Dust Ho!

Whenever I need a good shot of righteous indignation, I like to search through Google Books on keywords like 'ridiculous dress' or 'ludicrous gown', because I'm never disappointed. I can always find some man who has decided that the only thing wrong with the world is women's dress, and that of course he, being far above the vagaries of fashion (and who is, of course, wearing that completely rational item of dress, the necktie) is ideally suited to pass criticism upon it.

This example is wonderful -- it's not that the streets of London are filthy, or that men should perhaps not throw their cigar butts in the gutter -- no, women's dresses are too long. (Why can't both things be true, I wonder?)

SOCIAL CATECHISM.
Q. WHAT is the dirtiest creature you know?
A. The English fine lady.
Q. What are your reasons for saying this ?
A. Her habits.
Q. Explain yourself more fully.
A. When she walks she drags behind her a receptacle for dust and dirt of every kind.
Q. What is this called?
A. A long dress, or train.
Q. What is its action?
A. It sweeps the ground, collects mud, dust, cigar-stumps, straws, leaves, and every other impurity.
Q. What happens next?
A. This accumulation rubs off to a certain extent upon other portions of her dress, or upon the legs of any person who may walk beside her, and when she gets into her carriage, the objectionable matter spoils the lining ; besides that, the dust is most offensive.
Q. Why does she wear such a ridiculous dress?
A. For one of two reasons. Either because she aims at a servile imitation of certain great folks, or because she owes money to her milliner, and dares not order any kind of dress except that which this tyrant sends home to her.
Q. Why does she not raise, or loop up her dress to keep it from the ground?
A. Because, being a lazy person, she has thick ancles [sic], or being a scraggy person, she has skinny ones, which her vanity forbids her to exhibit.
Q. Is there any other reason?
A. Yes; she has probably ugly feet, disfigured by corns or bunions caused by wearing tight boots.
Q. Is there any cure for such habits?
There is none, until her husband has been nearly ruined by her extravagance, when she is compelled by economical reasons to dress like a rational being, and at once becomes clean and charming as the British female was intended to be.
Q. What sensation is caused to man by the sight of these dresses ?
A. Contemptuous pity for the woman, and pity, without contempt, for her unfortunate husband.
Q. Does she know this ?
A. Yes, but as she dresses less to please men than to vex women, the knowledge has no effect upon her dirty habits.
Q. Where can the animal be seen?
A. At the Zoological Gardens on Sunday afternoons, in the Park and Kensington Gardens, and in most places where fine clothes can be successfully exhibited.
Q. What lesson should you deduce from this ?
A. That of thankfulness to Providence that, (if married at all) you are married to a sensible woman and not to a fine lady.
Q. What will you take to drink ?
A. Anything you like to put a name to.

Comments

[Latter-Day Flapper]

[Cue sarcasm] . . . because it's not as thought men were the fashion designers and dictators of what was modest, moral, and respectable, right?You know, there was a "Simpsons" cartoon recently that was a spoof of Tom Sawyer. There's a carnival log ride with a camera at the end. One character says, "This young lady is flashing her private parts!" and the photograph shown is of a woman showing her ankle.

[libbylondon]

I love the part where it says she doesn't want to show her ankles out of vanity, because they're too thick or too skinny - not because, of course, he'd call her a slag if she did!

[Sally]

What a rendition of hatred of women! The assumption that she is spending all her husbands money on clothing, etc., etc. Ah, the charm of the historic era!Not that the same attitudes don't exist today, but at least they are not so prevalent.

[Eirlys]

Skirting the subject of womankind being blamed for everything, whatever her conduct (it was ever thus), when my mother asked her father (born 1876) what it had been like back in the days when women (or should that be "ladies"?) wore long skirts (which she imagined to have been terribly romantic), his reply surprised her. He said it was pretty filthy, the worst thing being the amount of horse-sh*t that would attach itself to the hem area. It's easy to forget that there was an awful lot of it lying around the streets in the late 19th century. And quite a bit of it conjured up by the gentlemen at Punch who should really have known better. Tsk, tsk!

