Dress Reform in the 19th Century
PACKET 2
by Jennifer Erbach
©2003 Illinois During the Gilded Age Digitization Project.
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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!
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"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 1850's.
…For my part I believe that the costly, hampering and grotesque dress of women — the
worst bondage from a barbarous past that still enthralls us — has a twofold explanation.
First, that when all men were soldiers and before money was known, they made the
women folk who staid at home in places of comparative safety, the custodians of their
wealth, hanging it upon them in rings, necklaces, bracelets, and rich fabrics. Secondly,
that the more women could be hampered by their clothing — the trailing skirts that
impeded locomotion, the half-bared head and lightly clad feet which exposed them to the
discomfort of snow and rain and cold; the veiled face which prevented them from seeing
or being seen, the more were they content to stay indoors, and thus the more especially
did they become the exclusive property and utter dependents of some fierce barbarian,
who while heaping his treasure upon them, regarded these fair and fragile beings as the
chief treasures of all he had amassed….
…A Christian civilization has worn away the most repulsive features of this bondage, but
every punctured ear, bandaged waist and high heeled shoe is a reminder that manhood
and womanhood are yet under the curse transmitted by their ignorant and semi-barbarous
ancestry. Men have emerged farther than we, because they are more enlightened and
more free to seek their own development and comfort. They have always set the fashions,
because they have always been and are today the ruling class. Man and woman are King
and Courtier in the world's great realm, and will be, until he, in his growing wisdom and
tenderness shall say to her, "I will no longer make a law for you since I perceive that God
has made laws for us both. Let us hereafter, like boy and girl at school, study out, side by
side, the sacred laws of health and happiness which He has written in His Works and
Word." Man in our age has begun thus to speak to the gentle companion whom God gave
to be with him, and as she emerges into the sunlight of truth and becomes a citizen of the
great, home-like world which his prowess has subdued for her, she will throw off the
badges of her long servitude and appear in a costume at once modest, healthful and
elegant. All roads lead to Rome, and a discussion of the origin of woman's love of dress
— which I claim is superinduced, and her senseless extravagance — which grows out of
her ignorant and subject condition, leads inevitably by a logical process of thought, to
industrial independence and the self-protection of the ballot as essential to her
deliverance from both these senseless follies…
…Girls learn the love of dress at their mother's side and at their father's knee. Most of all
they learn it from their wretched, heathenish dolls. Girls are systematically drilled into
the lust of the eye and the pride of life; into false standards of taste, and those worldly
estimates of value which look only upon the outward adorning; and in this hateful school
their teacher is the doll, with simpering face and fluffy hair, bespangled robes and perfect
artificiality. The Kindergarten is doing no one thing so helpful as to banish this grotesque
Queen of the playroom; and to substitute for boys and girls the same playthings, and
these based upon good taste and common sense…
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…Alas for the "saleslady" who falls into the snare of some city establishment which
advertised for help, and whose proprietor told her, when "the terms" were being settled,
that she could get so much more per week, if she would "obey any orders they might give
her!" She should dress in as many furbelows as she pleased — at the price of her own
honor. So frequent as this bait of filthy lucre become, that our social purity workers will,
it is hoped, soon add to their efforts for the legal protection of women, the attempt to
secure such enactments as shall make it a penal offence for any man to offer such wages
to women as will not suffice respectably to board and clothe them. The style of dress
among hired girls is often pitiful to see. But it usually puts to shame the mistress more
than the maid by reason of its tawdrier imitation of tawdry fashions set in the parlor
which, in this democratic land, the kitchen will be sure to follow…
…If young women knew what is the outcome to those tempted as they are not, of an
evening spent in their company, where the low corsage, the naked arm, the whirling
dance, allure young manhood, they would sink upon their faces before God in penitence.
If they realized what distressed parents could tell them as they have told me, about the
results of such temptation upon the conduct of their sons; the penalties vicariously borne,
the blight upon home's peace and purity, not even the all-potent dictum of the (im)"modiste" could hereafter bring them to this unchaste public disrobing…
Willard, Frances. "Dress and Vice" available online on Illinois During the Gilded
Age at http://dig.lib.niu.edu/gildedage/all.html.
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"Reflections on Women's Dress”
Writing for the publication Arena in 1892, Elizabeth Smith Miller looked back on the
dress reform movement of the mid-nineteenth century and her own involvement in dress
reform.
…The lines of beauty in "the human form divine"--lines which painter and sculptor spend
their lives in striving to render with unswerving accuracy--are ignored by women who
make fashion their ideal. It is a sad fact that in modes of dress we have no taste; the most
hideous costumes become beautiful in our eyes if they are only fashionable…
…It might be suggested that we devise and make fashionable a reasonable and beautiful
dress--one as little subject to change as the ancient Greek costume. But would a fashion
not originating in Paris be accepted, and would woman consent to lose the charm of a
constant change of style?
From this thralldom to fashion, which presents such a hopeless aspect, there is one grand
outlook. It is the higher education of woman. When we consider that many colleges have
opened their doors to her, that many have been established for her, and that vast numbers
are eagerly availing themselves of these educational advantages, we may with good
reason rejoice in the prospect of her reaching a plane where fashion will no longer
enslave her. At this height of mental and moral culture, frivolous views of life will give
place to those of an earnest, serious nature; the responsibilities of motherhood will reveal
a stronger, deeper meaning; the welfare of the nation will become dear to her, and the
long withheld right of suffrage will be claimed and received; and finally, "in the
expulsive power" of these new and nobler interests, fashion, with its train of follies, will
fade into insignificance…
…All hail to the day when we shall have a reasonable and beautiful dress, that shall
encourage exercise on the road and in the field; that shall leave us the free use of our
limbs; that shall help and not hinder our perfect development.
ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER.
Elizabeth Smith Miller, "Reflections on Woman's Dress, and the Record of a
Personal Experience," Arena (September 1892), pp. 491-95.
Available from http://womhist.binghamton.edu/dress/doc28.htm
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Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The following is an excerpt from a letter written by Gerrit Smith to his cousin Elizabeth
Caddy Stanton, after she stopped wearing the Bloomer costume and returned to their
former style of dress..
…Voluntarily wearing, in common with their sex, a dress which imprisons and cripples
them, they, nevertheless, follow up this absurdity with the greater one of coveting and
demanding a social position no less full of admitted rights, and a relation to the other sex
no less full of independence, than such position and relation would naturally and
necessarily have been, had they scorned a dress which leaves them less than half their
personal power of self-subsistence and usefulness. I admit that the mass of women are
not chargeable with this latter absurdity of cherishing aspirations and urging claims so
wholly and so glaringly at war with this voluntary imprisonment and this selfdegradation. They are content in their helplessness and poverty and destitution of rights.
Nay, they are so deeply deluded as to believe that all this belongs to their natural and
unavoidable lot. But the handful of women of whom I am here complaining--the woman's
rights women--persevere just as blindly and stubbornly as do other women, in wearing a
dress that both marks and makes their impotence, and yet, O amazing inconsistency! they
are ashamed of their dependence, and remonstrate against its injustice. They claim that
the fullest measure of rights and independence and dignity shall be accorded to them, and
yet they refuse to place themselves in circumstances corresponding with their claim.
They demand as much for themselves as is acknowledged to be due to men, and yet they
refuse to pay the necessary, the never-to-be-avoided price of what they demand--the price
which men have to pay for it…
…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 nonsenical 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...
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…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. 83639.
Available online at http://womhist.binghamton.edu/dress/doc25.htm.
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Guided Reading Questions
Answer the following in 1-3 complete sentences.
1. What does Frances Willard believe is the 'two-fold explanation' of women's style of
dress?
2. What connection does Willard make between men's and women's rights and fashion?
How does she believe fashion will change as equality between men and women is
achieved?
3. What, according to Willard, are some of the moral problems that have been created by
current fashions and/or the desire to be fashionable?
4. What connection(s) does Elizabeth Smith Miller make between education for women
and dress reform?
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5. Does Gerrit Smith believe that wearing current fashions helps or harms the efforts of
women in the suffrage movement? How does he see it as helping/harming?
6. How does Smith relate women's style of dress to their social status of being inferior to
men? What does he think will happen if current fashions are abandoned?
7. According to Smith, if women continue to wear current fashions, what will be the
effect on their efforts at social equality in America? In other parts of the world?
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