Clothed in meaning : literature, labor, and cotton in nineteenth-century America / Sylvia Jenkins Cook.

Author: Cook, Sylvia Jenkins, 1943- author.

ImprintAnn Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2020.

Imprint2020

Description309 pages ; 24 cm.

Note:"O dear, how the factory girls do rig up!": dressing up and speaking out at Lowell -- A metaphor-making argument -- "Think what I have felt": William Grimes -- "Tricked out": dress and nakedness -- Strong spheres and elegant arts: the "real presence" of slaves in Stowe's Dred -- The empire of fashion and the empire of cotton -- "The ebony pen of an ambitious lady": the coiffeuse and the modiste -- "Depth of thought and flights of eloquence": epics of cotton -- Conclusion: the material of expression.

Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-302) and index.

Note:"The rise of both the empire of cotton and the empire of fashion in the nineteenth century brought new opportunities for sartorial self-expression to millions of ordinary people who could now afford to dress in style and assert their physical presence. Millions of laborers toiling in cotton field and producing cotton cloth in industrial mills faced a brutal reality of exploitation, servitude, and regimentation, yet they also had a profound desire to express their selfhood. Another transformative force of this era, the rise of literary publication and the radical extension of literacy to the working class, opened an avenue for them to do so. Cloth and clothing provide potent tropes not only for the physical but also for intellectual forms of self-expression. The rise of both the empire of cotton and the empire of fashion in the nineteenth century brought new opportunities for sartorial self-expression to millions of ordinary people who could now afford to dress in style and assert their physical presence. Millions of laborers toiling in cotton field and producing cotton cloth in industrial mills faced a brutal reality of exploitation, servitude, and regimentation, yet they also had a profound desire to express their selfhood. Another transformative force of this era, the rise of literary publication and the radical extension of literacy to the working class, opened an avenue for them to do so. Cloth and clothing provide potent tropes not only for the physical but also for intellectual forms of self-expression."-- Provided by publisher.

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