Mourning Dress (Routledge Revivals)

Finding Difference in Emotional Communities: New Feminisms of Women's Lives in the Nineteenth Centuryceand Sixth Millenniumbce

“…Mourning wear can be characterized, archaeologically and socially, through its materiality and its colour. Largely black in the instance of deep (or first) mourning, and expanding to include sombre colours such as white, grey and pale purple as mourning progressed, mourning wear was heavily associated with materials such as crape and bombazine, jet and seed pearls (Taylor 2009, 202–4, 229, 234). Such elaborate performative mourning has often been associated with social climbing, with women used as showpieces by their families to demonstrate the family's virtue, respectability, and, most importantly, means (Taylor 2009, 136).…”

“…Largely black in the instance of deep (or first) mourning, and expanding to include sombre colours such as white, grey and pale purple as mourning progressed, mourning wear was heavily associated with materials such as crape and bombazine, jet and seed pearls (Taylor 2009, 202–4, 229, 234). Such elaborate performative mourning has often been associated with social climbing, with women used as showpieces by their families to demonstrate the family's virtue, respectability, and, most importantly, means (Taylor 2009, 136). The spread of mourning dress, along with the elaborate funeral procession and other accoutrements, throughout Victorian society has been characterized as an effort at class emulation (Cannon 1989, 438–9), an argument which was commonly used in the period to dissuade expenditure on such lavish funerals (e.g.…”

“…Chadwick 1843). Performative mourning, it has been argued (Curl 2000; Ruberg 2008; Taylor 2009), was largely indicative of status, control and the effects of peer pressure, rather than an expression of true grief. However, narratives based around status aspects of performative mourning are arguably based on conventional narratives constructed around class, which have their origins in the nineteenth century and continue to be enacted today, and uncritically interpreting evidence from the past in those terms can only reinforce them.…”

“…It may also be necessary, therefore, to apply this relationship-led focus not only to objects of private mourning, but also to performative mourning wear, and to consider mourning wear as a method of reconstructing relationships following bereavement. It is possible to start to investigate more about the way bereaved women interacted with each other by dismantling the assumption that mourning culture is something oppressive, forced upon women to control their mode of dress and social lives (Taylor 2009, 136). The sheer amount of clothing on offer, as well as its marketing by retailers, is more indicative of the amount of choice available.…”

“…This, however, does not take into account the long mourning periods recommended for all manner of relatives. At two years for parents and mothers-in-law, a year for children, and six months for brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents (Taylor 2009, 303), a woman who strictly observed mourning could be in black for upwards of 10 years over the course of her life, with few reliable ways for onlookers to determine if she had been widowed. If mourning served a social function of letting eligible men know that a woman was becoming available, then it seems reasonable that mourning for widows would be in some way exceptional, but this does not appear to be the case.…”