men’s clothing. She remains in men’s garb for more feminine reasons, however. The narrator repeatedly informs readers of Snell’s outstanding virtue in keeping her sex a secret from her fellow soldiers and sailors. She keeps her secret so that she can preserve her virtue from the 169 “rapacious, boundless and lustful Appetites” (18) of the soldiers who surround her. Snell’s atypical femininity is here placed in contrast with very stereotypical masculinity: the inevitable lust of her companions is constructed as necessitating that Snell hide her true sex. Yet, after she has left military service, she still wears breeches. The narrator provides a practical reason for her seemingly odd clothing choice: “she was very uneasy, fearing, lest a […] Discovery should be made, and she thereby [be] deprived of her Soldier’s Pay. This Motive induced her to conceal herself as much as possible” (38). The narrator’s careful explanations provide an abundance of reasons for Snell to have assumed men’s clothing, all of which contribute to her singularity while simultaneously allowing her to maintain femininity via the justifications of her conduct. Not all cross-dressing women necessarily take up men’s clothing of their own volition, however, or at least, not all are represented as doing so. In A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), Charles Johnson 66 explains the cross-dressing of Anne Bonney and Mary Read as the result of their parents’ desires to disguise their gender. Bonney’s father, having impregnated his maid with a female child, dresses Bonney as a boy so that he can pass her off to his neighbors as the son of a relation. Read’s mother dresses her as a boy for similar reasons: her husband’s 66 A General History of the Pyrates is believed by many scholars, Paul Alkon among them, to have been written by Daniel Defoe under a pen name. Julie Wheelwright dissents, however, explaining, “the attribution to Defoe was later debunked,” citing Peter Furbank and W. R. Owens’s assertion in The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe that no external proof exists for Defoe’s authorship (“Tars, Tarts and Swashbucklers.” In Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages. Jo Stanley, ed. London and San Francisco: Pandora, 1995. 176-200). 170 family knows that their son had sired a boy, but Read’s mother has conceived a daughter with another man. To obtain money for her child’s support from her mother-in-law, Read’s mother disguises Read as a boy and successfully presents her as her husband’s child. In both cases, the supposed genesis of the pirate women’s cross-dressing is involuntary rather than resulting from the decision of the crossed-dressed woman herself. Again, as in Mary Frith’s story, this move toward explaining away the women’s cross- dressing seems to function as a deflector of any possible lesbian motives that the cross- dressers may have, as well as firmly anchoring the women within traditional femininity and passivity. Further distancing the female pirates from any chance of lesbian desire, Johnson also explains away much of their seemingly masculine behavior as resulting from their loyalty to the men whom they love. For instance, when Mary Read’s lover is challenged to a fight, Read intervenes. She challenges the man herself, having appointed “the Time two Hours sooner than when he was to meet her Lover, where she fought him at Sword and Pistol, and killed him upon the Spot” (158). Read’s bravery, or in other words, her masculine behavior, is explained away because of an excess of womanly love. In this case, however, the stories of these women occur in third person, not first person, format, so the thwarting of any potential homoerotics works as a result of the storyteller rather than a direct reflection of the desires of the pirate women in their own words. While a need seems to exist on the part of the editors and writers of these women’s 171 stories to explain the motivations of the cross-dressing woman, but the woman herself is not likely to provide the voice that offers up such an explanation. The omission of any explanation for transvestism coming from the cross-dressed woman herself becomes a hallmark of accounts of women cross-dressers, and Charke’s refusal to explain her offstage sartorial gender-bending thus serves to tie her narrative to the sub-genre of cross-dressing stories. Her evasions range from the offhand, such as her describing herself as being “for some substantial Reasons, EN CAVALIER” (90), to the intentionally obfuscatory: My being in Breeches was alledged [sic] to me as a very great Error, but the original Motive proceeded from a particular Cause; and I rather chuse to undergo the worst Imputation that can be laid on me on that Account, than unravel the Secret, which is an Appendix to one I am bound, as I before hinted [referring to her second, clandestine marriage, and her promise never to reveal her spouse's name], by all the Vows of Truth and Honor everlastingly to conceal. (139) Charke’s refusals to disclose the reasons for her cross-dressing move her narrative toward the realm of fiction, because in these refusals she follows a generic model of non- disclosure established by her predecessors. If Charke follows generic conventions, then the strict veracity of her tale has more than likely bent to conform to these conventions. Charke maintains power over her story; she has led an intensely public life, but refuses to make public her motivation for wearing men’s clothes. She acknowledges that her transvestism results from a “particular cause,” confirming that a motive exists for Charke’s cross-dressing. Her refusal to disclose this reason allows readers to speculate as 172 to what could cause Charke to don men’s clothes, and savvy readers can apply their familiarity with generic conventions to fill in the gap. While this ascribes power to readers, it also reinforces Charke’s protean capabilities, demonstrating her ability to fulfill a multiplicity of roles. It also keeps Charke in control of the narrative, maintaining power because she decides what readers can know. Charke’s rhetorical construction of the necessity of her staying silent as to the reasons for her cross-dressing echoes a novelistic withholding of one of her contemporaries. In Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1750), Jenny Jones refuses to disclose the father of her child Tom. Squire Allworthy asks her the father’s name, but she declares that she is “under the most solemn Ties and Engagements of Honour, as well as the most religious Vows and Protestations, to conceal his Name at this Time. And I know you too well to think you would desire I should sacrifice either my Honour, or my Religion” (39). 67 Charke employs strikingly similar language when she explains why she cannot divulge her reasons for cross-dressing, writing that she is bound “by all the Vows of Truth and Honor” to conceal her motivations for transvestism (139). Jenny’s withholding directly ties to sex: in refusing to disclose the name of her child’s father, she 67 Sidonie Smith also sees a parallel between Charke’s autobiography and Tom Jones: “In the story of the essentially good outcast who is thrown on the road to make ‘his’ way in life, the narrative recalls that of Tom Jones. Yet, while she is like a Tom Jones thrown on the world as outcast, she is not a man, but a woman dressed as a man; and she is not a son who goes from bastardy to true filiality, but a daughter who falls from true filiality to a kind of metaphorical bastardy. Moreover, as a woman she cannot absorb the moral errancies of a Tom Jones into her tale. Tom is forgiven his healthy sexual desires. Charke must repress whatever desires she may have. There is no place for a female Tom Jones in her culture” (118). 173 refuses to confess with whom she has had sex. Charke’s withholding, too, could easily relate to the keeping of a sexual secret; much like the editor of Mal Cutpurse’s story, Charke could be tacitly acknowledging the possibility of lesbianism in her refusal to explain her cross-dressing. In yoking her motive for wearing men’s clothes to her clandestine marriage, however, Charke seemingly hints at heteronormativity. In either case, however, Charke’s withholding of her motive aligns her with previous accounts of female cross-dressers and this in turn suggests that Charke has fit her story to match the stories of her precursors. This raises doubt as to how strictly “true” her narrative is. Charke’s professed distaste for needlework performs a similar function, tying her narrative to those of her transvestite predecessors. This further disrupts gender norms through the severing of the binary that aligns women with clothing and sewing. The writer of the introduction to Mary Frith’s story tells readers that “she could not endure that sedentary life of sewing or stitching, a Sampler was as grievous as a Winding-sheet, her Needle, Bodkin and Thimble, she could not think on quietly, wishing them changed into Sword and Dagger for a bout at Cudgels” (9). It is significant that the voice that delivers this information is the anonymous editor’s rather than Frith’s, because readers have no way of knowing if the editor received this information directly from Frith or has constructed it independently. Frith does tell her readers, when discussing how a band of pickpockets examines her hands when they evaluate her for membership in their group, that her fingers “had not been use to any slight and fine work” (21), but this is as close as 174 she comes to admitting any distaste for needlework. The rejection of needlework becomes a trope common to the stories of cross-dressing women, with Charke later asserting in her own narrative “I was never made much acquainted with that necessary Utensil which forms the housewifely Part of a young Lady's Education, call'd a Needle; which I handle with the same clumsey [sic] Awkwardness a Monkey does a Kitten, and am equally capable of using the one, as Pug is of nursing the other" (17). Even if it is true that Charke found sewing and embroidery distasteful, her inclusion of this fact into her Narrative aligns her with the literary, fictional tradition of female cross-dressers. As long as such alignment exists, the possibility also exists that Charke may have fictionalized elements of her tale to effect this alignment. This tradition somewhat problematically extends to the denigration of men who dress in women’s clothing or affect stereotypically feminine behavior. As Mary Frith’s account of “Anniseed-Water Robin” demonstrates, the cross-dressed man receives no sympathy from the cross-dressed woman. Writing of medieval cross-dressing women, Valerie R. Hotchkiss asserts, “women who aspired to be like men were distancing themselves from womankind. It could be argued, therefore, that by imitating men they were simply trying to improve themselves” (12). Hotchkiss’s study, though focused on a much earlier era, sheds light on some of the gender difference that emerges in these later stories of cross dressing. In Frith’s tale as well as in Charke’s Narrative, the cross- dressed woman gives voice to disgust concerning cross-dressed or overly effeminate 175 men, establishing these women’s beliefs that cross-dressing debases a man. Frith writes of a cotemporary of mine, as remarkable as my self, called Anniseed-Water Robin: who was cloathed very near my Antick Mode, being an hermaphrodite, a person of both Sexes; him I could by no means endure, being the very derision of natures impotency, whose redundancy in making him Man and Woman, had in effect made him neither, having not the strength nor reason of the Male, nor the fineness nor subtlety of the Female: being but one step removed from a Natural Changeling, a kind of mockery (as I was upbraided) of me, who was then counted for an Artificial one. (35) Frith’s denigration of Robin allows her to characterize what she sees as the traits of each biological sex, but she does not provide these distinctions within a hierarchical framework. Her taxonomy instead involves nature as opposed to artifice; Frith might artificially appear to be a “person of both Sexes” or a hermaphrodite, but Robin actually is one by nature. Here, contrary to the usual or expected, artifice ranks above nature, and this suggests that cross-dressing inverts all order. When Frith labels Robin “as remarkable as my self,” she expresses an uneasy awareness of their seeming equality, a condition she destroys by asserting her superiority to Robin through violence and aggression. These are both traditionally male traits, and her use of them is her attempt to demonstrate her superiority to Robin. Frith’s distaste for Robin is extreme; she explains that she arranges for a group of boys to throw dirt at him and make Robin move away. In this gender inversion, the woman clearly holds more power than the man. Ironically, her power stems from her 176 cross-dressing, which renders her ambitious, while Robin’s loss of power stems from his own cross-dressing, which renders him debased. Frith’s adoption of men’s clothing aligns her with the more powerful sex. This dynamic is also in evidence at the opening of The Female Soldier. The narrator begins by describing the effeminacy of the times, writing “In this dastardly Age of the World, when Effeminacy and Debauchery have taken Place of the Love of Glory, and that noble Ardor after warlike Exploits, which flowed in the Bosoms of our Ancestors, genuine Heroism, or rather an extraordinary Degree of Courage are Prodigies among Men” (1). Here, as with other tales of female transvestites, women in men’s clothes receive power from performing masculinity, while the performance of femininity by a man lowers his status. Much of the third person justification of cross-dressing women appears to be aimed at constructing these women’s rises in power as laudable but also very unique – a move meant to minimize fear and anxiety that any woman might gain such power simply by donning men’s clothes. Charke, too, expresses hostility toward an effeminate man, but this takes place within the fictional world she creates in her novel The History of Henry Dumont, Esq; And Miss Charlotte Evelyn (1756). In Henry Dumont, Charke raises the specter of an overly effeminate, though not actually transvestite, man in the character of Mr. Loveman. Loveman sends a billet doux to Dumont, who is disgusted by the letter: “'tis true I have heard there are a set of unnatural wretches, who are shamefully addicted to a vice, not proper to be mentioned [...]; but my behaviour could not in any degree give the smallest 177 hope to the unnatural passion of such a detestable brute. I therefore think it highly incumbent on me, to make an example of the villain" (Henry Dumont 60). The unspeakability of Loveman’s homosexuality suggests it is the most abominable of secrets, but this also echoes Charke’s refusal, in her Narrative, to divulge her reasons for cross-dressing. Narrative withholdings in Charke’s writings thus evoke sexuality, and more specifically, homosexuality. While Charke very likely did not intend for this incident to resonate with her own concealment of transvestite justification, the air of secrecy surrounding hints at the possibility of similarity. Yet any similarity between Charke and Loveman ends with the possibility of homosexual desire, because Charke clearly delineates Loveman as both comical and disgusting. Loveman’s choice of his valet Mr. Turtle, another girlish man, damns Loveman to inveterate effeminacy, for surrounding himself with emasculated men carries the interpretation of surrounding himself with available potential sexual partners. Turtle is described as a “moppit; whose hair was curl'd in the form of a fine lady's, and scented the room with perfumes […]; his dress was a fine milk-white fustian-frock, with green sattin cape and facings, a white cambrick handkerchief carelessly tied round his neck; and a pair of white gloves; one of which he pulled off, and discovered a beautiful white hand, with a handsome diamond ring on the little finger” (Henry Dumont 62). The narrator later describes Loveman as an “odious creature in a female rich dishabille” (Henry Dumont 65), using the implied effeminacy of an interest in dress to demarcate both Turtle and Loveman as degenerate. 178 The repetition of the descriptor “white” emphasizes Turtle’s effeminacy, because the trope of the fairness of a woman’s skin correlates to her ideal femininity, and also demonstrates that Turtle could not engage in manly activities and keep his linen and gloves (much less his hands) so spotlessly white. After Loveman receives a beating – a punishment made necessary by his having sent the love letter to Dumont, thus impugning Dumont’s reputation – the heroine Miss Evelyn declares that “no punishment was sufficiently severe for such unnatural monsters” (Henry Dumont 69). Here Charke inverts the trope of the monstrous woman and casts the effeminate man in the role of monster; 68 in so doing, Charke removes herself (both in the actual world as well as in the constructed world of her Narrative) from the role of monstrosity, recalling The Female Soldier’s inversion that makes Snell’s husband unnatural while elevating Snell’s character. This hallmarks Mary Frith’s dealings with Aniseed-Water Robin as well, for the creation of an other who falls below the cross-dressed woman in the social hierarchy allows the transvestite woman power through the donning of male attire. Charke need not have read the tales of earlier cross-dressed women for her to have received their influence, perhaps having overheard these or similar stories told by others who had read or heard cross-dressing stories. Given the Narrative’s similarities to these tales, it is not difficult to imagine Charke (consciously or unconsciously) employing 68 For a detailed account of the construction of femininity as monstrous in eighteenth-century Britain, see Felicity Nussbaum’s The Brink of All We Hate: English Satires on Women 1660-1750 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984). 179 other sources as models as well. As I shall demonstrate, her life story also bears strong similarities to the autobiographical writings of her father. Charke’s reliance on literary precedents suggests that her Narrative, however much she may base it on occurrences from her own life, also adheres to established conventions. In so doing, her Narrative takes on the cast of fiction. Her choice of “narrative” in her title may then prove significantly descriptive; in selecting a term that relates as much to fiction as it does to life-writing, Charke capitalizes on a category crisis that allows for play in the presentation and interpretation of her story. Charke’s “madcap” antics One way in which Charke exerts power over multiple categories at once is by taking advantage of the idea that appearances create reality. The first part of her narrative sees her running through an incredible number of off-stage roles that she presents much like theatrical characters. She mentions that her experience living in a doctor’s family gave her some understanding of physic, and she used a Latin dictionary to give her some “hard Words” that convinced the old ladies of the parish of her skill (35) 69 . For Charke, seeming is more important than being, firmly separating her from virtuous novelistic characters like Richardson’s Clarissa, and Charke emphasizes this in the story that follows in which she fancies herself a physician. She buys a large quantity of medicine from an apothecary’s widow and dispenses it free of charge to her neighbors. When the 69 According to Charke’s Narrative, when Charke’s mother worries about her health during a “Fit of Illness,” she sends Charke to live with a Dr. Hales in Thorly, Hertfordshire (30). 180 widow sends Charke’s father the bill, he pays it but leaves clear orders that he will pay for nothing further. Without access to actual medicines, Charke substitutes crushed snails in brown sugar, and receives thanks from her patient who asks her to “repeat the Medicines, as she had found such wonderful Effects from their Virtues” (38). The patient’s belief in the efficacy of Charke’s makeshift medicine causes her to feel rejuvenated. While this may serve as a humorous episode, it also reinforces the idea that fiction can exert as strong an effect as truth, because the patient believes that her health improves as a result of the medicine. A syrup need not actually be medicine to exert power over the patient. The permeable barrier between being and seeming relies on appearances; in the previous example, the appearance of medicine lends to the patient’s belief in its efficacy. In Charke’s life, however, no element of appearance works so forcefully as clothing. Charke repeatedly focuses upon men’s hats and the impression that they leave on viewers. In one instance, Charke uses hats to align herself with fashionable men, strengthening the sense that she performs male gender with taste, and thus with an elevated and stylish talent. She writes of the monetrary necessity of pawning her hat, and needing to procure a Covering for my unthinking Head; but Providence kindly directed us to a House where there was a young Journey-man, a Sort of Jemmy-Smart, who dress'd entirely in Taste, that lodg'd where we lay that Night. As I appear'd, barring the want of a Hat, as smart as himself in Dress, he entered into Conversation with me; and, finding him a good- natur'd Man, ventured (as I was urged by downright Necessity) to beg the 181 Favour of him to lend me a Hat, which, by being very dusty, I was well assured had not been worn for some Time, from which I conceived he would not be in a violent Hurry to have it restored; and, framing an Excuse of having sent my own to be dress'd, easily obtained the Boon. (234) Charke has already described the “Jemmy-Smart” as very fashionable when she rhetorically places herself as his equal; she appears “as smart as himself.” She develops enough of a camaraderie with him, which she presents as the result of her superior fashion sense, to gain the favor of borrowing his hat. This episode demonstrates how expertly Charke manipulates appearances. Charke here establishes that she can successfully blend in with men, and moreover, that she can blend in with the most stylish men. Additionally, Charke speaks of hats to show that she cannot help herself from standing out among women. Charke distinguishes herself from the other women with whom she lives, writing that she could not bear to pass a Train of melancholly Hours in pouring over a Piece of Embroidery, or a well-wrought Chair, in which the young Females of the Family (exclusive of my mad-cap Self) were equally and industriously employed; and have often, with inward Contempt of ‘em, pitied their Misfortunes, who were, I was well assured, incapable of currying a Horse, or riding a Race with me. (53) Charke’s use of “mad-cap” here is worth noting, as it is possible to take the term figuratively; Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755-56) defines the term as “a madman; a wild hotbrained fellow.” But Johnson’s Dictionary also supplies a literal etymology for the term: “mad and cap; either taking the cap for the head, or alluding to the caps put upon distracted persons by way of distinction” (Vol. II, 82). Because Charke 182 focuses so often on hats, the literal interpretation of “madcap” helps to differentiate her from other women by reinforcing sartorial markers of unusual behavior. This clothing reference underscore how clothing in general, and hats in particular, allow Charke to blur boundaries. Charke tells several stories about hats in the Narrative, all of which emphasize her manner of making herself a sartorially distinctive boundary breaker When she is arrested for a seven pound debt, for example, she writes that “this Misfortune was occasioned first by the Stupidity and Cruelty of the Woman [who had her arrested], and effected by Dint of a very handsome lac'd Hat I had on […] which was so well described, the Bailiff had no great Trouble finding me” (90). Charke’s delight in her singularity and distinctiveness are undoubtedly part of what leads her to dress as she does, given that such distinctiveness causes her difficulty because it makes her easily found. “I am certain, there is none in the World MORE FIT THAN MYSELF TO BE LAUGH’D AT. I confess myself an odd Mortal” she writes (86), and seems to revel in this oddity, because while it may make her the subject of laughter, it also renders her narrative distinctive enough to compete in a crowded literary marketplace. When Charke makes bail, she returns again to the topic of her hat: I was set at Liberty; and the Officer advised me to change Hats with him, that being the very Mark by which I was unfortunately distinguished, and made known to him. My Hat was ornamented with a beautiful Silver Lace, little worse for wear, and of the Size which is now the present Taste; the Officer's a large one, cocked up in the Coachman's Stile, and weightened with a 183 horrible Quantity of Crape, to secure him from the Winter's Cold. As to my Figure, 'tis so well known it needs no Description; but my Friend, the Bailiff, was a very short, thick, red-faced Man: Of such a Corpulency, he might have appeared in the Character of Falstaff, without the artful Assistance of Stuffing, and his Head proportionable to his Body, consequently we each of us made very droll Figures; he with his little laced Hat, which appeared on his Head of the Size of those made for the Spanish Ladies, and my unfortunate Face smothered under his, that I was almost as much incommoded as when I marched in the Ditch, under the insupportable Weight of my Father's (94-5). In the last lines of the above, Charke invokes an earlier episode in which, as a child, she marched about in her father’s wig and brother’s waistcoat “in the happy thought” of being taken for her father (19). She adds to her ensemble “one of my Father’s large Beaver-hats, laden with Lace, as thick and broad as a Brickbat” (18), and it is to this (a story to which I shall shortly return) that she refers in her story of switching hats with her bailiff. Her invocation of hats serves as a reminder that Charke refuses to obey social boundaries like the line between male and female, or the difference between on- and offstage garb. The reference here to her father’s beaver hat suggests that her reoccurring mentions of men’s hats work, on at least one level, as her adult attempts to be like her father. Charke’s mimicry of her father Charke’s narrative contains echoes of and references to her father’s An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740) that support the assertion that Charlotte was at least partially responding to her father’s work in the writing of her own. One similarity is generically common to the “apology” form: the excusing of making public one’s life. 184 Cibber writes “when I have done it, you may reasonably ask me, of what Importance can the History of my private Life be to the Publick? To this, indeed, I can only make you a ludicrous Answer, which is, That the Publick very well knows, my Life has not been a private one” (4). Charke’s narrative pushes the public nature of her life still further; she reproduces a letter that she wrote to Cibber to ask for permission to “throw myself at your Feet” in which she asserts that as she is “conscious of Errors, I thought I could not be too publick in suing for your Blessing and Pardon” (119). Although the justification for publicizing one’s personal history occurs in most life-writing at the time, here Charke appears to take advantage of her father’s having lived what he admits is a public life to attempt to marshal public sentiment in her favor. Her proclaimed purpose in writing her Narrative is to reconcile herself to her father, and she explains that she writes to “clear my Reputation to the World, in Regard to a former Want of Duty, but, at the same Time, give a convincing Proof that there are yet some Sparks of Tenderness remaining in my Father’s Bosom, for his REPENTANT CHILD” (15). Much of the early portion of the Narrative works to align Charke with Cibber, showing their similarities in what reads as an attempt to create her persona as inheritor of Cibber’s dramatic spirit. The aforementioned story of Charke’s childhood imitation of her father by usurping his wig and her brother’s clothes works in this vein. Charke’s recounting of her impersonation of her father allows for her to demonstrate how much she wants to be like Cibber, and ostensibly also to remind Cibber 185 of his affection for her. Charke writes of her childhood impersonation of her father: “taking it into my small Pate, that by Dint of a Wig and a Waistcoat, I should be the perfect Representative of my Sire, […] I paddled down Stairs, taking with me my Shoes, Stockings, and little Dimity Coat; which I artfully contrived to pin up, as well as I could, to supply the Want of a Pair of Breeches” (18). She adds her brother’s waistcoat and father’s wig, belt, and sword, then “began to consider that ‘twould be impossible for me to pass for Mr. Cibber in Girl’s Shoes” (19). For this reason, she marches in a ditch to conceal her shoes from sight. Again Charke emphasizes her distinctiveness, explaining that “the Oddity of my Appearance soon assembled a Croud about me; which yielded me no small Joy, as I conceived their Risibility on this Occasion to be Marks of Approbation, and walked myself into a Fever, in the happy Thought of being taken for the ‘Squire” (19). The young Charke might want to pass for her father, and her inclusion of this story in her Narrative might serve on the one hand to remind her father of “the Fondness of both Father and Mother” for Charke, but it also reinforces Charke’s originality, her “Oddity” and distinctiveness: she is a Cibber simulacrum, but in girl’s shoes, and she is therefore her father with a difference. Kristina Straub suggests that Charke’s attempts at performing masculinity are “parodic repetitions of some of her father’s more infamous differences from an authoritative, heard-but-not-seen masculine subject. Charke puts on the guise of masculinity in order to put her father on, and in the process she gestures toward a performative, ‘unnatural’ masculinity that unsettles newly dominant 186 assumptions about gender as legitimized according to fixed and oppositional categories” (Straub 138). Charke refuses existing categories, and in mimicking Cibber renders herself less of a copy of him and more of an original, distinctive self. Charke’s mimicry troubles the distinction between copy and original, because her artifice and skill allow her to imitate Cibber without losing her own distinctive character. Charke’s Narrative performs an analogous task, blending elements that she borrows from several sources to produce a distinctive piece of writing that defies easy categorization. Several of the stories within her Narrative recall stories within her father’s Apology. For instance, Charke relates a circumstance of kindness involving an actress playing the queen in John Dryden’s The Spanish Fryar. Charke writes that “it proceeded from an unprecedented Instance of even a Superfluity of good Nature, which was excited by her Majesty’s observing Torrimond to have a dirty Pair of Yarn Stockings, with above twenty Holes in Sight; and, as she thought her Legs not so much expos’d to View, kindly strips them of a fine Pair of Cotton, and lends them to the Hero” (185). Charke adds that she “never saw so strong a Proof of good Nature, especially among Travelling-Tragedizers; for, to speak Truth of them, they have but a small Share of that Principle subsisting among them” (186). This story of sacrifice in the service of preserving appearances strongly savors of one that her father relates fifteen years earlier in his Apology. He writes of his friend Henry Brett, who has been spending a great deal 187 of time trying to woo a wealthy lady, and who declines an invitation to spend time with Cibber: After twenty Excuses, to clear himself of the Neglect, I had so warmly charg’d him with, he concluded them, with telling me, he had been out all the Morning, upon Business, and that his Linnen was too much soil’d, to be seen in Company. Oh, ho! said I, is that all? Come along with me, we will soon get over that dainty Difficulty: Upon which I haul’d him, by the Sleeve, into my Shifting-Room, he either staring, laughing, or hanging back all the way. There, when I had lock’d him in, I began to strip off my upper Cloaths, and bad him do the same; still he either did not, or would not, seem to understand me, and continuing his Laugh, cry’d, What! is the Puppy mad? No, no, only positive, said I; for look you, in short, the Play is ready to begin, and the Parts that you, and I, are to act to Day, are not of equal consequence; mine of young Reveller (in Greenwich-Park) is but a Rake; but whatever you may be, you are not to appear so; therefore take my Shirt, and give me yours; for depend upon’t, stay here you shall not, and so go about your Business. To conclude, we fairly chang’d Linnen, nor could his Mother’s have wrap’d him up more fortunately; for in about ten Days he marry’d the Lady. (217-8) The two accounts differ significantly: Charke’s concerns camaraderie among members of an acting troupe, and Cibber’s privileges the needs of the “real” world above those of the stage. Cibber’s language points to the deceptive lesson at the heart of his story: “whatever you my be, you are not to appear so,” he tells Brett. Charke’s story presents an opposed lesson, because she focuses on a friend’s willingness to appear bizarre rather than focusing on the actor who benefited from the loan of the stockings. Charke writes, “I was concerned to find my Friend’s Humanity had extended so far as to render herself ridiculous, besides the Hazard she run of catching Cold” (186). Both stories relate instances of loans of clothing that are ostensibly meant to reveal goodwill on the part of 188 an actor, and both stories reinforce the power of clothing to shape perceptions of its wearer. But Charke also subtly upbraids her father by focusing on sacrifice whereas Cibber highlights duplicity. Charke’s story is one of a woman’s selflessness, and Cibber’s is one of a man’s success in duping a woman. In a sense, Chake is arguing for a different definition of fiction than that her father provides. In an actor’s performance can be found her true nature, Charke’s story seems to say. Cibber’s story of borrowed linen casts acting as something done offstage as well as on; if “all the world’s a stage” to Cibber, then all the world’s deceptive. Yet Charke suggests that, through performance, an actor reveals his or her true self. Charke’s view of performance as a conveyor of reality inflects her use of theatrical allusion in her Narrative. The many references to the theatre in Charke’s work – for instance, her providing the title to The Spanish Fryer in the above episode, her allusions to The Recruiting Officer (29), The Mock Doctor (35), and her invocations of characters like Lady Bountiful (36) and Sir Charles Easy (51) – may echo Cibber’s frequent theatrical references in his Apology, but are not seamlessly integrated into Charke’s plotlines and so contribute to the text’s generic instability. Charke inserts lines from plays throughout the Narrative, and this not only demonstrates her familiarity with and knowledge of the stage, but also conflates the plots of Charke’s stories from her life with the plots of the plays that she referenced. One instance of this involves a story that Charke relates of finding her young daughter in convulsions. Charke portrays herself as almost completely 189 out of her senses at this discovery, and she relates that, “In the Hurry of my Distraction, I run into the Street, with my Shirt-Sleeves dangling loose about my Hands, my Wig standing on End, Like Quills upon the fretful Porcupine” (98). This originally appears in Hamlet, in a line spoken by the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The ghost tells Hamlet “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, / Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, / Thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand an end, / Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. / But this eternal blazon must not be / To ears of flesh and blood […]” (I.v, 1149). When Charke quotes from the ghost’s speech, she invokes the terror of not only the ghostly visitation, but that of unspeakable murder as well; though no murder, or even death, transpires in Charke’s anecdote, she interpelates the terror of Shakespeare’s tragedy into her tale. When Charke laments what she assumes to be the impending death of her daughter, the crowd mistakes her for a man, and “it drew them into Astonishment, to see the Figure of a young Gentleman, so extravagantly grieved for the Loss of a Child. As I appeared very young, they looked on it as an unprecedented Affliction in a Youth, and began to deem me a Lunatick, rather than that there was any Reality in what I said” (98-99). Having explicitly compared herself to Hamlet through the quotation, Charke gains a height of emotionality that she could not otherwise have achieved, yet she destabilizes the generic mode of her narrative by relying on playhouse drama to establish the emotional texture of the story. For Charke, the theatre and the offstage world are 190 blended and indistinguishable; her real-life occurrences allow for sublime performance. This differs from the distinction between these spheres that the rest of society upholds, and reinforce her oddity. Charke’s borrowings, from plays and poems as well as from the work of her father, support her assertion of her intensely changeable nature: “I was entirely lost in a Forgetfulness of my real Self” (42). Charke’s Narrative sets her forth as a series of characters, both in the sense of its recording of her acting roles, but also in the sense that she assumes and sheds personae throughout the text, and relishes the role of costume when she does so. Even in the account of her response to her daughter’s convulsions, Charke highlights her clothing and the gender-bending implied by shirt-sleeves and wig. For Charke, clothing is costume, both on and off stage, and is integral to her distinctive personality. Like Mary Frith, Charke broadcasts her originality through dress. She proudly asserts that she is “as changeable as Proteus” (40), echoing her father’s assertion that his career has ensured that he has “never appear’d to be Himself” (3). Cibber here asserts that, however famous he may be, his actual self is private and he has kept it from public view; this is the same maneuver Charke employs when she refuses to reveal her reasons for cross-dressing. The public Charke and the private Charke (much like the public and private Cibber) differ, and the lines between them rely on Charke’s withholdings. What she displays to the world, she embellishes (or one might even say 191 “dresses up”), rendering her public life a fiction and maintaining a “true” self through her secrecy, a secrecy also guarded by the fiction of her transvestite dress. Charke demonstrates her awareness of the difficulties of separating truth and fiction in her introduction to her The Mercer, Or Fatal Extravagance: Being a True Narrative of the Life of Mr. Wm. Dennis (1755?). She writes, “And tho’ Histories are so commonly made the Entertainment of the Publick, that Truth and Falsehood are equally regarded, and past by, by the Reader only as Fabulous, but this Narrative, has a Claim to Reflection [...]” (4). 70 Of course, this kind of truth claim had appeared in novels for decades (Moll Flanders and Anti-Pamela provide two examples), reinforcing the blurring of truth and fiction that Charke here claims to clarify. Cibber discusses his Apology’s equally fuzzy relationship to truth: “Now, as I am tied down to the Veracity of an Historian, whose Facts cannot be supposed, like those in a Romance, to be in the Choice of an Author, to make them more marvelous, by Invention, if I should happen to sink into a little farther Insignificancy, let the simple Truth of what I have farther to say, be my Excuse for it” (326-327). Charke’s novels, her autobiography, and her father’s autobiography all capitalize on the difficulties that readers experience in knowing how much stock to place in assertions of truth, and all work to convince readers that the information contained in the texts is true. Charke’s incorporation of novelistic, poetic, 70 Charke ends The Mercer on a similar note: "This Story is too True to be distrusted, or Disregarded by the Reader, or those who may hear it told; and as every Person who breaths may be liable to the same dreadful Misfortune; 'tis not to be deem'd an Offence to relate the sad consequences arising from Ill-plac'd pride, and unreasonable Ambition" (31). 192 and theatrical elements into her Narrative thwarts easy readings of her work as simply an autobiography. In the Narrative, she explains that she was enjoin'd (nay ‘twas insisted on) by many, that if ‘twas possible for me to enlarge the Account of myself to a Pocket Volume, I should do it. In Compliance with so obliging a Request, which I receive as a Compliment from my good Friends, I have deferred the Publication of Mr. Dumont’s History ‘till this is finish’d, which will be now in two Saturdays more; and I hope that, though the Town is not so well acquainted with the above-mentioned Gentleman, they will be equally curious to become so with his Story, as they have been with mine; and, I dare promise, that ‘twill afford them such a Satisfaction in the reading, they won’t repent their Encouragement of the Author. (175) In advertising her novel Henry Dumont within the text of her Narrative, Charke again blurs generic lines. In conflating her life story with her novel, she suggests that the two are at least partly interchangeable. Her use of the phrase “equally curious” literally equates her story with Dumont’s, entangling reality with fiction. In mentioning her own novelistic creation and making an explicit comparison between herself and her created character, Charke raises doubts as to the literal truth of her autobiography. The author of The Female Soldier, another roughly contemporary story of a female cross-dresser, resists alignment with novels. Reality here ranks above fiction. In protesting that The Female Soldier’s main character is real by contrasting Snell with Richardson’s Pamela, however, the anonymous author only creates doubt. Hannah Snell “is not to be put in the Lists with the fictitious and fabulous Stories of a Pamella, &c. […] Here is the real Pamella to be found” (Female Soldier 40). The wording here undercuts the sense of contrast that the author tries to create; after first refusing to list 193 Snell alongside Pamela, the author then explicitly equates the two with the phrase “the real Pamella.” After recounting her military and sailing prowess, the narrator continues confusing Snell with a fictional character: If these, together with many more Circumstances, are not Virtues infinitely surpassing the Adventures and Virtues of our romantick Pamella, I own I am mistaken, and shall leave them to the Judgment of the impartial Reader. This is a real Pamella; the other a counterfeit; this Pamella is real Flesh and Blood, the other is no more than a Shadow: Therefore let this our Heroine, who is the Subject of this History, be both admired and encouraged. (41) The idea of “counterfeit” and reality creates confusion. The narrator seems to want to delineate novelistic fiction from reality, but the use of the word “counterfeit” in a narrative about a cross-dresser raises different a distinction of truth and fiction. Novels, as Henry Fielding will later argue, can convey truth, and stories of reality can incorporate untruth; this makes generic boundaries difficult to draw clearly, and this creates anxiety. Fielding’s Female Husband Scholars have been much readier to grant that Henry Fielding embellished truth with fiction in his pamphlet The Female Husband: Or, the Surprising History of Mrs. Mary, Alias Mr. George Hamilton (1746) than to suggest the same of Charke’s Narrative. Fielding’s title page asserts that the story is “taken from her own Mouth since her Confinement,” but as Sheridan Baker has established, Fielding almost certainly never met 194 Mary Hamilton. 