I had a tough time finding a single topic on “The Victorian Dictionary” and certainly spent more time than I realized perusing the wealth of information on the site. I’ve always been interested in women’s history and their roles throughout various periods so I knew that I wanted to choose something having to do with that when I finally landed on an excerpt from London and Londoners in the Eighteen-Fifties and Sixties by Alfred Rosling Bennett. In a chapter that seems to just be about women’s fashion of the time, I noticed several pieces of information that are actually so much more than they appear and really allow us to examine culture in London at this time.

After reading the entire excerpt I understood that the fashion of the time was in direct opposition with itself. Bennett describes how extraordinary the giant hoop skirts of the time were and how each woman commanded a presence because of it. Even in day-to-day activities like riding the bus, women in these skirts were hard to ignore. Bennett emphasizes that this style was worn “by all classes alike, the extra-ordinary fascination afflicting maid as markedly as mistress” (Bennett); a point I think is worth looking at. After reading the first article for the introductory blog it was made very clear that London was a city very much divided by class. The fact that a fashion style was able to transcend such rigid divisions and become accessible to all women was very interesting to me, as it seems to go against many other social structures of the time.

I also noted how despite the extravagant clothing choices, women of this time did not wear make-up, seeing it as an unnecessary indulgence. A line that stood out to me in particular was “maneuvers of the kind were considered essentially French and unworthy of English womanhood” (Bennett). Having been to France I found this assertion humorous because a very popular French cliché is how the women are very fashionable and done up… I had never thought how this stereotype would affect other European cultures either positively or negatively. He also points out that this intolerance of makeup was also due to the fact that “the vast majority disdained such trickeries” (Bennett). This line also stood out to me because it is important to remember that women were still considered as second-class citizens and were victims of many societal pressures and practices. The fact that makeup was thought as “trickery” reminds the reader that although it is possible that many women did in fact believe that make up was an indulgence, the underlying theme is that they were not allowed to regardless.

After reading this excerpt, I definitely began to think more about fashion and what it can tell us about a woman’s life at the time in which she lives in. Although I really enjoy women’s studies I had never really read a lot about fashion so I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to glean so much new and thought-provoking information.

Bennett, Alfred Rosling. London and Londoners in the Eighteen-Fifties and Sixties. 1924. http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm.