Samuel Richardson, Dress, And Discourse

While dress is but one way of entering into a text, and a small point of entry at that, analysis of dress in Richardson's novels provides us with insights into the nature of novel writing in eighteenth-century England; into the nature of Richardson's novelistic project of constructing a legible domestic feminine body whose signification remains stable; and into the paradox that Richardson's ideal, sensible (as possessed of sensibility) female body is ultimately coded as male. It also calls into question the whole construct of the "domestic woman" and what this construct means in terms of bourgeois ideology: Is the ideal domestic woman merely a man in drag?

About the Author:
Kathleen M. Oliver is an assistant professor of English at the University of Central Florida