71 Baker even goes so far as to say that the pamphlet “is basically dishonest” (224). Fielding presents the tale of a bold, lascivious cross-dressing woman as journalistic fact, but employs novelistic techniques like dialogue and character motivation that pull the pamphlet into genre confusion. As in Charke’s Narrative, in Fielding’s The Female Husband the topos of the cross-dressed woman violates taboos of not only gender but genre. Fielding’s pamphlet employs many of the stereotypes of the transvestite woman that I have previously established, yet he pushes those stereotypes more firmly into the realm of lesbian desire. Hamilton’s justification for first taking up men’s clothing is unclear; she has been left by her lover Anne Johnson, who seduced her into lesbianism, and has no immediate plan for her subsistence. The narrator explains that “as soon as the first violence of her passion subsided, she began to consult what course to take, when the strangest thought imaginable suggested itself to her fancy. This was to dress herself in mens cloaths, to embarque for Ireland, and commence Methodist teacher” (33). The 71 Baker carefully checked the events in The Female Husband against newspaper accounts and court records of Mary Hamilton’s trial, and concluded “in all of Fielding’s history of Mary Hamilton before arrest, the only statements squaring with the court records are these: Mary Hamilton, masquerading as a doctor, married Mary Price at Wells and deceived her with some strange device; Mary Hamilton came to Somershetshire from Devonshire; she once took lodgings in a house owned by a ‘Mrs.’; one of the girls she married had an aunt” (214). Emma Donoghue points out that “Fielding could have had access to the facts had he wanted, since his cousin David Gould was a lawyer working on the case, but he evidently preferred having room to fictionalise” (Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. 74). Terry Castle argues, “the many inventions of The Female Husband, Fielding’s blithe lack of interest in recording the ‘real’ life of his subject, suggest that—as with similar writings of Defoe—we must treat the work as a literary rather than a journalistic event” (605-606). 195 narrator makes no explicit connection between Hamilton’s sexual preferences and her wearing of men’s clothing, instead couching her choice of dress in terms of vague abnormality (“the strangest thought imaginable”). Vagueness and ambiguity characterize The Female Husband. Terry Castle has written about the text’s ambiguities finding expression even in Fielding’s rhetoric. She discusses Fielding’s use of euphemism, which often works in The Female Husband to hide what might interfere with the pamphlet’s thin premise of being a warning to young women. Fielding avoids naming the act of lesbian sex, employing instead phrases like “transactions not fit to be mention’d” (31) or “the faint endearments we have experience’d together” (32). Castle explains, “the use of euphemism is symptomatic. It is everywhere in The Female Husband. And again, euphemism bespeaks ambivalence, here on the level of the sentence. It is a figure commonly associated with paradoxical rhetorical intentions—a way of simultaneously telling and not telling, censoring and not censoring” (610). Euphemism demonstrates the difficulties in writing about sexually titillating material while professing that “it is to be hoped that this example will be sufficient to deter all others from the commission of any such foul and unnatural crimes” (51), because euphemism avoids the actual naming of the acts that the narrator labels as unnatural, hence Castle’s “paradoxical rhetorical intentions.” Euphemism, then, works as a kind of concealment or disguise, and the narrator provides a wide array of rhetorically concealed elements. 196 For example, when Hamilton first begins to make addresses to a widow in Dublin, she has lost her voice and so “was obliged to make use of actions of endearment, such as squeezing, kissing, toying, etc.” (35). While the narrator provides a list of gerunds, the use of “etc.” allows readers to supply other activities imaginatively, preventing the narrator from including further specific actions while implying that other, potentially even more sexually aggressive, activities transpire. After marrying the superannuated Mrs. Rushford, Hamilton becomes the cause of an argument between Rushford and another old woman, a discourse “not proper to be repeated, if I knew every particular” (38). The narrator’s ending phrase implies that he knows some particulars of the conversation, amplifying the sense that the narrator intervenes within the narrative to protect the readers through acts of withholding. After Hamilton meets the young daughter of one Mr. Ivyhorn, euphemism again serves to refer to the unnamable. The girl has the “green sickness,” or an affliction affecting young virgins for which sexual consummation was reputed to be the cure. Hamilton, posing as a doctor, claims to have an “infallible nostrum” that can cure green sickness, a joke regarding Hamilton’s sexual intentions while keeping those intentions implicit and effectively concealed from (though strongly suggested via euphemism to) the reader. When Ivyhorn’s daughter realizes the truth about Hamilton after a fortnight of marriage, the narrator withholds the depiction of the actual discovery, explaining only that Hamilton had drunk too much punch and slept late. When Hamilton awakes, the young wife, crying, says “you have not … you have 197 not … what you ought to have” (42). Here, ellipses function to signify the unnamable, a typographical substitution for what the narrator withholds. These kinds of narrative withholdings contribute to the pamphlet’s comic tone, a hallmark of most of Fielding’s writing. But they also allow the perpetuation of the pretense of didactic writing. Without including explicit references to lesbian sex, The Female Husband can uphold its claims of moral function. Paradoxically, however, knowledge is necessary to fill the gaps left by such withholdings, and a reader possessed of such knowledge might already have fallen outside of the realm of morality circumscribed by the pamphlet’s didacticism. One of the concealments central to the action of the pamphlet’s story involves what critics agree to be a dildo. Fielding’s narrator pointedly avoids the naming of this device, calling it instead Hamilton’s “wherewithal” (39) or “something of too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature, which was found in the Doctor’s trunk” that allows for charges of “false and deceitful practices” to be brought up against Hamilton (49). Fielding’s professed audience – those who belong to “that lovely sex” and who “preserve their natural innocence and purity” – would ostensibly be likely to have no knowledge of sexual implements such as dildos. A reader unaware of the meaning of the euphemisms employed to signal an artificial penis would fail to understand the extent of Hamilton’s transgressions, missing the moral of the pamphlet. The moral or virtuous necessity for concealment thus robs the text of its stated 198 exemplary function. In turn, this troubles the pamphlet’s generic status by preventing its stated goal as serving as a moral warning. Another rhetorical muddle that Castle discusses is Fielding’s slippage between male and female pronouns when referring to Hamilton, ascribing a generic motive to this impulse: “In The Female Husband, Fielding’s persistent ironic use of the pronoun ‘he’ for Hamilton (often together with ‘she’ in the same sentence to heighten the reader’s sense of sexual and semantic confusion) might be counted as a kind of minimalist mock heroic, at the most basic referential level” (611). One example immediately follows Fielding’s quotation of Matthew Prior’s lines, “The doctor understood the call, / But had not always wherewithal.” Fielding continues “so it happened to our poor bridegroom, who having not at that time the wherewithal about her, was obliged to remain meerly passive, under all this torrent of kindness of his wife […]” (39). The move from “bridegroom” to “her” to “his” serves a comedic function, but also adds to the confusion of the text. The pronoun usage makes this especially apparent when Fielding continues that sentence: “but this did not discourage her, who was an experienced woman, and though she had a cure for this coldness in her husband, the efficacy of which, she might perhaps have essayed formerly” (29). The “her” and “she” referenced here is the former Mrs. Rushford, now Mrs. Hamilton, but a quick reading of the sentence could easily entangle a reader in the complex gendering of the pronouns. The difficulty of tracing pronoun antecedents reflects the text’s larger generic difficulties. 199 The Prior lines come from the poem “Paulo Purganti And His Wife: An Honest, But A Simple Pair,” a work that forwards the notion that women are sexually insatiable. This furthers Fielding’s joke, because both participants in his sexual scene are women, and thus both should be insatiable. Fielding later demonstrates the boundlessness of Hamilton’s sexual appetite when he tells readers that the same evening that Hamilton endures the first whipping to which she is sentenced when convicted of false and deceitful practices, “she offered the gaoler money, to procure her a young girl to satisfy her most monstrous and unnatural desires” (51). Even the sexually rapacious Hamilton cannot summon the desire necessary for sex with a lusty older woman, inverting the commonplace idea of women’s insatiability, and the former Mrs. Rushford’s age helps to perpetuate a topsy-turvy quality in Hamilton’s life story. Though Mrs. Rushford is “in the sixty eighth year of her age” (37), at her wedding to Hamilton she “drest herself as airy as a girl of eighteen” (38). A staple of comic plays and prints, the figure of the old coquette entertains because she inverts the expected order. Young women might lavish attention on their dress and cosmetics, but this behavior in an old woman defies proper decorum. Mrs. Rushford incarnates this inversion of decorum, and her name recalls those of aged female characters from farces like Lady Wishfort (“wish-for-it”) in William Congreve’s Way of the World (1700). Fielding’s narrator injects another, more overt, theatrical reference when he presents a letter written to Hamilton by Mary Price, a girl with whom Hamilton was really in love, or so the narrator asserts. The letter’s 200 misspellings are comical (“sur I ham much surprise hat the loafe you priten to have for so pur a garl as mee”), but the narrator explains that “the Doctor received this letter with all the ecstasies any lover could be inspired with, and, as Mr. Congreve says in his Old Batchelor, Thought there was more eloquence in the false spellings, with which it abounded, than in all Aristotle” (45). 72 This explicit gesture toward theater unsettles the genre of The Female Husband, because if the reader knows the Congreve play, he or she might remember that the scene from which this reference hails also includes a mention of the pleasures of disguise. Bellmour, who has proclaimed the elegance of poor spelling, learns that his mistress Laetitia has requested that he disguise himself to visit her. “Then I must be disguised,” Bellmour declares, “with all my heart. It adds a gusto to an amour; gives it the greater resemblance of theft; and among us lewd mortals, the deeper the sin the sweeter” (Congreve 41). In effect, Fielding’s narrator subtly suggests that Hamilton, in her men’s clothing, acts the part of a Restoration rake, and this adds a level of meaning to the pamphlet that is accessible only to those who know the Congreve play. Of course, it also seriously undercuts the pamphlet’s morality, making the genre of the text more akin to amatory fiction. Fielding’s inclusion of these theatrical references, and the poetic comedy of Prior’s poem, into Hamilton’s biography heightens the blurring of gender and genre boundaries that Hamilton enacts with her cross-dressing. 72 In The Old Batchelor, Bellmour declares “There’s more elegancy in the false spelling of this superscription than in all Cicero” (Congreve 40). 201 The Female Husband begins with an implicit acknowledgement of the difficulty of delineating the boundaries of works of fiction. Fiction, the novel, and invention are all implicated when Fielding writes “there is nothing monstrous and unnatural, which they [our carnal appetites] are not capable of inventing” (29). Literally, Fielding invokes the monstrous unnaturalness of Hamilton’s sexual behavior, but he also damns invention more broadly. The imagination, or the powers of invention, can lead to monstrousness. Fielding expresses his anxieties about fiction more specifically in Tom Jones, in which he delineates the boundaries of the “new Province of writing” he claims to pioneer (Tom Jones 53). One of the functions of the critical examinations that fill the first chapter of each book of Tom Jones is to ensure originality: I question not but the ingenious Author of the Spectator was principally induced to prefix Greek and Latin Mottos to every Paper from the same Consideration of guarding against the Pursuit of those Scribblers […] By the Device therefore of his Motto, it became impracticable for any man to presume to imitate the Spectators, without understanding at least one Sentence in the learned Languages. In the same Manner I have now secured myself from the Imitation of those who are utterly incapable of any Degree of Reflection, and whose Learning is not equal to an Essay. (314-5) Imitation threatens originality, but the genre of the novel is solidifying at this point, and the establishment of generic conventions causes Fielding anxiety. He works to distance himself from lesser fictions, emphasizing that “Truth distinguishes our Writings from those idle Romances which are filled with Monsters, the Productions, not of Nature, but of distempered Brains” (Tom Jones 99). If Fielding’s style of writing contrasts 202 unnaturalness, then his construction of Mary Hamilton as unnatural warrants examination in terms of her relation to genre. In his presentation of Hamilton as unnatural and possessed of monstrous invention, he creates a figure who perpetuates inferior, untruthful fictions. The new species of writing that would come to be called the novel needs protection from similar pretenders to art: To invent good Stories, and to tell them well, are possibly very rare Talents, and yet I have observed few Persons who have scrupled to aim at both […] For all the Arts and Sciences (even Criticism itself) require some little Degree of Learning and Knowledge. Poetry indeed may perhaps be though an Exception; but then it demands Numbers, or something like Numbers; whereas to the Composition of Novels and Romances, nothing is necessary but Paper, Pens and Ink, with the manual Capacity of using them. (Tom Jones 315) The boundaries of fiction have become incredibly difficult to police, and Fielding here works to elevate the kind of fiction that he produces to something like the level of poetry. The inclusion of self-reflexive criticisms within the text of Tom Jones allows Fielding to declare his own originality even while he participates in the creation of a genre, expressing anxiety even while working to allay it. Generic instability What I am suggesting here is that the presence of transvestite women in literature indicates an instability in the characters’ senses of identity the instability of the texts’ generic “identities” reinforces. The extensive system of borrowings and influence that I have delineated further destabilizes any easy categorizations of these texts. These cross- dressed women call into question the functioning of mimesis; in their wearing of male 203 clothes, these women conflate the idea of mimesis with that of mimicry. I return here to “Upon seeing Miss B----- in the same Habit,” the poem that I included in this chapter’s introduction. The author conflates Miss B-----’s riding habit with a desire to impersonate a man, or “assume the mimic Man.” Mimicry, here gendered feminine, registers as lower than reality, and fiction correspondingly takes on a feminine cast. It is the power of a woman to mimic a man that gives the poem an air of threat, a threat that the poet tries to minimize by warning women that they lose their charms with men when they try to claim this power. This echoes or repeats the threats posed by cross-dressing women in mid- century texts, and the attempts to minimize those threats by editors and narrators repeat each other as well. Marjorie Garber works out the relationship between cross-dressing and repetition: “What, then, is the relationship between transvestism and repetition? For one thing, both put in question the idea of an ‘original,’ a stable staring point, a ground. For transvestism, like the copy or the simulacrum, disrupts ‘identity’ and exposes it as a figure” (Garber 369). In other words, cross-dressing threatens identitarian boundaries, and this triggers the impulses toward explaining motives for transvestism that we have seen repeated in Mary Frith’s, Hannah Snell’s, Anne Bonney’s, and Mary Read’s narrators. Charke’s refusal to explain her cross-dressing acts, in contrast, as a refusal to surrender her identity. Readers may interpret her motive as an affront to her father, a loving impersonation of her father, a way to open up greater choice in jobs, a cover for a 204 romantic relationship with her traveling partner, or her love of the theatre spilling over into her off-stage life, but Charke alone holds the secret. She could have claimed that she had no reason for her cross-dressing, but she makes clear that a reason does exist, and that she will not make the reader privy to it. In her end-summaries of what her narrative contains, she includes “My going into Mens Cloaths, in which I continued many Years; the Reason of which I beg to be excused, as it concerns no Mortal now living, but myself” (273). Despite her request of the reader to excuse her, Charke exercises an aggressive drawing of the boundaries of her identity. Similarly, she aggressively refuses to keep her Narrative within the bounds of one genre. Genre works in one sense to undermine originality, creating a kind of template within which authors must work, and this opposes Charke’s repeated insistence upon her originality. Yet Charke’s blending of genres gives her tale originality, as does the reader’s knowledge that the main figure in the Narrative is a woman who wears men’s clothing. Cross-dressing unsettles boundaries, and this is also true of Charke’s generically unbounded Narrative; the donning of men’s clothes renders Charke difficult to categorize, and the incorporation of varied genres in her Narrative renders it difficult to categorize as well. Charke employs dress to establish her “madcap” identity, demonstrating the centrality of dress to her selfhood. Charke writes “When Poverty throws us beyond the Reach of Pity, I can compare our Beings to nothing so adaptly, as the comfortless Array of tattered Garments in a frosty Morning” (137). For Charke, 205 clothing and selfhood are intertwined, the state of one’s garments capable of standing in for the state of one’s being. But Charke’s insistence on originality forces her style of dress and her style of writing out of clearly delineated boundaries, steering her and her Narrative into twin category crises. The boundaries of women’s clothes do not extend into the realm of men’s dress, however much clothing like the “masculine” riding habit might suggest the possibility of a break in those boundaries. In fact, the changes in riding habits from the mid-century point to the end of the eighteenth century show that riding habits move steadily away from the blurring of masculine and feminine. From the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the riding habit moves from a masculine style to a style with masculine influence. This difference establishes firmer boundaries for the riding habit, moving it further away from displaying a similarity with cross-dressing toward a more clearly feminine style. In the mid-century riding habit, the coat almost exactly resembles a man’s coat; the key difference is that the coat’s skirt is slightly more exaggerated than a man’s coat skirt so that it can sit smoothly over the top billow of the petticoat. But the jacket of the later riding habit aligns with that period’s rage for empire waist styles. The jacket of this riding habit is truncated so as to harmonize with the exclusively feminine empire waistline in women’s gowns. This firmly places the later riding habit within the realm of women’s clothing, because men’s jackets were never shortened in this manner. These changes in riding habits suggest how threatening cross-dressing is in the mid- to 206 late-eighteenth century, and how changes transpire in this period to effect the cultural containment of such threats. The gender instability conveyed by mid-century texts that deal with cross- dressing relates to generic instability that plagues the fledgling novel in this period. Samuel Johnson wrote about originality and genre in Rambler 121, to which he affixed the Horatian motto “Away, ye imitators, servile herd!”: there has prevailed in every age a particular species of fiction. At one time all truth was conveyed in allegory; at another, nothing was seen but in a vision; at one period, all the poets followed sheep, and every event produced a pastoral; at another they busied themselves wholly in giving directions to a painter. It is indeed easy to conceive why any fashion should become popular, by which idleness is favored, and imbecility assisted; but surely no man of genius can much applaud himself for repeating a tale with which the audience is already tired, and which could bring no honor to any but its inventor. (Johnson 200) The genre of the novel at the mid-century point might well have seemed like another entry in Johnson’s list, and his notion that working within generic conventions simply equates to following fashion causes great unease among novelists. The eighteenth- century novel is a form predicated on the establishment and exploration of identity, a genre that comes to signal the exploration of character. The fact that so many novels of this period are named after their principal characters demonstrates how strongly individual identity hallmarks the early novel. When such a fundamental part of that identity as sex is in flux through cross-dressing, the “identity” of the novel itself is in flux. Charke’s Narrative capitalizes on this generic flux. In her canny staking out of the 207 margins of gender and of genre, Charke maintains ties with more clearly delineated worlds (like femininity, like autobiography) without relinquishing their opposites. This is the real threat that Charke poses: rather than simply trying to usurp male privilege through cross-dressing or seeking impact by completely fictionalizing her narrative, Charke works to keep the best of all categories. Belonging completely to no category allows her to draw power from all categories. In tales of cross-dressing, the novel, needing to assert its generic boundaries, delves into areas in which boundaries are traversed. 