Dress, Distress and Desire: Clothing and the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Batchelor, J.

Dress, Distress and Desire explores representations of sartorial experience in eighteenth-century literature. Batchelor's study brings together for the first time canonical and non-canonical texts including novels, conduct books and women's magazines to investigate the pressures that the growth of the fashion market placed on conceptions of female virtue and propriety. It shows how dress dispelled the sentimental myth that the body acted as a moral index and enabled the women reader to resist some of sentimental literature's more prescriptive advice.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2005-01-01

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9781349525010

DOI: 10.1057/9780230508200

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 216