[WhiteStone]

I've often viewed the long skirts in movies and wondered how in the world those women kept their gowns clean? I thought perhaps in the "real" world the hems were slightly above the surface of the ground and perhaps it was only in the movies that these "romantic" dresses dragged the ground. I stand reproved on that thought. In today's world we change clothes daily. But surely in those days they didn't wash those yards and yards and yards of fabric after a single wearing? Cough! Cough!

[lorrwill]

I agree the original author smacks of misogyny.Wait - What? You mean our childhood tales of the sum of all that is virtuous and beautiful, the epitome of femininity, the unsullied, virginal fairy princess in her long, flowing gowns is actually repugnant?But not ironically I wore a full, ankle length full skirt a couple of weeks ago and it swept the stairs outside my apartment building as I went down them - even that gave me a little gross out.Horsepatties - ewwwwwwwwwwwww.Seriously, this why platform shoes were invented. (For as pointed out, raising the hem would have made the woman a harlot.)Neckties - LOL!!!!!

[Zoltar Panaflex]

I used to work at this law firm in Seattle in the earliest 90's. One day, I wore suit pants, a pure white shirt and a tie (I am a girl...)I spent the day observing the rather nervous, confused male herd observing my tie, and each time I'd walk the long hallways, each man would reach up and grasp his symbolic tie in a very Freudian way.

[La BellaDonna]

If my memory serves me correctly - and I know it does - these were the same "rational folk" who went into flipping CONNIPTIONS at the possibility of ladies shortening their long skirts, revealing neither ankles thick nor ankles thin, but perfectly modest, fully gathered, Turkish trowsers - that is, the Bloomer Costume.Misogynistic creep. Eirlys, it's why the little boys would be paid a penny to "sweep the crossing" - so that the ladies didn't. One writer reminisced about carrying a banana skin into the house in a hem which had come half-undone! The REALLY awful part is looking at some of the crude sketches of early San Francisco, when the ladies would pay some man to carry them across the street because the streets were open, running sewers - and running with rats, scampering/swimming down them. Even as late as turn-of-the-century (1900), herds of pigs would roam the streets of New York. And some of what you'd find on the open garbage heaps I won't mention here.Whitestone, the ladies would sew wool/mohair braid around the hems of their skirts - that is, the hem itself would be INSIDE the "braid sandwich" (the braid was really just flat tape, a little like our hem bindings). This was called "brush braid," and it was expected to pick up the worst of the wear and tear and ... whatever else got picked up. After the lady was done with her errands, and when her skirt dried, she would then BRUSH OFF whatever had encrusted itself on the brush braid. Hem lengths varied with fashions; if you weren't a lady with a carriage, you weren't SUPPOSED to be dragging a train in the dirt! But sometimes there weren't a lot of options available, and in periods when even "walking skirts" had trains, the ladies could buy detachable ruffles that were meant to go on the underside of the the hems of the trains (in addition to brush braid). The French called them "balayeuse;" in plain English, "street sweepers" or "dust ruffles." And there were plenty of women at the time who thought hours spent brushing dirt off long skirts was a perishing waste of time! No, they certainly did NOT wash their skirts or dresses every time they wore them; this was a time period when a gown would be made up out of material that had NOT been preshrunk (because how wasteful to wash something that wasn't dirty!), and it might be worn all summer before it was washed (if it was a washable fabric). And then it would be ripped apart and remade, because, as often as not, it would have shrunk. Wools, of course, were not washed. It's not quite as horrible as it sounds, either; remember, women kept the WASHABLE fabric - layers and layers of it - between them and the uppermost gown, which would be aired, brushed, and spot-cleaned as needed. The washable layers, of course, WERE washed.

[jen]

that is AWESOME. (besides this brief comment, i am speechless. and amused.)

[Anonymous]

I think this man was just hoping he'd get to see ladies ankles and knees. He is really reaching for an argument in favor of shorter skirts, that it makes me think there was an ulterior motive. I notice that he's not suggesting trousers as a less unsanitary alternative to a dress with a train. This is merely a guy hoping for the development of miniskirts. Pretty transparent, I'd say.Shaun

[Cookie]