208 Chapter Four: Frances Burney and the Restrictions of Clothing Mistrust of vision By the end of the eighteenth century, the seemingly boundless sense of clothing’s potential power for women in Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina was no longer possible; indeed, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the sense that clothing could actively signal feminine virtue had largely disappeared. Instead, women who devoted excessive attention to exterior appearance were increasingly depicted as superficial, vain, and addle-brained. Clothing could only negatively signal virtue; late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century texts reinforce the idea that feminine virtue is found in the absence of fashion. The Records of Fashion, a periodical from the early nineteenth century, extols the ideal fashion in its description of its frontispiece: With a magic, consistent with the attributes of Fancy, in the second distance of the picture, [Nature] has raised up the shades of departed Fashions, which are perceived receding in a gradation of perspective, (agreeing with the lapse of time); and by the ludicrous effect even of a correct representation of their costume, afford the best testimony of the superior taste of the present day … The Genius of the visionary scene, that illustrates the progress of the Art of Female Decoration, in herself displays the simplex munditiis—the real standard of Taste, in all ages; and the friend of Juno [a peacock], abashed, holds its gaudy plumage in homage before the chastened Elegance. (vii) 209 The Records of Fashion constructs simplicity and elegance as true taste, and labels the fashions of the past as “ludicrous” in contrast with more restrained, modern fashion. 73 The increasing emphasis on simplicity in women’s clothing (a shift that started around the mid-century point and continued to gain ground until the early part of the nineteenth century) meant that women had less fabric in each dress and fewer acceptable gown styles with which to construct a fashionable wardrobe, limiting them in their sartorial choices. This shift from women’s clothing as a source of potential power to a kind of restriction is, at least in part, a consequence of the changing beliefs about the nature of vision. Visual appearance had increasingly become believed to be less than capable of conveying reliable information about an individual, as the Pamela media frenzy demonstrates. The late eighteenth-century novel characters that placed too much stock in dress were deemed worthy of being mocked for their faith in the artifice of dress, and, by its role in sensing dress, vision. Newtonian optics had exercised a hold over theories of vision for over a hundred years, with Newton’s followers staunchly upholding the concept of light as corpuscular, or made of tiny particles of matter, 73 The newly developing fashion press often mocked previous styles in their praise of elegant modern simplicity. For example, An Investigation of the Principles of Dress explains that “The Beauty of Dress has its first requisite in the Convenience of its appearance. It is against this rule that all Fashions have been most liable to err: hence the Gothic institutions of the Hoop, the Stays, &c. that have been handed down to us; and which the force of Custom has continued in existence, in opposition to all the dictates of that good Sense and Taste, which the illustrious Ladies of these better times are possessed of” (1770. Huntington Library shelfmark 356650. 8). 210 despite increasingly persuasive work that suggested the ineffability of light. By 1802, Thomas Young had presented a unified theory of optical phenomena that corrected Newton’s, but it was slow in being widely established and accepted. If light, the means through which the eye achieves sight, is a wave rather than a stream of particulate matter, then sight is more of a mental than a physical act. This leads vision into a realm characterized as masculine and rational, changing the common conception of how vision works. The increasing alignment of vision with the body helped to disassociate dress from mental activity. Theories of vision, being in great flux, defied an easy resolution and perpetuated a lack of fixed meaning to visual elements. 74 The increasing alignment of vision with mental activity makes the manipulation of visual elements more like a manipulation of a specialized vocabulary, and thus women were seen as increasingly less suited to this sort of expression. Eighteenth-century culture placed strictures of silence on women, with conduct books 74 That Burney had some awareness, at least, of popular theories of vision is more than likely, because in the 1770s the Burneys moved to St. Martin’s Street, into a house that had once been Sir Isaac Newton’s (Moore, Frank Frankfort. The Keeper of the Robes. London, New York, & Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. 69). Charles Burney, Frances’s father, reveled in this association with the great scientist and philosopher; in her journal, Frances records an instance of his calling on the caché of dwelling in Newton’s former home when in the presence of Hester Thrale and Dr. Johnson: “Mrs Thrale, in a laughing manner, said ‘Pray, Dr Burney, can you tell me what that song was, and whose, which Savoi sung last night at Bach’s Concert, and which you did not hear?’ My father confessed himself by no means so good a Diviner, not having had Time to consult the stars, though in the House of Sir Isaac Newton” (Journals 72). Dr. Burney’s veneration for Newton may have led his daughter to believe in Sir Isaac’s explanations of the workings of optics as probably corpuscular. While it is not known whether Frances Burney associated the workings of vision with the body rather than the mind, she certainly depicted women as suffering because of the shallow, superficial way in which men viewed them. 211 stressing the importance of only speaking when addressed. 75 Communication through visual elements like dress was steadily viewed as a form of inappropriate “speech” that violates the injunctions of silence on women. Paradoxically, however, these injunctions against speaking cause women to rely even more on their visual selves to create their identities, even as clothing at this late stage of the eighteenth century can signal virtue only passively, negatively. Women can show their propriety by eschewing an excessive focus on dress, while devoting too much time to outward appearances labels women as superficial. To signal that they have depth, women must pay only minimal attention to surface. Yet ignoring clothing or not paying enough attention to it can cause problems as well, a point which Frances Burney raises in Camilla; Or a Picture of Youth (1796). But Burney also shows in The Wanderer; Or Female Difficulties (1814) that a woman can perfectly understand her relationship to clothing yet still be unable of governing the way in which others interpret – and misinterpret – what that clothing signifies. 75 For instance, John Essex begins his chapter entitled “The Character of a Virtuous Young LADY, extracted from the Archbishop of Cambray’s Tenth Book of the Adventures of Telemachus” with a list of attractive characteristics of young women, and silence is the first: “That which pleases in her, is her Silence” (The young ladies conduct: or, rules for education, under several heads; with instructions upon dress, both before and after marriage. And advice to young wives. London, 1722. 126. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group. <http://galenet.galegroup.com.libproxy.usc.edu/servlet/ECCO>. Gale Document Number: CW404549811). Many strictures on women’s silence take the Bible as their ultimate source, citing such verses as 1 Timothy 2:11 (“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection”) and 1 Corinthians 14: 33 (“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law”), among others (The Holy Bible. New York: American Bible Society, n.d. 213 and 180). 212 Burney herself experienced difficulty with the faculty of vision. Claire Harman cites Samuel Johnson’s description of Frances Burney as “a spy” to provide evidence that he “came to understand that her reserve was neither affectation nor ineptitude” (129). Paradoxically, however, Burney’s “short sight caused her trouble all her life and undoubtedly affected her behaviour. She became mildly paranoid about being scrutinized by other people” (Harman 70). This tension produced by Burney’s watching and being watched may help to explain why the plots of each of her novels rely in varying degrees upon women as observers as well as women being observed. Burney’s novels evince great anxiety about visuality, often placing female characters in situations that dictate that they must allow themselves to be judged wholly on appearances. As the changing notions of vision demonstrate, the faculty of vision increasingly became associated not only with the body, but by extension with the body’s fallibility, and so with instability and untrustworthiness. Burney’s heroines must negotiate this unstable territory, but must do so in ways consistent with the societal restrictions that governed the behavior of virtuous women; Burney’s novels show how these activities were so much at odds with each other as to be almost impossible. Clothing, often invoked to marshal support for being in distinction to seeming, tends to function throughout eighteenth-century novels as a site of self-constructed identity for women, and Burney’s novels are no exception. “As with speech,” Alison 213 Lurie writes, “the meaning of any costume depends on circumstances. It is not ‘spoken’ in a vacuum, but at a specific place and time” (12-13). Yet if verbal language, a more codified form of expression than dress, is open to a range of interpretations, clothing’s less regulated meanings render it a far more precarious mode of communication. As the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, novelists’ increasingly realistic works highlight this instability, using clothing in particular as a demonstration of the limitations of expression under which women labored and from which they suffered. Burney uses clothing to establish the sincerity of many of her female characters, a sincerity that their dress is meant to render readily visible much as it was intended to in Richardson’s Pamela. The extent to which Burney’s other characters can correctly read the heroines’ clothing as indicative of sincerity varies greatly, however, and the inability to read appearances well generates much of the plot of Burney’s novels. Burney’s discussions of novels in her prefatory materials shows an increasingly polemical view of the novel form. In Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778), Burney’s preface relegates novels to a very lowly status: “Perhaps were it possible to effect the total extirpation of novels, our young ladies in general, and boarding-school damsels in particular, might profit from their annihilation” she writes (55). Burney excuses her own production as a recording of nature, rather than as unbridled imagination using the cover of fiction for its unbelievable flights of fancy. “Let me, therefore,” she continues, 214 prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the sublimity of the Marvellous rejects all aid from sober Probability. The heroine of these memoirs, young, artless, and inexperienced, is No faultless Monster, that the World ne’er saw [a misquote from John Sheffield’s Essay on Poetry], but the offspring of Nature, and of Nature in her simplest attire. (56) Burney shuns those novels that depart wildly from realistic plausibility, and she emphasizes her own creation’s worth by employing a sartorial metaphor. Evelina is not merely a child of nature, but “Nature in her simplest attire” – no frippery appears to mar readers’ opinions of this heroine’s good sense, because Burney presents her account of Evelina in the simple dress of realism. Burney’s works reflect a widespread paradox of the late eighteenth century: women should not devote too much attention to their dress, but they also should not ignore it completely. As a Mrs. Peddle writes in a 1797 conduct manual, “[a] fantastical and expensive turn in dress is the certain mark of a little mind; but that attention to it, which principally regards neatness, is undoubtedly extremely laudable” (36-7) 76 . Mrs. Peddle explains the need to walk this line between disdain and mania for dress by saying “The attention [great minds] are seen to shew to the idol fashion, is 76 This advice was relatively common in late-eighteenth-century conduct material. In another example, Priscilla Wakefield explains “it is not asserted, that external appearance is unworthy of all regard, it certainly claims a due attention; but it is advisable to temper that care with every possible precaution against exciting the emotions of self-complacency and personal vanity, the most dangerous of all qualities in a female mind, as they are the source of the most common errors in female conduct” (Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex; With Suggestions for Its Improvement. London: J. Johnson, 1798. 77). 215 only a good natured condescension to the weakness of mankind, in points they judge of an indifferent nature, and much too trifling to become objects of their serious cares. The silly and ignorant are they who love dress for its own sake” (37-8). This tightrope walk between “good natured condescension” and being “silly and ignorant” is a difficult and complex maneuver to execute with any level of success. Burney’s attempts to use clothing as the means through which her characters’ sincerity can be read fail to negotiate sufficiently the association between these not-so-distant poles. When Burney’s virtuous female characters display their innate virtue through their clothing, they use the material (clothing) to impart the ineffable (their morality). While Burney’s later novels depict this mismatch of the material and the ineffable as uneasy at best, her first two novels use their heroines’ attitudes towards dress to show their moral superiority. Evelina’s and Cecilia’s distance from dress From her first published novel Evelina, or, a Young Woman’s Entrance into the World (1778), Burney capitalizes on visuality’s instability to reflect the kinds of difficulties encountered by women. Over the course of this epistolary novel, taking the form of the heroine’s letters to her guardian, the virtuous but uncultured Evelina Anville learns the importance of outward signs in the beau monde, especially for women. Upon her initial arrival to London, Evelina writes of her chaperone Mrs. Mirvan’s unease regarding Evelina’s unfashionable clothes. Their first evening in 216 London, Evelina and her friend Maria Mirvan wish to go to the theatre to see the celebrated David Garrick perform, but Mrs. Mirvan expresses hesitance. Mrs. Mirvan’s “chief objection was to our dress, for we have had no time to Londonize ourselves; but we teized [sic] her into compliance, and so we are to sit in some obscure place, that she may not be seen” (70-1). Mrs. Mirvan knows that appearing publicly in anything but the height of fashion will work to their social disadvantage – that is, if they are seen in unfashionable clothing. Mrs. Mirvan is worldly enough to understand that being and being seen are two entirely different things, and this contributes to her suitability as a chaperone for young Evelina. Very soon after their arrival in town, Mrs. Mirvan arranges a visit to equip the ladies of the party with dress proper for London. Evelina writes to her guardian of the shopping experience in amused detail, recounting: The shops are really very entertaining, especially the mercers; there seem to be six or seven men belonging to each shop […]; we were conducted from one to another, and carried from room to room, with so much ceremony, that at first I was almost afraid to follow. I thought I should never have chosen a silk, for they produced so many, I knew not which to fix upon, and they recommended them all so strongly, that I fancy they thought I only wanted persuasion to buy every thing they shewed me. And, indeed, they took so much trouble, that I was almost ashamed I could not. At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what most diverted me was, that we were more frequently served by men than women: and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a women’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbands with an air of so 217 much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them! […] Adieu, my dear Sir; pray excuse the wretched stuff I write, perhaps I may improve by being in this town, and then my letters will be less unworthy your reading […] (72-3). While the scene provides comedy in the artless Evelina’s impressions of the fawning shopmen, the scene also conveys the incredible importance of dress to women. Mrs. Mirvan’s insistence that they patronize a dressmaker so soon upon their arrival to London testifies to the importance of fashionable dress in London’s social circles. Appearing genteel is to be apprehended as genteel, and – more threateningly – appearing not to be genteel is to be apprehended that way. But Evelina’s account also highlights her good sense, because she acknowledges the ultimate insignificance of dress as the bulk of “the wretched stuff” she writes in this letter. Even from the beginning of Evelina’s adventures in London, she realizes that undue attention to dress signifies unworthiness, and this is one of the ways that readers can sense her innate virtue and goodness. Evelina’s description comically highlights the follies of sartorial excess (the mercers produce “so many” silks, and the other ladies patronizing the store are “so much dressed”) as well as the artifice of dress (the men serving her are “so affected”). Though she is a young and inexperienced girl, Evelina possesses a virtuous and superior sense of clothing as largely beneath her notice. Burney’s Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), like Evelina, also uses clothing, largely unproblematically, to demonstrate how level-headed and virtuous its heroine is. 218 Readers know that the eponymous Cecilia possesses great worth through her manipulation of clothing, or more specifically, through her choice to avoid masquerade dress. Mr. Harrel, one of Cecilia’s guardians, throws a lavish masquerade party in his home. But Cecilia lives under his roof, and she is told by Mrs. Harrel that “it was not necessary for ladies to be masked at home” (106). Burney uses this masquerade scene to establish the characters of Cecilia’s lovers and guardians, including her miserly guardian Mr. Briggs dressed as a chimneysweep (too tight with his money to hire a costume, he borrows the outfit from a real chimneysweep), the selfish Mr. Monckton who married for money in the costume of a devil, and the dreamer and social gadabout Belfield dressed as Don Quixote. Cecilia’s choice to wear her own clothes instead of a costume becomes all the more pointed in contrast to the character revelation of these costumes. While each of these men’s personalities become clear only through their costumes, or clothing intended to deceive, Cecilia can be read as honest and forthright through her everyday clothing. In this, readers can see her superiority to those around her. Yet not all of Burney’s heroine’s enjoy such an easy relationship with their visual self-presentation. Burney’s two last novels most emphatically underscore the perils of women’s reliance on visual means like dress to convey their inner worth, as well as the inevitability of women having to do so. Camilla and The Wanderer revolve around heroines who effectively become entrapped by their visual exteriors. 219 Camilla, earnestly trying to adhere to her father’s advice that young ladies should keep silent about their feelings, relies instead on visuals to convey her emotions. But she repeatedly finds that appearances mislead the other characters as to the purity of her motivations. Juliet of The Wanderer labors under a silence that, if broken, could cost her former tutor his life. She, too, thus depends on visual elements like clothing to impart a sense of her lofty station to those upon whom she must rely for shelter and sustenance. Both characters suffer under different injunctions of silence, and must find other means of expression. Both women also find that the visual strategies that benefited their early-century counterparts are no longer viable, and in fact lead to misreadings, suffering, and persecution. To counter this, Burney attempts to model a deeper, more meaningful form of looking at women in her two last novels: she advocates a way of looking in which sight penetrates past superficiality. Camilla and cultural expectations The novels of Frances Burney show that, despite her implicit call for a more keen form of vision, the changing beliefs regarding vision hampered Burney’s use of clothing to suggest a depth to looking at women. Burney’s attempt to establish a praiseworthy form of looking is complicated by the instability of visual information, an instability that shapes the plot of her novel Camilla. Camilla Tyrold attempts to 220 align herself with the prevailing notions of feminine ideality. 77 Because Camilla does so while trying to obey her father’s injunction of silence as proper for young women (another of the cultural expectations placed on her), she relies on visual indicators as her primary means of demonstrating her respectability. Camilla’s basic understanding of what is expected of her as a dutiful, virtuous young woman comes to her in the form of parental admonitions – specifically, her father’s advice in the chapter entitled “A Sermon.” Augustus Tyrold, worried about her affection for Edgar Mandlebert being unrequited, writes his advice to Camilla, telling his daughter that “[t]here are so many ways of communication independent of speech, that silence is but one point in the ordinances of discretion” (360), alerting Camilla to the necessity of monitoring her behavior relentlessly. “Carefully, then,” Camilla’s father continues, “beyond all other care, shut up every avenue by which a secret which should die untold can further escape you” (362); in this utterance, in addition to censoring Camilla’s verbal effusions, her father wishes also to censor her display of visual cues. Camilla understands this so well that, after reading her father’s 77 Kaja Silverman refers to these prevailing notions as the “screen” in The Threshold of the Visible World (New York and London: Routledge, 1996.). Silverman takes this term from Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XI, in which he denotes the screen as an external representation upon which a subject relies for his or her visual identity. Silverman’s “screen” is not a monolithic or uniform entity, but is instead constituted by “the full range of representational coordinates which are culturally available at a particular moment in time” (Threshold 221). “The normative aspects of the screen may indeed be so deeply rooted within our psyches, and so tightly imbricated with our desires and identifications,” Silverman continues, “that they generally determine what we see at the first moment of looking at a particular object” (Threshold 223). 