ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the examples of the power of dress from CharlesDickens because he seems to have been particularly aware of the complex effects that descriptions of dress could achieve. Most of the novelists of the period attempted occasionally what Dickens attempted repeatedly: to make clothes or accoutrements psychologically revealing. In the novels of Dickens clothing is often an extension of gesture, similarly conveying a sense of style. In Dickens's most developed character-portrayals the information concerning clothes and accoutrements does not merely confirm the suggestions implicit in his account of face or gesture, but carries them farther. At first glance detailed descriptions of clothes, however relevant to the visual life of a novel, might seem to promise little psycho logical or even social information. Clothes can most obviously be of psychological interest as an expression of an individual style.
