Fashion and the “Indian Mutiny”
The “Red Paisley Shawl” in Wilkie Collins's Armadale
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411852 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Suchitra Choudhury (University of Glasgow, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 817-832 |
| Publication date | 2016-11-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150316000231 |
| OpenAlex | W2547268861 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 29 |
In the April issue of the Quarterly Review of 1863, H. L. Mansel, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, disparaged “sensation” novels by comparing them to cheap fashion wear. “A commercial atmosphere floats around works of this class, redolent of the manufactory and the shop,” he taunted, “The public want novels and novels must be made – so many yards of printed stuff, sensation pattern, to be ready by the beginning of the season” (500). To scholars of Victorian literature, Mansel's analogy now serves as a commonplace for literary commercialism. Its other emphasis, which is on fashion, however, has received less attention. This paper examines Wilkie Collins's use of dress in Armadale (1864-66), as presented in the example of Lydia Gwilt's favoured attire, a “black gown and a red Paisley shawl”; and suggests that Collins uses the Paisley shawl to provide an indirect reference to the Indian Mutiny. In particular, the essay argues that as well as generating a humanised reading of Lydia's character, her shawl is a powerful metaphor to symbolize mid-century anxieties about class and empire
Ancient history · Art · Art history · Commercialism · Epistemology · Jungle · Literature · Metaphysics · Mutiny · Political science · Australian History and Society · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · History · Law · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature
Victorian Sensation Fiction
The Ideas in Things
Lady Audley’s Secret
The Empire Inside
The Nineteenth Century Sensation Novel
Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation
Accessories to Modernity
Nobody's Angels
Kashmir Shawls in Mid-Victorian Novels
Introduction
In Darkest England and the Way Out”
Design Piracy in the Fashion Industries of Paris and New York in the Interwar Years
The Ideology of Narrative Form in Sensation Fiction
The Idea of Poverty
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2022 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |