Title
Fashion Sense: Surfaces, Aesthetics, and Urban Space in U.S. Literature and Culture, 1843-1928
Publication Date
2016-08-07
Availability
Embargoed
Embargo Period
2018-08-07
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PHD)
Department
English (Arts and Sciences)
Date of Defense
2016-03-28
First Committee Member
John Funchion
Second Committee Member
Tassie Gwilliam
Third Committee Member
Joel Nickels
Fourth Committee Member
Keri Holt
Abstract
My dissertation argues that fashion operates in a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts to reveal a new form of perception and a mode of resistance predicated on fashion. Rather than being a tool of manipulation, fashion cultivates a conception of self. I take my cue from Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus’ theory of surface reading to suggest that the authors of novels and advice literature produce a mode of reading the surfaces of others. The key to understanding the role of fashion in the novel depends on what I am calling “fashion sense.” Fashion sense becomes a focal point of nineteenth-century aesthetic culture, providing a new way of feeling outside of hegemonic norms and prescriptive sentiment. This dissertation examines aesthetic strategies for resistance in etiquette manuals, periodicals, and novels. I consider the theories of Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, and Jacques Lacan to account for the tactical method of surface reading exhibited by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, and Nella Larsen. By tracing the nineteenth-century debates surrounding conduct and dress, I demonstrate that fashion is part of a larger philosophical discourse. Ultimately, the mass reproduction of both fashion and the novel underscores the way in which intersubjective desire informs industrialization and the use of urban space. I conclude with a discussion of aesthetic activism in new media using fashion.
Keywords
american fiction-nineteenth-century-history and criticism; fashion in literature; consumption (economics) in literature
Recommended Citation
Urban, Monica, "Fashion Sense: Surfaces, Aesthetics, and Urban Space in U.S. Literature and Culture, 1843-1928" (2016). Open Access Dissertations. 1725.
http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations/1725