Fashion as argument: nineteenth century dress reform.

• Author: Torrens, Kathleen M.

When a large number of individuals choose a style or element of dress that lies outside the established vocabulary of images, the choice is no longer individual speech but "publicspeak." Publicspeak reflects the sentiments of similar and dissimilar individuals and aggregates. (Rubinstein, 1995, p. 12)

Precedent is longstanding for social protest to be written on the body. The human body occupies varying positions in social movements, sometimes being the focus, as in the debates over abortion rights, capital punishment and rights for the physically challenged. In other cases, the body becomes the focal point for the construction and maintenance of ideology, as well as the principle visual metaphor for the movement. The body may be the site of discursive practices that symbolize new radical notions of the status quo (Butler, 1993). Clothing often functions as an argumentative sign of movement membership, identifying individuals who dissent, resist, or protest. For example, Hare Krishnas, Hasidicjews, Hell's Angels, and youth gangs all signify their group ideology, at least in part, through their clothing (Rubinstein, 1995). In these examples, individuals make claims about their affiliations and loyalties through their clothing.

The nineteenth-century dress reform movement exemplifies social protest evolving from and centering on the body. The female body was inscribed at this time with nearly indelible expectations, beliefs, and norms of femininity. The prevailing definition of femininity, circumscribed by and enforced by modes of fashion, provided an eloquent and elusive battleground for the struggle to equality. Dress reformers emancipated their bodies from the physical and ideological constraints of conventional fashion, insisting on equal station and access to the public domain. In this essay, I argue that dress reformers used the body as the source of and site for argumentation supporting equality for women. The reform costume or short dress embodied the movement's ideology by redefining femininity and the appropriate sphere of movement and influence for women.

CONTEXT: NINETEENTH CENTURY FEMININITY

In nineteenth-century America industrialization revolutionized life, invoking cultural, social, political, and educational change. Opportunities for women expanded and contracted simultaneously. Such tremendous social upheaval in such a short time--fifty years--created significant tension in the United States. Traditional values became obsolete, yet were simultaneously idealized. The "pastoral myth" remained strongly appealing (Berg, 1978). However, disparity segregated the dreams of success and fortune and the reality awaiting those migrating to the cities. The stress created by this discrepancy "was heightened by the knowledge that their fierce aspirations for wealth hastened the demise of the idyllic, simple, noncompetitive agrarian republic they philosophically still espoused" (Berg, 1978, p. 45). Belief systems shifted, the traditional family transformed, accepted gender roles collapsed. In addition, vast uncertainty arose about new ways of life, new technologies, new knowledge and information, and new strategies of consumption. People sought identity and ideals consistent with the new social milieu. Ehrenreich and English (1978) depict this confusion:

Everything that was "natural" is overturned. What had unquestionably been "human nature" suddenly appears archaic; what had been accepted for centuries as human destiny is no longer acceptable, and in most cases, is not even possible (p. 12).

Many tried to harmonize the old with the new, to protect themselves and "fit into the crowd" (Sennett, 1976, p. 164). Clearly, sacrifices had to compensate for the reigning chaos and allay uncertainty. Furthermore, much of the sacrifice designed to appease this cultural discomfort fell to women because of their low political and public status.

The actual position of women during this period can be characterized as a paradox of opportunities and constraints. The eighteenth century had already witnessed the assimilation of women into the public sphere as cooperative, functioning members. After industrialization, however, it became less acceptable for average middle-class women to step outside the increasingly constraining private sphere. Some nineteenth-century women had access to education and employment outside the home, but it was frowned upon (Banner, 1983). The ideal woman decorated the private sphere; the man populated the public arena (Sennett, 1976; Steiner, 1979).

Perhaps because of their marginalized position relative to the power bases of society and because their sphere comprised the home and private life, women were imbued with the values and mores of earlier times. In fact, Welter (1976) claims that "if women had not existed, the age would have had to invent them, in order to maintain the rhetoric of eighteenth-century democracy" (pp. 85-86). The pressures and upheavals of everyday life, the need for familiarity and structure in belief systems, and - the lack of defining qualities about the nation created the institution of "home," and "woman" became its caretaker. As a result, "the middle-class home and the woman who managed it found new importance as a symbol of the American way of life" (Theriot, 1996, p. 78).

Cultural definitions of femininity impeded the expansion of women's opportunities outside the home. The political status of women did not significantly change from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. As noted by Lerner (1973), however, "the spread of the franchise to ever wider groups of white males during thejacksonian age, the removal of property restrictions, the increasing number of immigrants who acquired access to the franchise, made the gap between these newly enfranchised voters and the disfranchised women more obvious" (p. 99). The disparity of opportunity between women and men was also evident in the rigid codification of separate spheres. From functioning members of the system to superfluous bystanders, women began to see themselves as "isolated from social life except as ornaments, marginal with respect to idealized values except those reserved for women, and wholly excluded from national political life" (Steiner, 1979, p. 82). The female body displayed the family wealth; a well-to-do man possessed a wife (for she was his property) who wore clever, ornate clothing, exhibited the pallor and thin physique fashionable at the time, and who did not work at anything beyond her appearance and the maintenance of her home (Lauer & Lauer, 1981; Banner, 1983).

The nineteenth-century body provided a site of discursive engagement: a site of contest, definition, and debate. Clothing decorated the body, but also symbolized and enforced gender and social station. Clothing became a prison and a marker. Physical appearance in this era signified one's station in society and provided mass relief from the chaos engendered by industrialization. Public appearance was taken seriously, as people "believed they could fathom the character of those they saw" (Sennett, 1976, p. 69). The adequacy of a person's station and the appropriateness of their gender performance was determined by their clothing (Hollander, 1994). Restrictive and unhealthy fashions constrained women physically, the frippery of fashion constrained them economically; creating elaborate displays of frills, furbelows and flounces absorbed potentially productive time. Fashionable clothes performed gender by symbolizing and enforcing women's restriction from the public sphere (Lauer & Lauer, 1980). Appropriate clothing indicated membership in the burgeoning affluence of the middle class and acceptance of the rights and opportunities associated with it. The significance of clothing at this historical juncture cannot be overstated.

The social markings of fashionable clothing tremendously affected women's health and well-being. Catharine Beecher (1848) noted that "American women are unusually subject to disease" (p. 41). Sadly, the fashion of pallor and delicacy encouraged some women to feign illness (Banner, 1983). Given the clothes worn, however, pretense was not always required. "Headaches, and backaches, and sideaches, dyspepsias, neuralgias, and consumption, with all the long train of weaknesses peculiar to their sex" are only some of the evils of Fashion identified by Mrs. M. M. Jones lecturing before the 1864 World Health Convention in New York (Jones, 1865, p. 9). Corsets encouraged disuse and atrophy of vital muscles and disarranged the internal structure of the body, rendering the major organs dysfunctional (Haynes, 1874; Safford-Blake, 1874; Lauer & Lauer, 1981). Stylish attire also...