Reading Dress: Fashion And Friendship In A Little Princess And Anne Of Green Gables
This Major Research Project (MRP) argues that fashion is a key tool for the critical examination of textual and visual works. Specifically, this research illustrates fashion’s impact on the social identities of young female protagonists in early-twentieth-century adolescent literature, through a comparative literary study of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Engaging theories of fashion, literature, and girl culture, as well as theories of semiotics and fashion diffusion, dress is shown to be instrumental in developing episodes of closeness and friendship for the protagonists in these novels, along with moments that may isolate them. This MRP examines the illustrations and accompanying textual descriptions found in the 1905 (London) and 1908 (Boston) editions of each work in order to expose fashion’s mirroring and shaping of social identity; ultimately, this study reveals the tension between fashion’s ability to both cement and subvert dominant cultural norms and ideals at the turn of the century.