221 “sermon,” she feels strengthened “with resolution, to guard every future conflict from [Edgar’s] observation” (363). To be an ideal woman, and to be ideal for Edgar, Camilla must guard sedulously her visual self-display, and this requires her awareness of her body language, facial expressions, and dress. Ironically – and importantly – had she remained innocent of the ramifications of her visual cues, and thus not regulated them to fit cultural or patriarchal expectations, she may have spared herself most of the agonies that she experiences throughout the novel. Camilla is, after all, most bewitching to Edgar when she obeys her impulses, which guide her toward selfless and generous action. Edgar, under the advice of his mentor Dr. Marchmont, invariably reads Camilla’s visual indicators in ways that do not agree with Camilla’s intentions, generating a plot of misunderstandings. Edgar loves Camilla, but Dr. Marchmont cautions him against believing too quickly in Camilla’s worth. Both Edgar and Camilla receive advice that centers on specularity: Edgar must watch Camilla closely to see that she loves him, and Camilla must avoid displaying anything like affection. Clearly, these are incompatible goals. Both also receive advice that focuses specifically on women’s behavior, because while Edgar is admonished to watch Camilla, his mentor’s advice places the burden of propriety on Camilla. Dr. Marchmont provides Edgar with a clearer view of one aspect of a woman’s proper behavior: since it is only within a few hours you have taken the resolution which is to empower her to colour the rest of your life [i.e., to marry Camilla], 222 you must study her, from this moment, with new eyes, new ears, and new thoughts. Whatever she does, you must ask yourself this question: ‘Should I like such behaviour in my wife?’ Whatever she says, you must make yourself the same demand. Nothing must escape you; you must view as if you had never seen her before; the interrogatory, Were she mine? must be present at every look […]; you must forget her wholly as Camilla Tyrold, you must think of her only as Camilla Mandlebert; even justice is insufficient during this period of probation, and instead of inquiring, ‘Is this right in her?’ you must simply ask ‘Would it be pleasing to me?’ […] here—to be even scrupulous is not enough; to avoid all danger of repentance, you must become positively distrustful. (159-60) Dr. Marchmont, deceived in romance earlier in his life, is skeptical of appearances and he therefore endeavors to inculcate in Edgar a suspicion of women’s artifices. But in enjoining Edgar to be “positively distrustful,” Dr. Marchmont in effect encourages Edgar to view Camilla in a manner that presupposes her inconstancy and artfulness. Edgar cannot rely on how Camilla “appears,” but must view her as if he “had never seen her before.” Dr. Marchmont suggests that all that Edgar has yet seen of Camilla is simply superficial and deceptive appearance. Dr. Marchmont’s advice guides Edgar to doubt Camilla so much that nothing she does is free from suspicion. The lens through which Edgar is instructed to view Camilla is one that figures her goodness as a false front, and the measure of her goodness is not virtue but Edgar’s pleasure: “Would it be pleasing to me?” Camilla’s actions proving pleasurable is the yardstick by which Edgar is to measure her worth, and looking merely for pleasure’s sake is exactly the kind of looking that Burney criticizes. 223 Burney provides a foil for Camilla in the form of a female character who is aesthetically pleasurable, Camilla’s cousin Indiana Lynmere. Yet Indiana, nothing more than a “beautiful doll” (221), can provide pleasure only as the object of a gaze. Selfish and vain, Indiana is incapable of mental improvement or selfless kindness. When she thinks that the wealthy Edgar wishes to marry her, she “secretly revolve[s], with delight, various articles of ornament and luxury, which she had long wished to possess, and which now, for her wedding clothes, she should have riches sufficient to purchase” (150). Burney’s alignment of Indiana with clothing and ornament shows Indiana to be mere surface, and the men who fall in love with Indiana can see only this glittering exterior. One of Indiana’s suitors, the romantic and scholarly Melmond, sees her surface beauty as an indicator of beautiful depths of personality. Seeing her exterior as beautiful, Melmond assumes that Indiana’s soul is also beautiful. When he first meets Indiana, Melmond rapturously exclaims that “she is all I ever read of! all I ever conceived! she is beauty in its very essence! she is elegance, delicacy, and sensibility personified!” Lionel, Indiana’s cousin, asks “how should you know anything of her besides her beauty?” (103). Melmond’s response indicates his intense reliance on superficial sight to inform him of the character of a woman: “How? by looking at her! Can you view that countenance and ask me how? Are not those eyes all soul? Does not that mouth promise every thing that is intelligent? Can those lips ever move but to 224 diffuse sweetness and smiles? I must not look at her again! another glance may set me raving!” (103-4, emphasis mine). One of the clearest indications of the novel’s mission to inculcate a deeper sense of looking is the subplot Melmond’s evolution from this slavish obsession with beauty to the ability to sense true female worth. Finally seeing Indiana for mere beautiful surface, Melmond slowly finds Camilla’s smallpox-scarred and lamed sister Eugenia worthwhile for the less clearly visible beauties of her mind. Eugenia has loved Melmond ever since she first saw him blissfully reading the works of one of her favorite poets, but she understands that her physical imperfections render a union with him impossible. When Eugenia’s financial generosity allows Melmond to engage Indiana to be his wife, Melmond cannot help but compare the two women: Indiana […] now seemed scarce to live but while arraying, or displaying herself […] His discourse, when not of her beauty, but strained her faculties; his reading, when compelled to hear it, wearied her intellects. She had no genius to catch his meaning, and no attention to supply its place. Deeply he now thought of Eugenia, with that regret ever attached to frail humanity, for what is removed from possible possession. The purity of her love, the cultivation of her mind, and the nobleness of her sentiments, now bore forth a contrast to the general mental and intellectual littleness of Indiana, which made him blame the fastidious eyes, that could dwell upon her face and form; and feel that, even with the matchless Indiana, he must sigh at their mutual perversity of fate. (812-3) 225 Ultimately, Indiana’s elopement with an ensign frees Melmond, who becomes Eugenia’s devoted husband. Melmond learns to see in a deeper and more productive way, albeit over the course of time. Edgar, too, changes his manner of viewing the woman whom he loves, and he must learn to forget his revered mentor’s advice before he can again see Camilla rightly. Yet Edgar has less reason to doubt his beloved than Melmond did, because Edgar has known Camilla almost his entire life. Edgar’s ability to see Camilla properly is severely compromised by Dr. Marchmont’s advice as to how Edgar should view Camilla. This advice causes Edgar to see with the eyes of cultural expectation rather than see Camilla through the interpretative lens of his own natural impulses. This, combined with Camilla’s nervous uncertainty of the propriety of her actions that stems from her father’s instructions, means that the watcher (Edgar) and the watched (Camilla) invariably work at cross purposes. Because of her father’s instructions, Camilla keeps in check her natural impulses, which would have led her to demonstrate her love for Edgar in ways that his careful watching would have registered (blushes, facial expressions, body movements). But her attention to eradicating all visible indications of her emotions for Edgar inadvertently causes her to give him visual cues of which she is largely unaware, diminishing any power that Camilla might be said to have. Part of her father’s explicit instructions to Camilla underscores the limited power or activity that a woman holds in courtship: “where 226 allowed only a negative choice, it is your own best interest to combat against a positive wish” (359). A proper woman should be passive, not active, in courtship. Yet Dr. Marchmont’s advice to Edgar demands that Camilla be very active in her expression, and very visible in her affection. Unwittingly, Edgar bases his expectations for Camilla on a model of femininity that does not fit with Camilla’s understanding of proper feminine behavior, for he has been taught to seek the active expression of Camilla’s “positive wish.” Camilla’s dress and impropriety Despite Camilla’s efforts to provide no visible signs of affection, and to provide no visible signs of impropriety, Camilla nonetheless makes herself visually improper. Ironically, she does so because of her strong sense of right and wrong. Camilla meets a woman named Mrs. Mittin, a minor character in the novel but one with tremendous impact on the way that other characters view Camilla. Mrs. Mittin, crediting false rumors that Camilla is the heiress to her rich uncle, wants to be of service to Camilla so that Camilla will feel obligated to keep up her acquaintance after she comes into her inheritance. Mrs. Mittin also knows that, by serving Camilla in keeping her wardrobe up-to-date, Mrs. Mittin can benefit by receiving Camilla’s cast- off articles of dress. More than any other character in the novel, Mrs. Mittin understands how dress can shape others’ perceptions of one’s identity. She explains in her first meeting with Camilla that “I keep a large bonnet, and cloak, and a checked 227 apron, and a pair of clogs, or pattens, always at a friend’s; and then when I have put them on, people take me for a mere common person, and I walk on, ever so late, and nobody speaks to me; and so by that means I get my pleasure, and save my money; and yet always appear like a gentlewoman when I’m known” (424). Mrs. Mittin knows well the significance of pattens and a checked apron, which indicate a rather low status through their association with servants, and can manipulate these sign to her advantage. A genteel woman (or, more precisely, a woman whom passersby believe to be genteel by her appearance) would not walk alone at night, but Mrs. Mittin saves the fare that she would spend on carriage rides to her home by dressing as a woman of lower station would. Mrs. Mittin’s origins are of the lower class, having been a milliner’s apprentice before inheriting money from an elderly woman to whom she had been useful. But she mistakenly believes that clothing alone can serve to make her a gentlewoman, and Camilla suffers in her association with this familiar, low-bred woman. Camilla spends a great deal of time when at Southampton in Mrs. Mittin’s company. Edgar, upon seeing Camilla with only Mrs. Mittin as her chaperone, wonders how Camilla could be connected to such an improper woman, because Mrs. Mittin’s “air and manner so strongly displayed the low bred society to which she had become accustomed, that he foresaw nothing but improper acquaintance, or demeaning adventures, that could ensue from such a connection at a public place” 228 (611). At a glance, Edgar can see past the clothing that Mrs. Mittin assumes makes her a gentlewoman. But Mrs. Mittin has proven useful to Camilla, for despite having run up a series of small debts in Camilla’s name to equip the heroine with fashionable caps and headgear, she also keeps the milliners and mantua-makers from seeking immediate remuneration. Camilla, indebted to Mrs. Mittin for calming these creditors, feels duty-bound to show the woman every civility, though upon first seeing her at Southampton “Camilla now experienced the extremest repentance and shame to find herself involved in any obligation with a character so forward, vulgar, and encroaching” (606). In trying to observe a politeness that she feels is her moral duty because of the services that Mrs. Mittin has provided her, Camilla attaches herself inappropriately, and the impropriety of this relationship manifests itself visibly. Upon first arriving at Southampton, Mrs. Mittin takes Camilla into almost every shop, viewing and admiring all of the commodities as a way of entertaining herself, but buying none. As an excuse for this impertinence, she uses the deception of asking directions to some local sightseeing destination. The narrator admits the strong possibility that, had Mrs. Mittin been alone, no one would have taken much notice of the coarse woman’s voyeuristic approach to the shops. But Camilla “was of a figure and appearance not quite so well adapted for indulging with impunity such unbridled curiosity” (607). The shop owners begin to notice that, whatever their directions for turning right or left, the pair of women simply continue their progress 229 through the shops, and this gives rise to arguments among two shop owners as to whether Camilla and Mrs. Mittin are shoplifters or simply deranged. The two principal disputants make a wager as to the truth behind the women’s behavior, and, accompanied by a perfumer who will arbitrate the argument, follow them. Camilla and Mrs. Mittin enter a bathing house to avoid these followers, but a crowd develops, including Edgar and his tutor Dr. Marchmont. Camilla reveals here that she does not understand the power of appearances; she and Mrs. Mittin are visually mismatched in terms of their station and socioeconomics, but she consents to attend Mrs. Mittin in her shop ramblings because, as she explains to Edgar after the fact, “ I had not the smallest idea, believe me, of appearing in public. I merely walked out to see the town, and to beguile, in a stroll, time, which, in this person’s [Mrs. Mittin’s] society, hung heavy upon me at home, in the absence of Mrs. Berlinton [her hostess at Southampton]” (619). Yet the crowd who misreads Camilla’s actions as criminal, or as mentally disordered, in some measure mitigates Edgar’s judgment of her improper behavior. Mr. Drim, the shop owner who makes the initial wager that Camilla and Mrs. Mittin are deranged, bases his opinion on an examination of the women: “the pensive and absorbed look of Camilla struck him as too particular to be natural; and in Mrs. Mittin he immediately fancied he perceived something wild, if not insane.” The narrator continues this justification of Mr. Drim’s view of Mrs. Mittin, admitting that, “[i]n 230 truth, an opinion preconceived of her derangement might easily authorize strong suspicions of confirmation, from the contented volubility with which she incessantly ran on, without waiting for answerers, or even listeners” (608). Appearances speak ill of Mrs. Mittin, and this damns Camilla for following her because Mrs. Mittin’s vulgarity renders her a visually unfit chaperone for a young woman of good family like Camilla. Camilla’s failing is that, “while she judged from the sincerity of reality, she thought not of the mischief of appearance. What in her was designed with innocence, was rendered suspicious to the observers by the looks and manner of her companion” (681). This is a fitting description of Camilla’s behavior with Mrs. Mittin in the shops, but this passage occurs in yet another instance of Camilla’s misunderstanding the impact of appearances – repeatedly, Camilla makes mistaken judgments that fail to regard appearances. This passage actually refers to her paying too much attention to an older man. Camilla thinks that Lord Valhurst is too old to have any interest in her, and thus finds him a “safe” conversation partner. But with Lord Valhurst, as with Mrs. Mittin. Camilla sees through the lens of innocence, too naïve to suspect that she might appear improper. Camilla labors to seem anything but active in her expressions of emotion, trying to live up to all the expectations that she feels have been placed upon her so that she will always seem proper. Camilla responds to this challenge by trying to use visual indicators to demonstrate her cheerful indifference to any one man, thinking 231 that through these means she can show that her heart does not incline to any of the men with whom she converses. In this way, she intends for Edgar to recognize himself to be her sole beloved without her having to establish that he is her “positive wish.” Yet Edgar, minutely attentive to her actions, and suspicious of them because of Dr. Marchmont’s instructions, sees her behavior as coquettish and toying. When Camilla finds that she has an admirer in young Henry Westwyn, she is saddened and confused and wants to discourage his attentions, because her heart belongs to Edgar. She finds that Lord Valhurst is “always by her side,” and though she dislikes him, “his time of life” convinces her that engaging in conversation with him is safe (681). In fact, she imagines that Edgar “would not more notice her in any conversation with Lord Valhurst, than if she were discoursing with her uncle” (681). As she did with Mrs. Mittin, Camilla here judges from “the sincerity of reality” – but reality and appearances, Burney makes clear, are decidedly not the same. Camilla is slow to understand that her judgment is in error when trying to discourage Henry’s attentions, seeing too late “the eternal watching of Henry for her notice” (702). In a party of pleasure celebrating a young nobleman’s birthday, Camilla has been distracted by the scenery surrounding the yacht upon which the group is sailing. The narrator emphasizes that, to Camilla, “the beauties of nature had mental, as well as visual charms” (702), here suggesting that vision is a bodily activity rather than a mental one. This helps to perpetuate misunderstandings between Edgar and Camilla, 232 because while Edgar may be a very rational and intelligent man, his reliance on vision is, ultimately, reliance on a bodily function. Edgar’s impressions of Camilla led by what he sees are also irrational, and they create a barrier between the couple: Is this, thought [Edgar], Camilla? Has she wilfully [sic] fascinated this old man [Lord Valhurst] to win him, and has she won him but to triumph in the vanity of her conquest? How is her delicacy perverted! what is become of her sensibility? Is this the artless Camilla modest as she was gay, docile as she was spirited, gentle as she was intelligent? O how spoilt! how altered! how gone! Camilla, little suspicious of this construction, though it would be now equally wrong to speak any more with either Henry or Lord Valhurst, and talked with all others indiscriminately, changing her object with almost every speech […] Thus while she dispensed to all around, with views the most innocent, her gay and almost wild felicity, the very delight to which she owed her animation, of believing she was evincing to Edgar with what singleness she was his own, gave her the appearance, in his judgment, of a finished, a vain, an all-accomplished coquette. (705-6) What Edgar sees leads him to conclusions that completely oppose Camilla’s intentions, and it is his vision – a bodily faculty that possesses all of the faults and potential for misleading that the body possesses – that causes this misunderstanding. Burney points to the difficulties of seeing motives when the narrative voice questions “But what is so hard to judge as the human heart? The fairest observers misconstrue all motives to action, where any received prepossession has found an hypothesis” (703). Of course, at this point, Edgar is not the “fairest” of observers, so this statement only serves to reinforce how easy it is for Edgar’s severity (inculcated through Dr. Marchmont’s advice) to misread Camilla’s intentions. 