Dress Reform in the 19th Century
Homework Packet 3: Men's Perspectives on Dress Reform
by Jennifer Erbach

Introduction | Reading #1 | Reading #2 | Reading #3 | Guided Reading Questions

Introduction

Among the many reform movements of the nineteenth century was a movement to reform women's style of dress. The fashionable long skirts made with yards of heavy material, tight corsets used to create an hourglass shape, and high-heeled shoes were all blamed for poor health in women. In the 1850s the first wave of the dress reform movement began among members of the women's suffrage movement. Some of these women adopted a costume that came to be known as the "Bloomer" or "Turkish" costume. It consisted of a short, loosely draped dress over very loose pantaloons. The use of the dress was not very widespread and eventually died out, as even the reformers returned to their old styles of dressing.

Dress reform again found a voice in the 1870s and 1880s with activists such as Frances Willard, the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Willard spoke out against the physical and moral damage done by wearing fashionable corsets, heavy skirts, and evening gowns that showed off the bust and arms.

Directions:
Look over the page of guided reading questions and then read through the documents in this packet. After you are finished, go back and answer the questions in 1-3 complete sentences. Write down any questions you may have and bring them to class with you. Be prepared to summarize what you've read for your classmates!

Reading #1: Advice to Young Ladies

The following is an excerpt from Timothy Shay Arthur's book Advice to Young Ladies.

To dress with neatness, taste, and propriety, is the duty of every young lady; and she should give just as much thought and attention to the subject as will enable her to do it, and no more. Unless she do give to it both thought and attention however, she will not be able to dress with taste and propriety. Occasionally we meet with instances where young ladies affect, or really feel indifference in regard to dress. Every thing like ornament is eschewed as beneath the dignity of an intelligent being. The higher colors never appear in any of their garments, and ribbons are used with a degree of caution that is quite amusing. All this might be tolerated if good taste accompanied their simplicity of attire; but, unfortunately, a want of good taste is, in most cases, the primary cause of the indifference they manifest. But, as there exists in woman a natural fondness for dress, the opposite extreme to this is the one into which young girls most frequently run, unless they are guided and controlled, as is usually the case, by the sounder and purer taste of a mother, an elder sister, or some judicious friend. In order to keep herself from running into this extreme, a young lady should guard against the common fault of dressing for the purpose of attracting attention. If she have a fondness for gay colors, let her use them, but not to excess; on the contrary, if her taste lead her to select those more subdued and less attractive, let her taste be her guide. In regard to ornaments, they are proper to be used, and, when worn by a person of good taste in their selection and arrangement, add very much to a woman's appearance.

An idea prevails very generally, among some persons, that all attention to dress, or the following of the fashions, as they usually term it, is a useless waste of money and time, and an actual injury to the moral state of the person who thus pays a regard to dress. There is no doubt that following the fashions to an excess, and thinking about little else than dress, is just as great an evil as it is here alleged to be. But it is one thing to do this, and another thing to have such a regard for external order, beauty, and propriety, as shall make our appearance pleasing to our friends, and our presence welcome in circles of taste and refinement. If we dress with a singularity because of a weak prejudice against the prevailing fashions, or outrage all true taste by incongruities of attire, our presence cannot be pleasing to our friends, nor welcome in refined and intelligent circles.

The true standard of dress for a young lady is that which happens to prevail in the present; but in adopting it, she should carefully avoid its extremes. If it trenches upon modesty, or endangers her health, let her so far not follow it. These extremes she can easily avoid, and yet not appear singular.

Arthur, Timothy Shay [1848], Advice to Young Ladies (Boston: Phillips and Sampson) Permission: Northern Illinois University 93-95. Available online at Lincoln/Net.

Reading #2: Dress and Vice

The following is part of a series of lectures given by Woman's Christian Temperance Union President Frances Willard. Willard advocated changes in dress on a more modest scale than the Bloomer costume worn by women in the reform movements of the 1850s.

…If young women knew what young men think and say of them when they pass along the street in pyramidal hats which are but cages of dead birds; dresses displaying the bandaged, hour-glass waist, the camel's hump, the mopping skirt, with front so strapped as to display the lower limbs in most unseemly fashion; with arms akimbo and so pinched that a sausage is their only parallel; and this fashionable effigy upborne upon the same hideous slant-heeled pedestals that the demi-monde of Paris wear; if even these young women could hear the remarks of the young men as they pass by, they would never again appear in such a hideous guise. Contrast with such an image a young lady quietly dressed in plaited waist, plain skirt of some soft goods, falling to the ankle, low heeled walking shoes, pretty collar with a bit of ribbon, and neat cuffs at the wrist, neat round hat, hair in a simple knot, clear skin, and cheek touched with the bloom of youth and purity! No young man having one spark of sense or manliness could look upon the first figure without secret contempt, or upon the last without sincere respect. One would "lead him a life," the other would found him a home. In one his heart might safely trust, the other would be apt to marry him in haste for his money and leave him to repent the squandering thereof at leisure…

… Our duty in the case is immediate, and may well be all-engrossing when we consider manhood's point of view in addition to our own. The following ingenuous letter which I recently received from a young man at the East, is commended to the candid reflection of all women, especially those who, like its author, are in the morning of life:

DEAR LADY: — It may seem presumptuous for an unknown and ignorant laddie like me to address you, but I have applied to several others for help and found none. I take the Witness, Pioneer and Laws of Life, and have seen some of your protests against that great crime so many women commit, viz: lacing. In this community we have a lodge of Good Templars which has held weekly meetings for eighteen years, and girls who are members of the order and take part in the exercises stand on a platform, and with blood filled with impurities from imperfect circulation and faces covered with pimples caused by lacing, urge the boys not to poison their blood with alcohol, and ridicule the red nose of the toper. We have also a Society of Christian Endeavor, and young women with breath and usefulness shortened one-half by corsets, attend the prayer-meetings of the society and say they are trying to serve the Lord, and pray that they may be enabled to do His will in all things. The boys of this place are a strong, healthy, tough and wiry set; but oh, the girls! Pale, pinched faces, and languid steps; forms created in God's own image cruelly deformed and distorted into hideous monstrosities to make men shudder and angels weep; unfit for wives because incapable of becoming the mothers of healthy children. What young man of sense wants to marry a dressmaker's lay-figure, or a bundle of aches and pains wrapped up in fancy dry goods? One of my friends — a fine young man with no poison habits — did marry one of them. Five short years have passed away and where is his family? Two little graves in the village cemetery and a wife who is a physical wreck, may tell the story. Now can you not write a leaflet that will bring to bear upon this subject physiology, theology and common sense and which can be scattered broadcast among the young women of the country, especially those of the W.C.T.U.? Think of this. It is the Master's work. He bids me write to you. Yours truly,
JOHN ------.

The young man from Vermont is right. Criticisms upon the habits of our brothers come with poor grace from those whose own sins against God's laws written in their members fill as many graveyards as do the tobacco and alcohol habits. For myself, I saw this early in my temperance apostleship and discarded corsets and high heeled shoes — two pets of my benighted youth, — adopted a more hygienic way of living in nearly all regards, and am slowly moving onward toward a better understanding of Christianity applied to the toilet, the table and all the daily conduct of life.

Willard, Frances. "Dress and Vice." Available online on Illinois During the Gilded Age.

The following is an excerpt from a letter from Gerrit Smith to his cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, after she and many others began abandoning the Bloomer costume, and returning to their old style of dress.

…Were women to throw off the dress, which, in the eye of chivalry and gallantry, is so well adapted to womanly gracefulness and womanly helplessness, and to put on a dress that would leave her free to work her own way through the world, I see not but that chivalry and gallantry would nearly or quite die out. No longer would she present herself to man, now in the bewitching character of a plaything, a doll, an idol, and now in the degraded character of his servant. But he would confess her transmutation into his equal; and, therefore, all occasion for the display of chivalry and gallantry toward her on the one hand, and tyranny on the other, would have passed away. Only let woman attire her person fitly for the whole battle of life--that great and often rough battle, which she is as much bound to fight as man is, and the common sense expressed in the change will put to flight all the nonsensical fancies about her superiority to man, and all the nonsensical fancies about her inferiority to him. No more will then be heard of her being made of a finer material than man is made of; and, on the contrary, no more will then be heard of her being but the complement of man, and of its taking both a man and a woman (the woman, of course, but a small part of it) to make up a unit. No more will it then be said that there is sex in mind--an original sexual difference in intellect. What a pity that so many of our noblest women make this foolish admission! It is made by the great majority of the women who plead the cause of woman.

I am amazed that the intelligent women engaged in the "Woman's Rights Movement," see not the relation between their dress and the oppressive evils which they are striving to throw off. I am amazed that they do not see that their dress is indispensable to keep in countenance the policy and purposes out of which those evils grow. I hazard nothing in saying, that the relation between the dress and degradation of an American woman, is as vital as between the cramped foot and degradation of a Chinese woman; as vital as between the uses of the inmate of the harem and the apparel and training provided for her. Moreover, I hazard nothing in saying, that an American woman will never have made her most effectual, nor, indeed, any serviceable protest against the treatment of her sex in China, or by the lords of the harem, so long as she consents to have her own person clothed in ways so repugnant to reason and religion, and grateful only to a vitiated taste, be it in her own or in the other sex…

Letter from Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, 1 December 1855, in History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), appendix to chapter XIII, pp. 836-39.

Directions: Answer the following in 1-3 complete sentences.

1.How does Frances Willard compare the fashionably dressed woman with the young lady dressed simply and modestly? How does she say young men will view each?






2. What problems does 'John' see with women's fashions as pertains to their health? Their efforts in various reform and purity movements?






3. How does 'John' view fashionably dressed women in terms of their desirability as wives? What example does he give?






4. How does Timothy Shay Arthur compare women who follow the fashions, with those who choose to dress very simply?






5. How does Arthur answer the arguments that following the fashions leads to immorality? Does he feel that any caution should be taken with regard to dress?






6. According to Gerrit Smith, if women were to abandon fashionable dress, how would their social standing in relation to men be changed?






7. What role does Smith believe the dress plays in women's social standing? What other customs does he compare women's dress to?