![Sample our Arts journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110799/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Arts.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper offers new perspectives on the reception of the women’s dress reform movement in Britain and North America. Focusing on a central case study of a satirical letter and accompanying illustration parodying Bloomerism, which was published on both sides of the Atlantic, periodical editorials are analyzed in light of contemporary social and political attitudes. In contrast to commonly held assumptions about Bloomerism having failed because of deeply entrenched gender norms, it is instead asserted that the eventual backlash against the Bloomer fashion was a result of the British association with America’s poor showing at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and not necessarily because of inherent objections to its sartorial aesthetics.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Ashanti Marshall, for piquing my curiosity by bringing the existence of the two versions of “Woman’s Emancipation” to my attention.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See, for example, the multiple portraits of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689‒1762), who observed and even wore authentic Turkish dress during her sojourn in Istanbul in 1716‒1718 with her ambassador husband. Fashionable Englishwomen emulated the exotic dress in portraits and at fancy-dress balls thereafter.
2. Before July 1855, Punch was divided into six-monthly volumes without internal dates; the volume containing the piece under discussion covered July to December 1851.
3. Boston was the center of Emancipationism and well-known for its liberal and reformist atmosphere (one need only recall the novels of Henry James); it is also important to note that it was also the seat of the American Revolution, which had taken place 75 years earlier. Punch’s reference to it being an intellectual city also makes reference to the fact that New England colleges were the first to admit women to higher education.
4. A reference to the philosophy of Samuel Thomson, the New Hampshire herbalist, 1769‒1843, whose patent medicines riled the established medical profession at the time, or to George Thompson (1823–1873), author of the sexually explicit Venus in Boston (1849).
5. His papers are now held by the Yale University Library: Increase N. Tarbox Papers Manuscript Group 1153. It is not immediately clear, however, how the editors of Punch managed to hear of him in 1851.
6. “There is not a number of this Magazine that does not supply British periodicals with articles. In some instances, tales from these pages have even been translated into French of German, and published in French or German periodicals, from which subsequently they have been translated back into English, published in British Magazines, and finally copied into American papers. … For its merit we appeal to the general declaration of the press, that this is ‘the most readable’ of the magazines, and to the fact that nearly everything we publish is reprinted in these second-rate periodicals over the water, which, like the second-rate ones here, live on other people’s brains, stealing what they can” (“A Word to our Readers” Citation1853, 98).
7. Splinter groups of social eccentrics seemed to be drawn to the reformed dress for various reasons. Vegetarianism was a cause allied to the health reform agendas of sanatoriums, water-cures, and homeopathy, which promoted female activity and personal agency in the promotion of good health. However, the perceived unnaturalness of female fashions led to a reaction on aesthetic principles, also, and artists seemed to support Bloomerism for this reason (“The Bloomer Costume” Citation1851a). This motive was also behind the later Aesthetic dress movement in England.
8. The Great Exhibition was recognized as a fashionable place: an 1852 fashion plate by Anais Colin-Toudouze for the French periodical Le Follet depicts two conventionally dressed ladies in the Crystal Palace (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: RP-P-2009-3333).
9. Susan Shapiro (Citation1991) points out that the evocation of a topsy-turvy carnivalesque world was an accepted satirical strategy in literature, and that it was used frequently by Punch when critiquing social reform and the relations between the sexes.
10. “Dressmaker” is a possible euphemism for prostitute, as historically many trades associated with dressmaking (including seamstressing and millinery) did not pay a living wage, and female workers were forced to turn to casual prostitution (see Mayhew Citation1861). Given that the author is careful not to call Mrs. Dexter a lady, and the following references to prostitution in this piece, it seems a likely possibility. See also Fischer (Citation2001, 83–89) for discussion of why pantaloons were associated with sexual licentiousness.
11. A notorious neighborhood of prostitution in London.
12. John Leech, “Memorials of the Great Exhibition No. XVI—The North-American Lodgers in 1851” (Leech Citation1851, 232). For further discussion of the message contained within such caricatures, see Message and Johnston (Citation2008).
13. “An over-grown school girl in frock and trowsers [sic] would give a very good notion of a Bloomerite in full uniform” (“The Great Exhibition” Citation1851a).
14. “The general effect of the whole dress was anything but handsome. This may be owing to the wearer, who is rather of a petite figure and not exactly cast in the mould of the Venus de Medici … Mrs. Dexter, who manifested no small amount of nerve throughout the ordeal to which she was subjected, cannot be less than 32 years of age, and may be more—but this is a delicate subject, and we forbear pursuing it” (“The Bloomer Costume—Mrs. Dexter In Glasgow” Citation1851).
15. “[G]reat-aunt Elizabeth—an incorrigible Bloomer … this strong-minded woman and pugnacious patriot” (Barrington Citation1854, 325).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Julia Petrov
Julia Petrov is a lecturer in liberal studies at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Canada. Her research interests include attitudes toward fashion in the long nineteenth century, and she has worked in collections management and curatorial roles in fashion and textile collections in Canada and the UK. She has published widely on fashion museology.