A few sad women actually died from wearing hoop skirts/crinolines, which had metal hoops. I read of one that was blown of the deck of a ship in a heavy gale, and another whose skirt caught fire, and she couldn't escape it. 1) This priggy man would have even more of a conniption if he saw a woman walking (comfortably) down the street in a halter top and shorts. 2) He doesn't acknowledge that fashion styles were arbitrated by what was acceptable to men. Queen Victoria had a huge influence as well, yet her modesty was shaped by a patriarchal society. 3) Women -- and men -- aspired in whatever way they could to wear what was "in fashion" because the class structure was so important in England that people were always trying to copy the nobles, in an effort to somehow better their lives.DIAGNOSIS: SAD

[La BellaDonna]

Cookie, more than a few. One Christmas Eve, a fire swept a cathedral in South America, leaping from crinoline to crinoline; more than 2,000 women died in that one incident. England, the U.S., South America; pioneer ladies and English nobility died as a result of fire tragedies directly linked to wearing crinolines (and I'm referring, now, to multiple instances, not just the one great tragedy).

[Cookie]

DEAR LORD! Yiiiiiiiiiiiiikes!

[Anonymous]

Ladies and gentlemen, hold your horses! Said quote comes from the Victorian equivalent of today's The Onion. The piece in question is more a comentary of "ladies" vs. "sensible women" than it is on women in general. This journal was written from a middle-class point of view and as such, takes a punch or two at the upper classes, among other things. More information here: http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/punch/pva44.html

[Anonymous]

And then there was the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900, and the story of the woman who died when she couldn't pull herself out of the floodwaters because of her long, heavy, wet dress. Wow, clothing that's actually dangerous. I hadn't thought about the getting dirty part, though. Yuck. And truly, how much could a woman get away with putting herself in more functional clothing. Look how upset people were when Katharine Hepburn wore trousers, and that's fairly recent history.Dawn

[Cookie]

The clothes under Napoleon were quite comfortable...and risque! They were thin chemise dresses and I think they were worn without corsets. Sometimes the ladies damped them down to make them even more clingy and see-through. Not that they were really see-through to begin with, but you know those jaded royal courts....maybe for parties?

[lupinbunny]

Osacr Wilde's wife, and Oscar Wilde himself (ironically, given his reputation for dandyism) were proponents of sensible dress for women. Together they founded a group/ society that I can't remember the name of for the life of me. They promoted the Aesthetic style of dress for women (which aesthetically for the majority of Brits looked rather like you'd popped out to the theatre in your dressing gown). Long skirts weren't their concern, from memory, but they favoured pants/ culottes hidden under an overskirt, or visible for exercise, and no corset (or other supportive undergarment) whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Apparently, Oscar Wilde's 2 half sisters died in a freak accident when their ball dress crinolines caught on fire:http://www.hoganstand.com/general/Identity/extras/gaels/stories/wilde.htmCMC

[lorrwill]

Highly informative and humorous at the same time. I love reading these comments as much as Erin's posts.

[Beth]

la belladonna,You are amazing. How do you know all this?

[the_lazymilliner]

Crinolines aside, can I just say how I hate the word ho?

[Lavon]

I made a long gown once. Sweeping the ground.I had to throw it away after one wearing.So yes the women who conformed to the men's idea of modesty had every right to spend their husbands money on new dresses.Show the ankles! Save the gowns!

[Toby Wollin]

I recall being told that during the 1830s in the US, fully a third of women died because their skirts caught fire from cooking either over open fires or at fireplaces. The invention of the stove was a major improvement.

[La BellaDonna]

Anonymous, my information does NOT come from Punch; I'm referring to a fire that took place in Santiago, Chile: the Iglesia de la Compaa de Jess caught fire during an 1863 church service, and over 2000 people died.Beth, Heh. I'm hoping that's a compliment. I think the correct answer is "compulsion." I've been interested in historic dress/folk dress/clothing and construction since I was about six; I remember looking things up in the Britanicca, since it was all I had access to at the time. I have hundreds of volumes in my library, which is always expanding. If I'd spent as much time studying medicine, I'd be a neurosurgeon by now. C'est la guerre.

[Cookie]

Together they founded a group/society that I can't remember the name of for the life of me. They promoted the Aesthetic style >> Was this the Bloomsbury Group? Incidentally, Liberty of London was a big supplier to fans of the Aesthetic Movement. They originally purchased their decorative fabrics from the Far East, then eventually began weaving their own when the market took off. (Or so says Wikipedia)