233 Yet Camilla tries repeatedly to show Edgar how devoted she is to him, and only to him. When she hears of a ball hosted by the Pervils, with the dancers’ clothes conforming to a set “uniform” of clear lawn and lilac trimmings, she is excited by the idea that she will see Edgar, who has been absent from her company for some time. The invitation to the ball, “therefore, which was general to all the company at Southampton, was in its first sound, delicious; but became, upon consideration, the reverse. Clear lawn and lilac plumes and ornaments she had none; how to go she knew not; yet Edgar she was sure would be there; how to stay away she knew less” (690). Because in her imagination, at the ball “Camilla painted Edgar completely restored to her,” she seeks out Mrs. Mittin to ask her what a lilac-and-lawn dress is likely to cost (691). Mrs. Mittin, officious and desirous to serve the girl she thinks is a rich heiress, rushes out and buys a piece of lawn that is large enough for three dresses. Mrs. Mittin knows that she is likely to benefit by receiving the leftover lawn, which cannot be returned to the traveling salesman (who has already left Southampton) and which is soon found to be comprised of almost entirely damaged fabric. As Mrs. Mittin relied on her view of only the first few feet of fabric, again superficial appearances mislead to Camilla’s detriment. Camilla, without the intervention of Mrs. Mittin, would not have been so reckless in her spending. “No possible pleasure or desire could urge [Camilla], deliberately, to what she deemed an extravagance” (692), but the circumstances under 234 which Mrs. Mittin bought the fabric render Camilla without any alternative than to accept the already-purchased lawn. Without any exterior motivation to buy the expensive ball uniform, Camilla would have adhered to perfect conduct-book behavior. The author of The Female Aegis of 1798 cautions parents to inculcate the proper respect for dress in their daughters, without encouraging girls to focus too strongly upon it: The danger which you fear, is it that your daughter may prove a slattern? Impress her with the advantages, the duty of neatness: train her in corresponding habits: teach her by precept, and whenever occasion offers itself, by example, the disgusting effects of deviating from them. Attach her thus to the properties without tempting her to the vanities of dress; secure the decencies of her person without ensnaring her mind. (26). Without Mrs. Mittin’s intervention, Camilla would have exhibited the “decencies of her person” without running into debt, but Mrs. Mittin’s meddling in Camilla’s affairs makes Camilla seem to others to have had her mind “ensnared” by a vain love of frivolous fashion. This, however, is far from Camilla’s motive in being so easily led by Mrs. Mittin. Resigned to the irrecoverable debt, Camilla can think of little else than her fancied reconciliation with Edgar. But Edgar doesn’t attend the ball. Camilla, disappointed and “for the first time in her life, divested of hope,” leaves the ball convinced of her folly in thinking that she deserved Edgar (721). Camilla becomes even more distraught when returns to her lodgings and sees herself in the mirror: 235 A more minute examination of her attire was not calculated to improve her serenity. Her robe was everywhere edged with the finest Valencienne lace; her lilac shoes, sash, and gloves, were richly spangled with silver, and finished with a silver fringe; her ear-rings and necklace were of lilac and gold beads; her fan and shoe roses were brilliant with lilac foil, and her bouquet of artificial lilac flowers, and her plumes of lilac feathers, were here and there tipt with the most tiny transparent white beads, to give them the effect of being glittering with the dew. (721) No other point in Burney’s novels provides such a rich and detailed description of clothing; even her letters and journals tend to avoid dwelling on dress, despite her five years as assistant Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte. Why, then, this lavish cataloguing of the most minute embellishments of Camilla’s exceptionally fashionable ball gown? Burney’s description moves from the larger details, the expensive lace, to the smaller, the almost invisible transparent beads. The account of the trimmings moves in the way that Camilla’s eye notices them, and the smaller the detail the more self-damning her findings become. The description presents these details as Camilla notices them in her mirror reflection, suggesting that Camilla, so long watched, finally pays attention to her own appearance. Camilla’s visual self-examination forces her to confront her foibles in the way that others would have done. In other words, in looking in the mirror, Camilla confronts her own inability to compare favorably to the cultural screen. In looking so intently at herself in the mirror, Camilla sees herself as wasteful. For Camilla’s dress to have exhibited attention to even the semblance of dew on her 236 feathers is for Camilla to have lavished money unnecessarily. Burney emphasizes this when she writes that “[t]he ear-rings and necklace, silver fringes and spangles, feathers, nosegay, and shoe-roses, with the other parts of the dress, and the fine Valencienne edging, came to thirty-three pounds” (743). Camilla’s day-to-day expenses while away from home have proved far more than she had anticipated, but the single greatest expense of the more than one hundred and eighteen pounds that she incurs at Tunbridge and Southampton is the thirty-three pounds for her Pervil ball “uniform.” Looking in the mirror at herself, Camilla sees these lavish details in terms of their incredible cost, which neither she nor her family can afford. Camilla’s self- examination in the mirror finally makes her aware of the way in which others have seen her, an important step on her road out of deluded naïveté. Edgar, of course, is chief among those who have seen Camilla only to perceive her incorrectly. Margaret Doody writes that “Edgar makes a ‘degenerate portrait’ of Camilla. The contents of the mind change in difference moments under different lights. It is a telling coincidence of history that among the popular new sights of the time were the Panorama (where, as if inside a huge head, viewers could see a whole scene around them) and the Eidophusikon (which offered changing scenes in changing lights)” (263). Edgar’s vision is corrupt, and as Doody points out, the product of a culture fascinated by the way that vision can fool the mind, but Edgar’s watchfulness is itself the subject of another’s gaze. In the opinion of Camilla’s friend Mrs. Arlbery, 237 Edgar’s vigilant watchfulness renders him unfit for the vivacious and carefree Camilla. When Mrs. Arlbery tells Camilla that the man who has captured Camilla’s heart is “a watcher,” she does so to provide proof as to “how exactly he is calculated to make [Camilla] wretched” (482). Mrs. Arlbery explains that a watcher, restless and perturbed himself, infests all he pursues with uneasiness. He is without trust, and therefore without either courage or consistency. To-day he may be persuaded you will make all his happiness; to-morrow, he may fear you will give him nothing but misery. Yet it is not that he is jealous of any other; ‘tis of the object of his choice he is jealous, lest she should not prove good enough to merit it. (482) Mrs. Arlbery’s characterization of a watcher simultaneously highlights the power as well as the inactivity of the gaze, because the watcher’s gaze transfers the watcher’s restlessness onto the object of his gaze without the watcher exhibiting any trust or courage of his own. Instead, the object of the gaze is called upon here to display sufficient merit, to behave actively rather than passively. As the object of the watcher’s gaze in this case is a woman, and a very young and inexperienced woman at that, her ability to be equal to such a task is rendered impossible by the strictures under which her father – and her society – has placed her. Edgar’s watching of Camilla is underpinned by his expectation that she will be active in displaying the depth of her love for him, but this expressly violates her paternal instructions as well as cultural notions of female delicacy. 238 Despite rendering Camilla routinely visually misapprehended, the novel shows Camilla to be capable of the kind of vision that Burney espouses: in defending to Edgar the foppish Sir Sedley, who daringly saved her life by stopping a runaway carriage, Camilla argues that Edgar sees “him only […] with the impression made by his general appearance; and that is all against him: I always look for his better qualities and rejoice in finding them” (465). One of the morals underpinning Camilla is that appearances can indeed be all against one who is possessed of better qualities. For instance, Sir Sedley, Eugenia, and Camilla all appear to be worse than they are, and Indiana appears to be better than she is. But once viewers learn that they have been mislead by appearances, by the eyes that have incorrectly visually assessed someone else, their rational minds triumph over the imperfections of vision. Dress is pivotal in this narrative, with Camilla’s confrontation in the mirror with her lilac and lawn outfit serving as the necessary shattering of her self-deception. Now, dress reveals truth rather than deceives. But the only truth that dress imparts to Camilla is that too great of an attention to dress renders her superficial, thoughtless, and an unfit romantic partner in the eyes of others. The Wanderer and external surfaces Mary Wollstonecraft laments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that women are “[t]aught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre,” and therefore a woman’s “mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming around its gilt cage, 239 only seeks to adorn its prison” (44). Women’s interest in external beauty causes them to reject rational enjoyments in favor of “frothy pleasures” and “frivolous fashion” (Wollstonecraft 146). The early nineteenth century perpetuates this view of women’s clothing as shaping a woman’s mind toward the corporeal rather than the mental. In the early nineteenth century, novels might employ dress as a means to demonstrate the virtue of a heroine, but only if that woman shows simplicity and restraint in her choice of dress. This kind of restraint effectively aligns the characters that favor simple dress with simplicity and virtue rather than superficiality and deception. In the early nineteenth century, social conventions no longer allowed proper, virtuous women to make their clothes a grand visual argument for attention: gone are the towering headdresses and engulfing hoops popular in the 1770s, and in their place are straight- lined chemises so slender as to necessitate the invention of the reticule, the forerunner to the modern “purse,” because the gowns left little to no room for pockets. 78 The idea that women’s dress can only convey virtue (or its lack) through its wearer’s embracing of simplicity surfaces in Burney’s The Wanderer. Yet Burney’s attempt to suggest a less superficial way of looking at women ultimately collapses because she cannot successfully depart from the dominant beliefs about women’s dress. 78 In English Costume from the Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Centuries (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000) Iris Brooke and James Laver explain that the reticule comes into use at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of “thin and unvolumnious dresses with no under-petticoats” (164). 240 In the “Letter to Dr. Burney” that precedes The Wanderer, Frances Burney defends the possibilities of the novel form. The novel’s ability to inculcate salutary principles in its readers renders it morally useful, she argues. Less apologetic than her previous prefatory writings, here Burney is more polemical, explaining that she wishes to show “that an exteriour the most frivolous may enwrap illustrations of conduct, that the most rigid preceptor need not deem dangerous to entrust to his pupils” (9). Her metaphor of exteriors relies on the convention that appearances mislead, but she twists the metaphor so as to make that propensity to mislead a salubrious one. Burney’s interest in the potential deception of exteriors runs throughout The Wanderer, and the ways in which women, particularly, suffer from perceptions that rely on appearances could be said to constitute almost all of the “female difficulties” of the novel’s subtitle. But for Burney’s heroines, the primary difficulty with visual exteriors is their instability of meaning, because a set of appearances might signal differently than an individual intends, and even those intentions can be influenced by subconscious or unconscious desires. The Wanderer opens at night with its heroine Juliet fleeing France. She has blackened her skin and dressed herself in rags, and the passengers of a small boat headed to England hesitatingly allow her to come on board. This incident immediately invokes issues of appearances, for Juliet is not what she appears to be. Her use of rags and skin-darkening cosmetics to achieve the look of a black woman 241 creates a stigma of artifice that affects the way in which most of her fellow-passengers see Juliet for the rest of the novel. 79 The fact that she is in disguise visually signals untrustworthiness, especially because her garb simulates a lower status than any white woman could have possessed, for what dire exigencies would motivate a woman of quality to doubly debase herself by presenting herself as both racially and socially inferior to what she truly is? Significantly, however, this is the only overt sartorial deception in which Juliet engages, a point to which I will return. Juliet’s ragged clothing causes her fellow passengers to initially judge her harshly. One of the boat’s passengers, Elinor Joddrel, obtains a better view of Juliet as the quality of light changes, and revises her initial fanciful and romantic expectation of Juliet’s identity as a nun escaping a convent: “Her dress is not merely shabby, ‘tis vulgar. I have lost all hope of [her being] a pretty nun. She can be nothing above a house-maid” (17). Visual assessment of Juliet’s appearance dictates Elinor’s romance-novel notions of Juliet’s identity, notions that Juliet spends most of the novel fighting. In actuality, Juliet is the granddaughter of Lord Granville, and she has been forced by dangerous circumstances to go into hiding. Lord Granville’s son married 79 The issues of race and class, while not discussed here, also resonate deeply in Juliet’s choice of disguise, especially in that they are coupled with the issues of gender that I explicate here. For discussions of Burney’s use of race, see Lutz, Kimberly Dawn. “‘Skins to Jump into’: Representations of Gender, Blackness, and Whiteness in the Novels of Frances Burney, Charles Kingsley, and Wilkie Collins.” Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 61.5 (2000 Nov) 1854. See also Salih, Sara. “‘Her Blacks, Her Whites and Her Double Face!’: Altering Alterity in The Wanderer.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11.3 (1999 April): 301-15. 242 Juliet’s mother in secret because of the disparity in their economic statuses, and Juliet’s mother died before the marriage could be publicly acknowledged. Perpetuating the secret of the marriage, Lord Granville arranges for Juliet to be raised by a worthy bishop in France. Lord Granville also has established a sizeable dowry for Juliet – provided that she remains outside of England, which allows his son’s unequal marriage to stay a secret from the English elite. This liminality of Juliet’s legitimacy (she is the publicly unacknowledged daughter of a Lord) foreshadows her later visual liminality, for she appears to different characters to be either laudable but unfortunate, or deceitful and scheming. A ruthless citizen who had seized power during under Robespierre forces Juliet into a quick and legally questionable marriage ceremony. He knew that marriage to her would entitle him to her dowry, and to obtain this money he forces Juliet into a wedding by threatening her with the guillotining of the bishop. Luckily, Juliet’s “husband” is suddenly called away, giving her the chance to escape. She seizes the opportunity, but only the gravity of the bishop’s situation could entice Juliet to engage in employing artifice and disguise. In fleeing France, Juliet also loses her purse, so she is completely dependent on her fellow-passengers on the boat even for the bare necessities of existence. She has no way to sustain herself, but she also cannot disclose her real identity to let these people know that she is their social equal (or, in some cases, superior). Needing to remain hidden to ensure that her “husband” will keep the bishop alive as a means through which to threaten Juliet, she 243 cannot risk divulging her actual identity. Her only method of conveying her worth is through her visual self-presentation, and she is continually and painfully aware that on her self-presentation alone rests her ability to establish herself as worthy of inclusion into polite society. Like Camilla, Juliet labors under a stricture of silence, but unlike Camilla, Juliet’s silence is necessary to preserve the life of a good man. Therefore, throughout the rest of the novel, Juliet adamantly uses visual display as a means through which to establish her resolution and rectitude. But the initial introduction to Juliet as a user of visual artifice casts understandable doubt on her integrity for most of the novel’s other characters. After Juliet arrives safely in England, she uses a guinea bestowed on her by a benevolent fellow-passenger to buy “decent clothing, though of the cheapest and coarsest texture” (41). Juliet’s choice to buy the cheapest materials could be read as evidence of her low status, or as evidence of virtue in disdaining to squander precious resources on frippery. Her previous donning of a lowly disguise inclines the other passengers to read Juliet’s choice here as a sign of her lower status. As the passengers soon discover Juliet’s ability to play the harp and sing, evidence of refined social cultivation, they are confused by how ill these accomplishments accord with the low status suggested by her clothing. Instead of conveying the virtue of economy or frugality, Juliet’s coarse clothing visually casts her, in the eyes of most of those around her, into the role of an economically and socially depressed woman. Her lowly 244 dress also contributes to their growing suspicions about a woman who will provide no information about her family or identity, because she displays an assortment of accomplishments that no one can reconcile with her cheap garb. The notion that Juliet has something to hide, especially when coupled with her use of disguise to flee France, renders Juliet’s humble clothing suspicious. Immediately after landing in England, the travelers take shelter in an inn. The haughty Mrs. Ireton begrudgingly allows Juliet to travel home with her, but is both astonished and angry at the idea of deceit when she sees how Juliet’s black skin and bandages have given way to white, unscarred skin: “It was now rather consternation than amazement with which Mrs. Ireton was seized, till the augmenting disorder, and increasing colour of her new attendant, changed all fear of any trick into personal pique at having been duped; and she protested that if such beggar-strategems were played upon her any more, she would turn over the imposter to the master of the inn” (45). While Juliet used disguise only to safeguard her beloved bishop, she will not risk his safety by defending herself to Mrs. Ireton. She won’t lie but she cannot tell the truth, and she also knows that disguise brands her as duplicitous. Nonetheless, she gains the assistance of some of her new acquaintance, who decide that she should perform on the harp and sing at a benefit concert, the proceeds of which will help her eke out a living. 245 But the women who decide to help Juliet take pains to differentiate themselves from her in as noticeable and visual a way as possible. When helping the superficial Miss Arbe to arrange the concert, the vain and jealous Miss Sycamore urges Miss Arbe to select a bright pink sarcenet fabric for Juliet’s dress. Miss Sycamore explains: “As our uniform is fixed to be white, with violet-ornaments, it was my thought to beg Miss Arbe would order something of this shewy sort to distinguish us Dilettanti from the artists” (314). The implications of the dress that these women assemble for Juliet speak to issues of surfaces and depth. Significantly, “[p]ink was especially in vogue during the period from the 1740s until into the 1770s” (Ribeiro 65), but by the late eighteenth century, which is the temporal setting for Burney’s novel, white and paler colors had become preferred. So in assigning a glaringly bright shade of pink to Juliet, the women arranging the benefit do more than accomplish their stated objective of merely distinguishing her rank as an artist in contrast to their amateur status. They try to align themselves with style and fashion while relegating Juliet to outdated modes. This maneuver carries an implication of socioeconomic standing, as formerly fashionable clothing signaled either the parsimony of the wearer for not updating her clothing, or signaled the wearing of second-hand garb. Another, yet more socially demeaning, possibility for the wearing of outdated clothing is a servant’s having received cast-off clothing as a perquisite from an employer. The dress’s color is intended to render Juliet visually lower in status than her benefactors. 246 The bold color of the dress is not the only element of the garment that works to cast Juliet visually as the social inferior of the townswomen. Sarcenet, the fabric chosen for Juliet’s benefit dress, is a flowing rather than a stiff silk, 80 and therefore clings to the body. Burney’s contemporary readers may also have associated sarcenet with underclothing, because it was popular in the early 1800s as a material for slips. 81 The combination of the flamboyantly outdated color and the sensuously clingy material causes the dress chosen for Juliet to wear during her performance to be a clear sign of her social and perhaps even moral inferiority. No woman of quality would willingly court so much attention as this dress would bring, because inviting the lingering gaze of others signifies a woman’s indecency. The increase in the visual accessibility to Juliet’s body that sarcenet allows renders the fabric choice malicious in its attempt to turn Juliet’s body into a morally dubious spectacle. The use of sarcenet in Juliet’s gown heightens the visual divide between Juliet’s uncertain social class and the fashionable, elevated class of the benefit’s organizers, and it also visually 80 Mary Brooks Picken describes sarcenet as a “[s]oft fabric in plain or twill weave; usually of silk. Used for linings, especially in England” in A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion, Historic and Modern. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1985. 282. 81 Fashion plates from the earliest Ackerman’s Repository (also known as the Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics), published in 1818, demonstrate that sarcenet was commonly used under materials such as muslin and satin. For example, sarcenet is listed as the material for a walking dress slip, the lining of a wrapping- cloak, and the material for two separate evening dress slips. In none of the dresses for that year does sarcenet function as the outer material. See Ackerman’s Costume Plates: Women’s Fashions in England, 1818-1828. Stella Blum, Ed. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1978. Pages 1, 2, 3, and 10. 