DRESSING UP: HARDY’S TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES AND OLIPHANT’S PHOEBE JUNIOR

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsie B. Michie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Clothing Industry ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Middle Region ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Late Nineteenth

THE ANXIETY ABOUT BEING ill- or well-dressed that Margaret Oliphant evokes so vividly in this passage was particularly acute in the last half of the nineteenth century when changes in the clothes people wore reflected increasing class mobility. With the growth of a ready-to-wear clothing industry that made it more and more difficult to distinguish the bourgeoisie from the lower echelons of society, “dress became,” as Charles Blanc argued in 1872, “an image of the rapid movement that carries away the world” (qtd. in Benjamin 74). Alongside and as a result of this democratization of dress, a backlash occurred in which subtleties of dress became a means of reinforcing the very class distinctions that seemed to be vanishing in the late nineteenth century. As Rudolph von Jhering argued in 1869, “Fashion is the barrier — continually raised anew because continually torn down — by which the fashionable world seeks to segregate itself from the middle region of society” (qtd. in Benjamin 74). In Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Phoebe Junior, Thomas Hardy and Oliphant use fashion to explore the freedoms and limitations of late nineteenth- century class mobility by telling the story of heroines who are able, in part through education, to separate themselves from their lower-class roots, a separation that is marked in each case by a change in attire.

Fight Club, 1880: Boxing, Class, and Literary Culture in John Boyle O'Reilly's Boston

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 706-736
Author(s):  
JAMES EMMETT RYAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Newspaper Editor ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
Fight Club ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Because late nineteenth-century American sport was connected to both immigrant assimilation and cultural prestige, this essay first describes Boston amateur athletics during the later nineteenth century. Ireland-born poet/lecturer/newspaper editor John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–90) provides an important example of social and intellectual class mobility from the perspective of an immigrant writer. We observe through O'Reilly's sporting experiences and literary career how the development of upper-class amateur athletics in Boston and the popularity of boxing among its Irish working classes gave him exceptional influence among both groups. His history of boxing, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (1888), is examined in detail as a key statement on pugilism, masculinity, and American citizenship fame. This view of Boston's intellectual and physical cultures, observed from the standpoint of O'Reilly, a talented writer and a sort of literary counterpart of famed pugilist John L. Sullivan (his friend, occasional sparring partner, and fellow celebrity among the Irish American community), sheds light on newly available pathways to social mobility made possible by simultaneous engagement with literary and athletic cultures.

Mind

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
William James ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Established Church

This chapter focuses on the writer Thomas Hardy who was raised a good Christian, a member of the established church. Then he read The Origin of Species and it all came crashing down. His poem “Hap,” written in 1866, tells it all, implying that God does not exist but that with his going, humans lose all meaning to life. The chapter also discusses crucial issues about how philosophers handled mind and meaning, about knowledge and morality. Not just the nonexistence of God— agnosticism or atheism pretty much became the norm in the profession—but the lack of meaning. The American pragmatists rode with things pretty well. Whether this was part of the general, late-nineteenth-century American vigor and rise to prominence and power, they found the challenge of Darwinism stimulating and thought provoking. For someone like William James, the struggle for existence and natural selection translated readily into a theory of knowledge—ideas fight it out just as organisms fight it out.

The Evolution of Virginity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora E. Jaffary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Empirical Means

This chapter traces change and continuity in the discourse and practice of virginity through colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico by studying religious tracts, medical texts, and criminal trials. Particular attention is paid to the testimony that Mexican midwives supplied about virginity to criminal courts. Colonial Mexicans primarily associated virginity with Catholic symbolism and expressed uncertainty about the confirmation of biological virginity. In this era, the cessation of menstruation might indicate pregnancy, but might also indicate various other medical conditions which could be alleviated through the ingestion of socially sanctioned menstrual regulators. The late nineteenth century marked the emergence of a scientific discourse that posited an impartial and empirical means to establish “biological virginity,” particularly in the research of physician Francisco Flores’ study of the Mexican hymen. Evidence from criminal trials and secondary literature also reveals a change across time whereby by the late nineteenth century, increasing numbers of lower class Mexican women purportedly adopted the imperative of preserving virginity prior to marriage than had done so in the colonial era.

From state uniform to fashion: Japanese adoption of western clothing since the late nineteenth century

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Ami Kobayashi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Adoption Process ◽  
Rural Space ◽  
School Uniform ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Since the late nineteenth century, yōfuku (a vague Japanese concept referring to all clothing originating from western countries) has spread predominantly from the upper to the lower class and from urban to rural space in Japan. In this process, the symbolic meaning attached to it has been transformed. Once a symbol of male elites, yōfuku has become ‘Japanese fashion’ and is now an expression of current Japanese (pop) culture. This article investigates the adoption process of yōfuku – especially the school uniform, which has reflected the contrasts between elite and non-elite, modernity and tradition, masculinity and femininity, and public duty and private life. Drawing on the case study of Japan, this article also sheds light on the complexity and variety that exist in modernization processes.

The Calvinist Paradox in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-227
Author(s):  
Alison M. Jack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Nineteenth Century Literature ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Susan Ferrier ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The relationship between theology and literature in Scotland from the mid eighteenth to the late nineteenth century is explored in this chapter through a consideration of the writing of Robert Burns, Susan Ferrier, Catherine Sinclair, and Margaret Oliphant. All are authors whose work has undergone re-appraisal in terms of its status and the way it reflects religious themes from a Reformed perspective. Four aspects of theological interest are covered: the significance of denominational allegiance; the tension between the influence of the family home and the ministry of the church on religious belief; the role of eschatology in literature; and the appropriateness of literature as a vehicle for theological instruction and debate. The writers under discussion offer contrasting, critical, yet committed insights into these areas which contribute to our understanding of contemporary theological debates.

Contents of Western Sociology of Religion as a Science and Educational Discipline

2002 ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).

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