Thinking about what they wrote by thinking about what they wore

By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald

While many people examine authors based on what they write, two English professors want to examine authors by what they wore.

Katherine Joslin, Ph.D., and Daneen Wardrop, Ph.D., English professors at Western Michigan University, discussed “Reading Dress and Discourse” Thursday night, Jan. 28 in Brown Hall.
The keynote presentation in the English Department Scholarly Speaker Series, “Reading Dress and Discourse” looked at the fashion of author Edith Wharton and poet Emily Dickinson and the fashion sense of their characters.

The topic also relates to the professor’s new books, “Emily Dickinson and the Making of Clothing” by Wardrop and “Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion” by Joslin, both released last year.

“It’s interesting to focus on material culture because it’s often what we discard,” Joslin said. “If we look at women’s clothing, changes in clothing and fabrics are the agent of change.”
Edith Wharton lived at a time when handmade clothing was being replaced by machine and factory made clothing and began using clothing extensively in her later years, Joslin said.
Wharton gave much of her clothing to her maids when she died, but a few of her dresses were available to Joslin to examine for her book.

“You could just imagine the handiwork that work into those. I learned to sew when I was a girl and we learned to hide the seams. You could see all the seams on the sequins on the inside,” Joslin said.

Joslin also argued that Wharton’s book “Age of Innocence” revolved around a single Empire-cut dress worn by a character that didn’t come into style during the period the book is set in.
The Empire-cut was a high-waisted dress gathered under the breasts based on early Greek dresses that hung from the shoulders.

The dress eventually became a symbol of freedom in France, where Wharton lived.
“Wharton places the gown in the 1870’s, acknowledging it’s out of fashion and not to be understood by stuffy Americans,” Joslin said.

Emily Dickinson, usually imagined as a serene figure wearing a white dress, didn’t wear white that much, Wardrop said.

“Dickinson is a poet of the body,” Wardrop said. “We’ve usually thought Dickinson was above clothing, sort of like Einstein. I thought of her with a closet of white dresses. But Dickinson was highly attuned to clothing, as her poems indicate.”

Clothing found that belonged to Dickinson, some of which Wardrop examined for her book, actually shows that Dickinson wore many dark colors with black lace due to the number of occasions for mourning in her life, Wardrop said.

Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” shows an example of Dickinson’s use of clothing, Wardrop said.

In the poem, a woman wearing only a tippet, a scarf or shawl-like article of clothing, made of thin tulle netting encounters Death driving a carriage.

“That would have alerted an alarm to readers that a tippet of only tulle would make her vulnerable and that it attracts attention to her,” Wardrop said.

When the poem was first published, many editors dropped the stanza where the tippet is described, deeming it too explicit for readers, Wardrop said.

Joslin thinks that not only will modern writers’ fashion be analyzed in the future, but it can be examined right now.

“The most timely fashion we can see is at the State of the Union address,” Joslin said. “You could tell political affiliation just by looking at their clothing. On the Republican side you had women like Olympia Snowe wore very sedated colors. On the Democratic side you had an explosion of colors.”

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=14295

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 31 2010. Filed under Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com