247 emphasizes Juliet’s impropriety in performing publicly. Public performance, unlike private performance in friends’ homes, signals a kind of impropriety, because it – like the vivid shade of pink – invites a viewer’s gaze to linger on the performer’s body. Further, public performance bears a resemblance to prostitution, as in both activities a woman accepts money to place herself on display. Priscilla Wakefield writes about the dangers of public feminine display in 1798, claiming it is not asserted, that external appearance is unworthy of all regard, it certainly claims a due attention; but it is advisable to temper that care with every possible precaution against exciting the emotions of self- complacency and personal vanity, the most dangerous of all qualities in a female mind, as they are the source of the most common errors in female conduct. One injurious consequence of a vain mind, is an extravagant taste for dress, and exhibiting the person in public places; a disposition subversive of domestic happiness, and that sobriety of character, which, in youth, is the presage of every thing useful and honourable. (77) Wakefield’s mention of “public places” refers only to participation in fashionable amusements like walking in the park or attending plays; a woman’s willingly setting herself out as a spectacle for which people have paid to see would have been even more unthinkably improper to Wakefield. Juliet, constantly aware of how she appears to others, resists improper behavior whenever possible, but her dangerous situation repeatedly threatens her with the privileging of pecuniary necessity over appearances. Because Juliet understands well the power of appearances, she works to balance them as much as possible with her dire economic needs. When she finally agrees to perform at the benefit – which she does only because Miss Arbe has already 248 spent a large sum of money that a generous Lady donated toward preparations for the benefit – Juliet appears in clothing of her own selection. Burney writes: Even her attire, which, from the bright pink gown, purchased by Miss Arbe, she had changed into plain white satin, with ornaments of which the simplicity shewed as much taste as modesty, contributed to the interest which she inspired. It was suited to the style of her beauty, which was Grecian; and it seemed equally to assimilate with the character of her mind, to those who, judging it from the fine expression of her countenance, conceived it to be pure and noble. (358) The firmness of Juliet’s decision to wear clothing that displays the elevated qualities of her mind demonstrates the difficulties in manipulating others’ opinions through one’s appearance. With the “plain white satin” gown, Juliet attempts to convey a more virtuous, refined sense of herself, one in which clothing relates more to honesty and simplicity than showiness or deception. Juliet believes that her appearance can convey the more exalted aspects of her personality (the purity and nobility that her “Grecian” dress indicates, for example), and tries to turn to good use the fact that observers can judge of her only by appearances. The word “simplicity” in the description of Juliet’s ornaments signals an alignment with anti-fashion writers. The hallmark of ideal feminine dress in harangues against the immorality of fashion is “‘simplicity,’ a recurrent though often loosely defined term deployed in counter-fashion attacks in the period” (Batchelor 130-1). Juliet, then, tries less to be fashionable in her change of dress and tries more to present herself as virtuous. But the community’s ideas of her reflect the prevailing 249 notions of the low morals of a “wandering” woman, or a woman who circulates herself in the public realm. These people operate with a harsh, unforgiving set of cultural expectations, and to them, the means that Juliet chooses to try to convey her morality – dress – inescapably relate to the body. Juliet tries to fight this belittling view, employing a simplicity meant to emphasize both Juliet’s taste and modesty. The only characters who see any worth or symbolism in her Grecian gown had already thought well of Juliet, and her sartorial display does not win her any additional supporters. 82 Moreover, Juliet’s community first saw her in disguise, creating a perceived relationship between Juliet and clothing that relies on dishonesty. She has jeopardized her goal of being perceived as socially acceptable by the artifice of her first visual impression. Though she tries to use the exteriority of dress to demonstrate her interior self, Juliet cannot reconcile the gap between exterior appearance and inner worth. Juliet is trapped between competing ideas of dress. These conflicting ideas take the shape of the pink dress and the Grecian gown. The pink dress reinforces the 82 Because of the period in which Burney sets The Wanderer, “simplicity” of dress could also raise politically charged ideas. Contemporary accounts of “the events of 20 June 1792 highlight the way that working dress was taken to be a sign of such transparency by virtue of its grubby quotidian lack of artifice” (Richard Wrigley, “The Formation and Currency of a Vestimentary Stereotype: The Sans-culotte in Revolutionary France.” In Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship. Wendy Parkins, Ed. Oxfrod and New York: Berg, 2002. 27). The espousing of the sans-culotte costume “was equivalent to lacking an essential sign of proper dress, and therefore to be consigned to society’s lower ranks” (20). Nowhere in Burney’s text do references to revolutionary French garb exist in conjunction with Juliet’s dress, but readers may well have sensed a connection between the sans culotte and Juliet’s attempts to dress simply – and this would further complicate Juliet’s attempts to be apprehended as virtuous through her clothing. 250 belief that too much regard to dress is improper for a woman, because that dress would garner her undue and morally dubious attention. Juliet attempts to use the Grecian gown to harness clothing as a form of feminine power. Yet the prevailing notions of femininity do not align with the ideas working behind Juliet’s employment of the Grecian dress. 83 When Juliet decides to perform publicly, she engages in behavior that casts doubt upon her sense of propriety. Burney goes to great lengths to let readers know that Juliet had no other choice but to perform in the benefit concert. Yet appearances are against Juliet: she is a wanderer who agrees to a public performance. The propriety with which she tries to appear cannot be reshaped through dress. Surfaces and depths Despite the commonplace reliance on appearances for information, the visual realm in this period does not enjoy a particularly high cultural status. Barbara Stafford writes of how, not simply in the eighteenth century but even into our own time, critics often discount visuality as a lesser form of knowledge than the verbal. In upholding the Cartesian mind-body dualism and its hierarchy of mind-and-intellect as greater than body-and-sensation, Stafford explains that “the matter and manner of vision had to be demoted to intellectual nullity, to the realm of the merely showy or fantastic” 83 Ralph Schomberg writes praising “Grecian” garb as a positive mode only in its original incarnation: “The Grecian garb, ‘tis owned, became the days, / When Grecian shapes and airs attracted praise, / When ample folds each decent grace display’d […]” (Fashion, a poem. Bath: S. Hazard. 1795. Huntington Library shelfmark 227819). 251 (47). 84 She underscores that “it was precisely in the eighteenth century that the persisting rationalist philosophical attitude toward images hardened into systems” (22). The resultant low cultural value assigned to visuality proves difficult to combat, especially for women, whose resources were more severely culturally limited. The constant threat for Juliet of being rendered a spectacle serves as a reminder of this. Yet even Juliet, who well knows how incommensurate being and seeming can be, finds herself swayed by appearances. Just as Juliet is subject to the views of others that are dictated by cultural expectations, she herself experiences difficulty in seeing without misinterpreting appearances. Juliet knows that her “husband” is looking for her, and she tries to evade him. When Juliet flees detection by hiding in a forest, she spends the night with cottagers whom she finds suspicious. Wary of their behavior, and believing that “their looks and appearance were […] darkly in their disfavour” (681), she finds herself unable to sleep. She sees figures outside the cottage late at night with a “dark lanthorn,” and she leaves early the next morning when she sees blood on the floor. Talking later to Dame Fairfield, a poor but kind-hearted woman who helps her, Juliet discovers that Dame Fairfield’s husband is implicated in the seemingly murderous activities of the 84 Descartes wrote that “because our senses sometimes deceive us, I wanted to suppose that nothing is such as they make us imagine it” (184), emphasizing the untrustworthiness of sensory perception. He clearly demarcates body and soul as separate, arguing that “the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body” (184). In a selection from Discourse on Method (1637). From The Portable Enlightenment Reader Isaac Kramnick, Ed. New York: Penguin: 1995. 181-184. 252 cottagers. When Dame Fairfield begs Juliet not to inform against her husband, Juliet exclaims “what am I to think of these appearances?” (712). Explicitly, Juliet acknowledges that visual appearances establish her beliefs concerning the actions of Dame Fairfields’s husband, because the appearance of wrongdoing creates Juliet’s certainty that a murder has taken place. Juliet soon finds the cause of these mysterious circumstances: the cottagers steal deer from the King’s forest, an act punishable by death or transportation. But theft is a very different crime than murder, which is what Juliet assumed from visual indicators had taken place. This incident problematizes the concept of appearances, which are important indicators of truth even if they can mislead radically. This raises implications for the mistaken readings of Juliet’s clothing by the novel’s characters, for if even the rational Juliet can misread appearances, how can she hope to establish a visual sense of her worth to other, less thoughtful, characters? From the very first pages of The Wanderer, Burney conveys (most likely unintentionally) an ambiguity inherent in “exteriours:” frivolity might entice a novel reader to absorb moral precepts, but harmful content might also conversely lurk under a seemingly harmless guise. In other words, while surface appearance may mislead, more penetrating looks might provide a profound sense of the depths underneath exteriors. In the first scene of the novel, the boat passengers experience literal difficulty in seeing Juliet, as “[t]here was just light enough to shew [one of the 253 passengers] a female in the most ordinary attire” (12). For the book’s characters, Juliet is often difficult to see, and the same is true for the book’s readers; Juliet’s initial entry into the novel is at night, and “the darkness impeded examination” of her (12), forestalling any visual description of Juliet. In fact, the reader only gradually discovers the facts of Juliet’s past that motivate her to keep her identity a secret, having to rely on exteriors and appearances like the other characters to gain any insight into Juliet for most of the novel. 85 However, Burney’s narrator contributes to readers’ ability to understand Juliet on a less superficial level by describing Juliet’s thoughts and fears, allowing the reader to “see” deeper into her character than the mere surfaces by which so many of the novel’s characters judge Juliet, and this helps to foster a sense of looking that surpasses the mere sensing of exteriors. The kind of confusion created by the conjunction of Juliet’s shabby clothing and her lofty accomplishments proves especially difficult for a woman to navigate, because anything that might blemish a woman’s reputation could destroy her social – and by extension, economic – network. This points to the larger issue of the strictures within which women had to operate. Politeness and modesty required women to curb their spoken responses, leaving the visual register as their main vehicle for culturally acceptable expression, as Burney had already demonstrated in Camilla. Clothing, 85 The narrator doesn’t even provide the name “Juliet” until book V in the third volume (page 387 in the 1991 Oxford paperback), calling her “Incognita” or “Ellis,” a name mistakenly given to Juliet that remains in use because Juliet finds it easier and more moral to use a mistaken moniker than to lie and provide a false name. 254 then, takes on added significance for women. Juliet’s resistance to wearing the outmoded and inappropriately showy pink sarcenet indicates her intense attention to decorum and propriety, as does her constant vigilance that her clothing always be simple and neat. Careful observers – those who understand the power of visual means to convey a complex multitude of information – notice Juliet’s subtle use of visuality and understand the inherent worth that hides beneath her seeming poverty and strange circumstances. Visuality can work as more than as the sensing of the merely superficial. Those characters capable of this deeper form of looking, like Sir Jaspar Herrington and Albert Harleigh can see “past” or “beyond” the deceptive surface of Juliet’s appearance. In these characters, Burney provides a model of looking that stresses the depths of interiors. Burney’s narrator describes the old bachelor Sir Jaspar Herrington’s ability to see more keenly than others, explaining that “[n]o plainness of attire could hide, from his scrutinizing eye, a certain native taste with which her habiliments, however simple, were put on” (635). Burney’s use of the term “scrutinizing” here emphasizes active and inquisitive looking, the sort of visual sensing that moves beyond surfaces. Sir Jaspar provides insight into his character that establishes him as a man of more probing vision: “My whole life has been spent in worshipping beauty, till within these very few years, when I have gotten something like a surfeit, and meant to give it over. For I have watched and followed beauties, till 255 I have grown sick of them. I have admired fine features, only to be disgusted with vapid vanity” (507). Sir Jaspar repeatedly has witnessed the incommensurability of beauty and wit in women, and has thus cultivated his ability to perceive women beyond the prevailing cultural screen’s emphasis on beauty as the sole desirable womanly characteristic. He confesses that his construction of Juliet is ideal: “But you! fair sorceress! … you have such intelligence of countenance; such spirit with such sweetness; smiles so delicious, though rare! looks so speaking; grace so silent; -- that I forget you are a beauty; and fasten my eyes upon you, only to understand what you say when you don’t utter a word!” (507). Sir Jaspar’s past experiences have allowed him to “fasten his eyes” upon Juliet and read the worth in her character that extends beyond surface beauty. Juliet’s admirer Albert Harleigh, too, sees past clothing to sense Juliet’s true nature: “To him, her language, her air, and her manner, pervading every disadvantage of apparel, poverty, and subjection, had announced her, from the first, to have received the education, and to have lived the life of a gentlewoman” (75). For Harleigh, Juliet’s clothing functions as only the first layer of what he can learn of her by sight, rather than as the pinnacle of what he can learn by looking at her. Harleigh also champions looking as a scientific mode of obtaining knowledge, espousing a kind of Newtonian method that rejects hypotheses in favor of repeated experimentation. He explains that his mental perceptions convince him, “through progressive observations, 256 that [Juliet] is a person of honour, well educated, accustomed to good society, highly principled, and noble minded […] Such […] I think her! not, indeed, from any certain documents; but from a self-conviction, founded, I repeat, upon progressive observations; which have the weight with me, now, of mathematical demonstration” (613). Harleigh’s mathematical and scientific language indicates the rationality of his admiration. He wishes to call attention to those aspects of Juliet’s character (like her principles and noble mindedness) that most other characters largely ignore in favor of focusing upon surface beauty. Harleigh’s mentions of “progressive observations” and “mathematical demonstration” work to idealize Juliet in defiance of, rather than in accordance with, the cultural notion that a woman need only appear beautiful. Harleigh’s valorized and careful looking elevates the visual to a more complex and subtle form of meaning, and renders Harleigh worthy of ultimately becoming Juliet’s husband. But by tacitly upholding the hierarchy that accords the verbal more prestige than the visual, Burney creates a tension around visual elements like clothing. As Alexandra Warwick and Dani Cavallaro argue, “[t]he conventional reading of dress as a superficial form to be penetrated in order to gain access to a deep content, obviously based on the primacy of notions of depth and content over those of surface and form, is radically challenged by a reading whereby the superficial forms of people and objects are seen to possess their own kind of depth” (xxii-xxiii). Burney does not 257 accord exteriors this kind of depth. The looking that Burney endorses is that which sees past or beyond the surface. Instead, she suggests that exteriors are superficial in the most pejorative sense of the word. In so doing, Burney implicitly grants power to the hierarchy of surfaces as lesser than depths, upholding the idea that surfaces are inconsequential. This inability to escape the dictates of the screen stands at odds with the way in which Burney tries to attach meaning to surface elements, working to trivialize rather than valorize “exteriours.” This minimizing of the value of exteriors poses a particular problem for women, with whom exteriors were, and still often are, culturally aligned. Burney’s Wanderer invokes this kind of gendering when it correlates surfaces with triviality and psychological “truths” with depth. In this way, the visual realm, associated with women, is degraded and necessarily lesser than narrative depth, which tends to be seen as more analogous to, and the province of, men. This hierarchical divide perpetuates distrust for the visual register, even as Burney tries to foster a more valorized sense of viewing, and contributes to the solidification of the gender divide. Clothing itself has been culturally constructed to perpetuate this divide, calling attention to the female body, 86 arguably even deflecting attention away from the male 86 For further investigation of the alignment of women, fashion, and the body, see (among others) chapter 3, “The Genesis of the Suit,” in Anne Hollander’s Sex and Suits (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); the introduction to Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace’s Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia UP, 1997); Shawn Lisa Maurer’s “Designing Women: The Fabric of Gender Politics in the Tatler and Spectator Papers” in Jessica Munns and Penny Richards’ The Clothes That Wear 258 body. The restraint of late eighteenth-century male dress “may well have been hastened, spurred by the extremity of ladies’ fashionable excesses, of which the folly could only be something sane men should be clearly seen to avoid, even if they liked it on the ladies” (Hollander 77). In contrast, female dress “has undergone frequent and often dramatic changes, accentuating the breasts at one moment, the waist at another, and the legs at another. These abrupt libidinal displacements, which constantly shift the center of erotic gravity, make the female body far less stable and localized than its male counterpart” (Silverman 147). Garments themselves, then, help to entrench the correspondence between women, surfaces, and the body. Seeing past the surface In 1818, The Edinburgh Magazine published a piece by William Hazlitt entitled “On Fashion” criticizing fashion as “haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath” (75). Hazlitt made particular reference to the ability of clothing to create visual confusion in ascertaining a woman’s character, much to the detriment of women of quality: Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and confidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed females whom we see at the play-house, in the boxes. Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, both are rouged, and wear their neck and arms bare – both have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air – the same toss of the head, the same Us: Essays on Dressing and Transgressing in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Newark: U of Delaware Press and London: Associated University Presses, 1999. 208-229); and the introduction of Clare Haru Crowston’s Fabricating Women; The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791 (Durham & London: Duke UP, 2001). 259 stoop in the shoulders, with all the grace that arises from a perfect freedom from embarrassment, and all the fascination that arises from a systematic disdain of formal prudery – the same pretense and jargon of fashionable conversation – the same mimicry of tones and phrases – the same “lisping, and ambling, and painting, and nicknaming of Heaven’s creatures”; the same every thing but real propriety of behaviour, and real refinement of sentiment. In all the externals, they are as like as the reflection in the looking-glass. The only difference between the woman of fashion and the woman of pleasure is, that the one is what the other only seems to be … (76). This linking of clothing with the opposition of being and seeming highlights some of the complexities of women’s dress at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries in Britain. Clothing, and particularly women’s clothing, signaled not only visual confusion between the prostitute and the fashionable woman in this era, as in Hazlitt’s example, but the difficulties inherent in using clothing as a means through which to establish or further an identity. Hazlitt’s repetition of the word “real” (“real propriety [...] real refinement of sentiment”) reinforces how clothing can create believable deceptions that mimic reality. If this is so, dress can aid the degenerate and the debased in presenting themselves as meek and virtuous. One particular scene in The Wanderer draws on the same moral implications of dress as does Hazlitt’s “On Fashion.” After unsuccessful attempts to earn her living by teaching music, by working in a milliner’s shop, and by working as a dress-maker’s assistant, Juliet is reunited with her long-lost friend Gabriella. Juliet works with Gabriella to manage a millinery warehouse, earnestly seeking to earn a living that doesn’t place her at the mercy of a cruel or capricious employer. When taking wares 260 to a client, Juliet’s accidentally unfastened bandbox spills an array of ribbons into the street, and a man in a carriage instructs his footman to help her retrieve the soiled goods. Juliet soon finds that her elderly friend and admirer Sir Jaspar Herrington is the footman’s employer. Appearances are strongly against Juliet here, because while she works as a milliner simply to support herself, eighteenth-century milliners were often confused with prostitutes. Milliners enjoyed the opportunity, rare for any other woman, “both to dress fashionably and to walk around London on their own to measure customers and deliver items. This provided a perfect cover for illicit activities, but it also drew unwanted attention to innocent women. Most prints [of milliners] assumed that milliners were also (or indeed, only) prostitutes. Prostitutes also dressed as milliners (by carrying the trademark band-box) in order to attract customers” (McCrery 59). Juliet’s situation when Sir Jaspar’s footman helps her – alone on the streets of London, wielding a bandbox that calls attention to her – places her in the interstice between milliner and prostitute that McCrery describes. It also invokes Hazlitt’s binary of “is”/“seems to be.” With Juliet, as with Hazlitt’s playhouse lady and demirep, clothing creates the possibility of visual confusion, a kind of confusion especially dangerous in its threat to Juliet’s sexual reputation. The Wanderer’s emphasis on Juliet’s body as a site for competing ideas about visuality and dress renders the novel susceptible to criticism. Given Burney’s emphasis on visual perception in The Wanderer, it is hardly surprising that some of the 261 novel’s harshest critics incorporated disparaging references to sight and display in their reviews of the novel. William Hazlitt wrote in The Edinburgh Review that Burney is unquestionably a quick, lively, and accurate observer or persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. There is little other power in Miss Burney’s novels, than that of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement of vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. (Hazlitt, “Standard Novels”) Hazlitt’s review demonstrates disparagement of the “superficial” and relegates such limited looking to women. In so doing, he implicitly undermines Burney’s defense of the novel in her prefacatory letter to her father. If superficiality is Burney’s specialty, her writing incorporates a particularly feminine (and thus lesser) way of looking, despite her claims that a frivolous exterior may mask a valuable depth. John Wilson Croker’s review of The Wanderer also aligns Burney and her novel with a pejoratively constructed female body, but his attack is more personal and more venomous than Hazlitt’s criticisms. Croker writes that in The Wanderer there is no splendour, no source of delight to dazzle criticism and beguile attention from a defect which has increased in size and deformity exactly in the same degree that the beauties have vanished. The Wanderer has the identical features of Evelina -- but of Evelina grown old; the vivacity, the bloom, the elegance, `the purple light of love' are vanished; the eyes are there, but they are dim; the cheek, but it is furrowed; the lips, but they are withered. And when to this description we add that Madame D'Arblay [Burney’s married name] endeavours to make up for the want of originality in her characters by the most absurd mysteries, the most extravagant 262 incidents, and the most violent events, we have completed the portrait of an old coquette who endeavours, by the wild tawdriness and laborious gaiety of her attire, to compensate for the loss of the natural charms of freshness, novelty, and youth. (125-26) Croker’s disparagement of the “attire” of Burney’s novel metonymically attaches itself to Burney, slighting both the novel and its author for not exhibiting enough surface beauty. Women’s novels, like women themselves, are for Croker only beneficial in that they serve as pleasing objects for display – a troubling belief which is, of course, at the heart of Burney’s novel. Croker constructs clothing as artifice, the means through which a feminine body tries to deceive others’ ability to see its aging imperfections. Yet Burney’s use of clothing in the novel performs a function similar to Croker’s use of clothing in his review. Because Burney upholds the depth/surface hierarchy in defending the possibilities of the novel, she ultimately casts the visual aspects of the novel in a pejorative relation to rhetoric, sinking the narrative use of “exteriours” like dress very low in contrast, substantiating Stafford’s argument of the longstanding constructed cultural inferiority of images. But, because of the wording of Burney’s novel defense in the “Letter to Dr. Burney,” Burney’s argument needs exteriors to remain powerful. Robbing appearances of their strength prevents Burney’s novel defense from working. Burney’s employment of dress in The Wanderer undercuts her own defense of the novel form. 263 Conclusion – “From pride, ignorance, or fashion” The uses of women’s dress within novels become increasingly limited over the course of the eighteenth century. The extent of this shift from dress as powerful tool to dress as constricting superficiality is perhaps best seen in Jane Austen’s early nineteenth-century novel Northanger Abbey (finished 1803, published 1818). A satire on reading practices as well as on the stereotype of thoughtless heroines, Northanger Abbey aligns an interest in dress with a giddy, vacuous turn of mind. The women in this work who devote great attention to dress are either scatterbrained or downright self-centered, showing that dress has lost its place as a medium for free and flexible feminine self-creation. One of the characters most clearly devoted to dress is Mrs. Allen, the chaperone for the main character Catherine Morland. The narrator informs readers in a very matter-of-fact mode that Mrs. Allen “had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner” and that “[d]ress was her passion” (7). In fact, very little exists of Mrs. Allen’s personality, unless a constant attention to clothing constitutes a personality. When Catherine tries to speak to her about Miss Tilney, sister to Catherine’s love interest, Mrs. Allen passes along the only information that struck her: “Miss Tilney was in a very pretty spotted muslin, and I fancy, by what I can learn, that she always dresses very handsomely” (49). When Catherine seeks Mrs. Allen’s help in constructing an explanation to Henry Tilney for a seeming breach of 264 etiquette, Mrs. Allen can only answer “[m]y dear, you tumble my gown” (71). Most everything that Mrs. Allen says reveals that dress is constantly uppermost in her mind. This signals to readers that Mrs. Allen is far from an ideal supervisor of Catherine’s behavior. Her attention to external elements robs her of any facility in understanding the finer points of social interaction. Mrs. Allen shows just how pernicious it can be that her world centers upon dress when Catherine and Mr. Allen discuss propriety and carriage rides. Mr. Allen speaks of the questionable appearance it gives for a young lady to receive rides in a carriage from young men to whom she is not related, and Mrs. Allen agrees. Catherine exclaims that, had she known it was improper, she would not have previously accepted a carriage ride from John Thorpe, but she had hoped that Mrs. Allen would tell her if she was “doing wrong.” Mrs. Allen’s interpretation of “wrong” demonstrates her sartorially-centered thought processes, and she immediately responds: “You know I wanted you, when we first came [to Bath], not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would” (81). Here, Mrs. Allen’s focus on dress poses an outright moral danger for Catherine. Because her powers of observation extend only to what people wear, she exercises no ability to monitor Catherine’s behavior sufficiently. As long as Catherine wears what Mrs. Allen finds fashionable and suitable, Mrs. Allen pays little to no attention to the moral aspects of Catherine’s behavior. Mrs. Allen’s love of dress adds to the novel’s comic tone, but the 265 implications of Mrs. Allen’s selfishness are that she could have allowed Catherine’s reputation to be compromised because her mind runs more to sprigged muslins than to the propriety of her ward’s activities. The narrator makes this misplacement of attention clear by explicitly telling readers that Mrs. Allen leads Catherine through a crowded ballroom “[w]ith more care for the safety of her new gown than for the comfort of her protegée” (8). Austin cements this sort of sartorial focus as self- centered when her narrator insists “[w]oman is fine for her own satisfaction alone” (54). Too great an interest in dress has become too great an interest in a woman’s self, and Mrs. Allen is a comically selfish figure because of her excessive, (and almost single-minded) attention to dress, ornament, and trimmings. Catherine forms a friendship with Isabella Thorpe, whose love of dress proves her to be narcissistic and selfish, but whose self-focus produces darker consequences than Mrs. Allen’s narcissism. When Catherine first meets Isabella, dress is one of their first conversation topics. 87 Dress, in fact, is a fairly constant topic with Isabella, and she often turns conversations to the discussion of her clothing. At the theatre, she greets Catherine by asking if Catherine’s suitor is in attendance. When Catherine answers in the negative, Isabella responds “Oh, horrid! am I never to be acquainted with him? How do you like my gown? I think it does not look amiss; the sleeves 87 The narrator places dress at the head of the list of Isabella and Catherine’s conversation topics: “Their conversation turned upon those subjects, of which the free discussion has generally much to do in perfecting a sudden intimacy between two young ladies; such as dress, balls, flirtations, and quizzes” (18). 266 were entirely my own thought” (51). Though she pays lip service to Catherine’s interest, Isabella’s steering of the conversation toward her own main concern – her own dress and appearance – clues in the reader (but not Catherine) to Isabella’s self- centeredness. The placement of Isabella’s speech into a monologue rather than spaced with pauses, as if she truly wanted to speak about Catherine’s concerns, reinforces that Isabella cannot keep her own attention focused on anything but herself. Catherine’s realization that Isabella is “a vain coquette” (176) comes from a letter that Isabella writes to her after encouraging the advances of Frederick Tilney when she is engaged to Catherine’s brother James. Isabella writes that she hasn’t heard from James, and is thus worried that some misunderstanding has caused a rift between them. Demonstrating the shallowness of her concern and the boldness of her deception, she follows a request for Catherine’s help with an assessment of the season’s fashions: “Your kind offices will set all right; - he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it. The spring fashions are partly down; and the hats the most frightful you can imagine” (174). Later in the same letter, she performs a similar rhetorical switch; she asserts that she was determined to go out so that no one will gossip about her shutting herself up because Frederick Tilney is gone. Immediately afterwards, she continues: Anne Mitchell had tried to put on a turban like mine, as I wore it the week before at the Concert, but made wretched work of it – it happened to become my odd face I believe, at least Tilney told me so at the time, and said every eye was upon me; but he is the last man whose word I 267 would take. I wear nothing but purple now: I know I look hideous in it, but not matter – it is your dear brother’s favorite colour. (175) Unable to keep her thoughts from turning to dress, Isabella reveals her shallowness by her emphasis on dress and her belief in her own superiority to others in terms of appearance. She jilts James, but when she finds that Frederick’s dalliance with her will not result in marriage, she tries to enlist Catherine’s aid in restoring James’s good opinion of her. Yet despite the gravity of this situation, Isabella’s interest in dress surfaces at every turn to show her greater interest in superficiality and show than in emotion or constancy. In contrast, Catherine’s interest in clothing is a fault of her youth, and dress is never her chief love. Despite Austen’s narrator labeling Catherine from the start of the novel as an anti-heroine, Catherine’s foibles are repairable. When she first meets Henry Tilney, he teases her with stereotypes of feminine superficiality: ‘I see what you think of me,’ said he gravely – I shall make but a poor figure in your journal to-morrow.’ ‘My journal!’ ‘Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; worse my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings – plain black shoes – appeared much to advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.’ (12) Part of Henry’s satire of stereotypical femininity lies in his mock assumption that Catherine’s journal would order its contents by importance: dress first, occurrences afterward. What a woman wears and how she looks should not take precedence over 268 all else, and this is part of Henry’s gentle joking with Catherine here. He strikes Catherine as odd because of his chatter about dress, but it is this sort of conversation with which he greatly impresses Mrs. Allen. When Mrs. Allen joins Catherine and Henry, she laments a hole in her sleeve, ‘for this is a favourite gown, though it cost but nine shillings a yard.’ ‘That is exactly what I should have guessed it, madam,’ said Mr. Tilney, looking at the muslin. ‘Do you understand muslins, sir?’ ‘Particularly well; I always buy my own cravats, and am allowed to be an excellent judge; and my sister has often trusted me in the choice of a gown. I bought one for her the other day, and it was pronounced to be a prodigious bargain by every lady who saw it. I gave but five shillings a yard for it, and a true Indian muslin.’ Mrs. Allen was quite struck by his genius. ‘Men commonly take so little notice of those things,’ said she [...] (14) Henry continues talking in this vein with Mrs. Allen, but Catherine fears that Henry “indulged himself a little too much with the foibles of others” (15). Whereas Mrs. Allen can only apprehend the surface meaning of the conversation and thus believes that Henry does indeed take great interest in women’s dress, Catherine understands Henry to be satirizing Mrs. Allen for her interest in dress as a serious and important matter. Catherine’s ability to realize that the surface content of a conversation does not constitute its only meaning subtly correlates to her growing understanding that the surfaces of dress are not the sole focus of respectable femininity. These traits allow for Catherine to transcend anti-heroine status and enjoy the happy ending of marriage to Henry. 269 Northanger Abbey is not unique among Austen’s works in displaying female characters’ relatively empty heads through their interest in dress. For instance, Austen’s Emma (1816) ends with its heroine’s marriage and Mrs. Elton revealing her shallow superficiality by snidely commenting on Emma’s too-few veils, and Pride and Prejudice’s (1813) Miss Bingley shows her cruelty and jealousy by gloating over Elizabeth Bennett’s muddy petticoats. In each case, readers know these female characters’ moral worth through their approach to dress. Emma cares more about her marriage than her wedding clothes, and through this readers know that she is virtuous and Mrs. Elton is petty; Elizabeth Bennett cares more for her sister’s health than for the state of her dress, and through this readers know that she is virtuous and Miss Bingley is petty. Northanger Abbey sets itself apart from these other novels, however, because it couples its presentation of love of dress as shallow with a polemical defense of novels. The narrator describes Catherine and Isabella’s growing friendship by detailing their shared activities. Among these activities are their pinning up of each other’s trains for dancing and their reading of novels together. “Yes, novels,” the narrator defiantly writes, and launches into a defense of the genre. Its passion stems in part from the amount of space that Austen devotes to it, and for that reason I quote it at length: I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding – joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets 270 on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens, – there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste, to recommend them. ‘I am no novel reader – I seldom look into novels – Do not imagine that I often read novels – It is really very well for a novel.’ – Such is the common cant. – ‘And what are you reading, Miss—?’ ‘Oh! it is only a novel!’ replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. – ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of with and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language. (21-2) Austen only mentions by name novels written by women (Frances Burney’s Cecilia and Camilla, and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda), and her labeling of these works as those “in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed” provides her defense with a gendered component. She extends the label of novelist to herself – “Let us not desert each other” – performing a very different maneuver from her eighteenth-century predecessors. 271 Even Burney, whom Austen’s narrator praises so highly, demonstrates a hesitance to allow that she is a novelist. Her dedicatory epistle to Queen Charlotte that prefaces Camilla proclaims, “I blush at the inference I seem here to leave open of annexing undue importance to a production of apparently so light a kind” (Burney, Camilla 3). Burney’s reluctance to classify her works as novels is an inheritance of eighteenth-century novelistic tradition. Samuel Richardson positions himself much as Daniel Defoe does regarding Moll Flanders: as editor of a found, real manuscript. In the case of Clarissa, Richardson even claims that he received the advice of friends to “give a narrative turn to the letters” (36). But Richardson asserts that other gentlemen cautioned him “that in all works of this, and of the dramatic kind, story or amusement should be considered as little more than the vehicle to the more necessary instruction” (Richardson, Clarissa 36). These friends give voice to Richardson’s philosophy of the novels that he wrote, with the phrase “works of this [...] kind” being as close as his preface comes to labeling his production a novel. His preface to Pamela provide a more sustained philosophy of the goal of novels: If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: [...] If to paint VICE in its proper colours, to make it deservedly odious; and to set VIRTUE in its own amiable light, to make it look lovely: [...] If to effect all these good ends, in so probable, so natural, so lively a manner, as shall engage the passions of every sensible reader, and attach their regard to the story: [...] 272 If these be laudable or worthy recommendations, the Editor of the following Letters, which have their foundation both in Truth and Nature, ventures to assert, that all these ends are obtained here, together. (Richardson, Pamela 31) Here, Richardson emphasizes that novels can use an entertaining style while inculcating serious lessons regarding virtue; the raising of real emotion for fictional characters can guide readers to value virtue, but the improvement must appear in “a dress fit to be seen,” as Defoe’s editorial persona asserts in the preface to Moll Flanders (37). The “foundation” of Pamela may be in “Truth and Nature,” but the exterior is one of fiction, aligning fiction with surface and shallowness against Richardson’s evident intention. Austen’s narrator in Northanger Abbey embeds sartorial metaphors in her defense of novels that challenge the supremacy of appearances in novels’ ability to enlighten readers. Yet here, dress metaphors clearly are not flattering. The reviewers of fictions “talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans” (Austen, Northanger Abbey 21, emphasis mine). The reviewers’ lack of creativity is revealed in their resorts to cliché that the term ‘threadbare’ implies. Worn to the point of being worn out, criticisms against the novel themselves have succumbed to the status of being merely superficial complaints. “From pride, ignorance, or fashion,” Austen’s narrator writes, “our foes are almost as many as our readers” (21). Fashion here figures as lack. Just as pride is lack of proper humility and ignorance is lack of knowledge, fashion is lack of individual thought. Austen’s defense of novels performs 273 differently than does Richardson’s or Defoe’s, because while these earlier novelists allow metaphors of dress and surface to apply to their productions, Austen levies sartorial metaphors as weapons against novels’ detractors. The truly superficial and the insistently fashionable mind refuses “some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed” (22). 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Creator Strong, Kathryn (author)

Core Title Dress and deception: women's dress and the eighteenth-century British novel

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 05/08/2009

Defense Date 11/19/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Britain,clothes,clothing,Deception,dress,eighteenth century,gender,novel,OAI-PMH Harvest,Women

Place Name England (countries), islands: Great Britain (geographic subject), United Kingdom (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Braudy, Leo (committee chair), Alkon, Paul K. (committee member), Anderson, Emily (committee member), Banner, Lois (committee member)

Creator Email kathrynstrong@gmail.com,kstrong@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2218

Unique identifier UC1100564

Identifier etd-Strong-2678 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-248305 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2218 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Strong-2678.pdf

Dmrecord 248305

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Strong, Kathryn

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu